You're Forcing Me To Defend Robert Barron, You Bastard

Was Hoping I Was Done With This Stuff

I HAVE SAID that I like Keith Olbermann and respect him.  That is to say, on balance I like what of Keith Olbermann that I know.  I've never met him, I've never seen him in life, I've never talked to anyone who knows him, friend or foe.  What I know of him is what I used to see when his Countdown show was on MSNBC (which I rarely saw because it came after I stopped watching cable TV) and what I've heard of him online, first in the series of polemical attacks he made on the Trump regime many of which I posted here and in his revived Countdown which he produces himself, generally the first thing that comes up when I go on Youtube because I listen to it virtually every day it's put out.  One thing that could be said about my idea of Keith Olbermann is that my view of him isn't disinterested because it's based entirely on what he says and what he says about himself and his life (we both like dogs, a lot, for example) and what we agree on, most everything to do with politics.  And what we don't agree on I can take, his anti-religiosity and anti-Christianity most seriously, his love of Thurber, which I don't get at all and his focus on sports.  Though I've said he is about the only person who is a good enough writer and interesting enough so that he is the only commentator on sports who can get me to listen to an entire piece about it.  Of people I like in that kind of way, I like him very much.  

If someone wanted to mock my liking and respect for Keith Olbermann, they could truthfully point out that I don't really know anything "objective" about him, since just about everything I know about him comes from him. I suppose I could go look for what other people say about him, including those who have known him.  But I've never done that and don't really have much of an interest in doing that, I like his commentary enough and find he is honest enough about what I share a knowledge of with him that I don't want his personality, likeable enough but with definite prickles, to get in the way of enjoying listening to him.  I'm sure his enemies, many of whom he has known and worked with would say things about him that could impact that.  I've also admitted that finding out too much about some composers, musicians, writers, etc. have made it impossible for me to enjoy their work.  Considering how much of his podcast is devoted to telling tales of others in media who he has worked with, his criticism of them (many of whom I dislike or, like Rick Kaplan and Laura Ingraham, I detest) and his positive reporting of a few of them, that would probably be something that would be a fair point in evaluating my opinion of him.  I can say that some of those he slams or criticizes I like, too.  I don't feel obliged to dislike someone just because he had a run-in or two with them.

If someone wanted to go all late night college sophomore on me, they could point out that I have a pretty flimsy basis on which to base my opinion of Keith Olbermann on.  I've never seen him, I've never seen him within the milieu in which he lives, I've never verified much of anything he's said about himself and his life.  For all I "know" if by that you mean know in some pretended objective and disinterested way, the man I know as Keith Olbermann is an actor playing a part on TV as I suspect many of those in the media do.  Some of whom he and I share a disliking for.  For all I know all of them are playing who they are as "TV journalists"*.  For all I know Keith Olbermann is a TV character who transitioned into Youtube and other online formats and is as real as any other TV character.  If it wasn't for the fact that he can write well and uses the language very well and doesn't have tell-tale beats taken in his delivery, his most recent Youtubes could be AI generated.  

All of this is because someone mocked me over Olbermann's repeated ridicule of Christianity in his "Worst Persons In The World" segment yesterday.  He gave out his typical barroom atheist mythicist rant about the real existence of Jesus and the events in the Gospels during it.  I'll start with what set that off this time.

Olbermann belatedly slammed the critics of the Olympics opening show's clear mockery, not of "The Last Supper" but of Leonardo Da Vinci's famous and decayed fresco of it, with drag queens as Jesus and the Apostles and pagan content.  Making believe that what the director of the thing, Thomas Jolly obviously did, making a vulgar mockery of one of the central events in all four Gospels, wasn't what he clearly did is beneath Olbermann's level of honest reporting.  It was blatantly an obviously offensive presentation mocking that.  There is no other reasonable interpretation of it.  Jolly's defense of it in terms of a right to disbelief confirmed that was his clear intent, despite his ass covering denials.  That ass covering makes any assertion of its courageousness an empty gesture.

It was a spectacle intending to offend Christians in the most obvious of ways.  It couldn't be more obvious that that's what he and his colleagues did.  And it is as clear THAT HE DID IT WITH THE INTENTION OF OFFENDING MANY PEOPLE AND GETTING A REACTION FROM THEM.  He was probably counting on the Archibishop of Paris, among others, to express that offense.  THAT SUCH PEOPLE GAVE THE REACTION THAT WAS CLEARLY DESIRED IS HARDLY THEIR FAULT.  Nor was it unexpected.   No more than that the fashionable despisers of Christianity expressing their delight at the offensiveness to it intended to offend.  If those who were offended had done what would probably have been the wisest thing to do, brush it off as another pedestrian Parisian spectacle as meaningless as any such production number, none of the pretended counter-offense of the anti-Christians could have happened.  If they'd ignored it altogether Jolly and his colleagues would certainly have been upset instead of gratified by it.  If there is one thing that they didn't want, it was to have the let-down of their offensive tableau NOT GETTING THE REACTIONS IT DID.  Such show-biz types mount spectacles to get attention and if it hadn't they'd have been the most hurt of all.   There's nothing much more to it other than getting paid to do it.

That part of the effect desired by those producing such intentional offense, the part that Olbermann and his like played in reacting to the original offense taken, their pseudo-moralistic defense of the um. . . "art"  on the basis of "liberty," "freedom of expression," "free speech" and "artistic freedom" was the most over-blown part of it.  Well, who stopped them from doing any of it?  

What is the most developed view of this situation is the intense irony that those who slam the objectors to the spectacle on the bases of various "freedoms" is that they are objecting to the liberty, the freedom of expression, the free speech of those expressing their hurt and outrage.  OF ALL OF THOSE EXPRESSING OUTRAGE, THE ONES INTENTIONALLY OFFENDED ARE THE ONES WHO DIDN'T DO A THING TO CAUSE THIS TO HAPPEN.  Even if I disagree with them on extremely important things, even my own rights as an LGBTQ+ man and even as I dislike many of those who have expressed their outrage, their outrage was in response to something they didn't originate.  The hypocrisy of Jolly and his colleagues in pretending they didn't intend to do what they so obviously intended to do is exactly that, hypocrisy.  As is the hypocrisy of those who had Olbermann's reaction to that expression of being involuntarily offended, is that they're objecting to the free expression of that offense.  The whole thing, from start to finish reeks of hypocrisy on the part of those who provoked the offense and those who object to the expression of that offense.  Much as I dislike many of those who have expressed that offense - I pretty much detest the two American bishops named in that piece I wrote about it last week - them taking offense at what they found offensive is the most honest thing about it.

Considering what I said about the dynamics of Olbermann's beloved sports as an entertainment planned to make at least half of those doing it and at least half of those watching it unhappy - for him to slam those who were involuntarily made unhappy by an . . . um. . . "artistic" spectacle they had no foreknowledge would be presented to them expressing their unhappiness is especially odd.  Especially as it was done as a prelude to exactly that kind of sports spectacle in which those made happy or unhappy were expected to express their feelings, how can those expressing their offense at the opening show be offensive?   I wonder if Olbermann has ever expressed his dislike of a half-time show at a football game.  Many do to not much criticism.  What if it had been on the basis of right wing politics, insincere and hypocritical nationalism?  The kind of stuff put on by Olympics mounted within some of the worst dictatorships?   Would it be Ok to slam those or express offense on those bases or is that a wrong on the same basis as the outrage of the Archbishop of Paris is held to be a wrong? 

I have to say, I wasn't terribly offended by the spectacle, which, watching it after it happened, was among the most tediously predictable drag act I've ever seen.  I'm not a huge fan of the . . . um . . . art of drag but it's best when it's surprising and creative.   Which the Paris spectacle was not.  I generally find that modern French culture is a matter of presenting the most predictable and practiced and sterotypical content - people go there to study styles of clowning, for fucksake.  They pretended that Jerry Lewis was a comic genius because some idiot ersatz savant claimed him to be one.  It is entirely in service to whatever is in fashion at any given time.  That's typical of such show biz, everything from nightclub acts to stage presentations, TV shows and movies, no matter where those are produced.  It's typical of the kind of lit that gets on best sellers lists and mentioned on TV and radio shows.  It's very rare that any of it rises above or departs entirely from the recitation of conventional images, in this case the typical conventions of anti-Christian puerility.  I'll add that J. D. Vance's "hillbilly" shit was just a different topic and style of the same thing, otherwise it would never have been made into a movie.

Keith Olbermann taking the opportunity to throw more offense at Christians who were so offended  by claiming that the existence of Jesus and The Last Supper are not knowably historical is, of course, the focus of the first part of this post.  Any claim made about Jesus is demanded to present a level of "proof" that little else is demanded to.  Especially considering when he lived.  Jesus is probably the best documented peasant from antiquity and better documented than any number of well known figures in the ancient and classical world.  There are more independent sources of information about him than for Socrates for whom there are exactly three hardly disinterested sources, Sparticus who is known only through aristocratic Romans writing about him more than a century after his life.   I doubt there is any such a thing as a disinterested classical writer about any person or event.   All of them wrote out of an apriori point of view. 

Since I'm reading him right now, Luke Timothy Johnson has said that the existence of Jesus as a Jewish peasant from the first century, his death on the cross and the movement that arose immediately after his reported resurrection are facts of the highest historical probability.  LTK is someone who has devoted his academic career to the topic, he has the credentials to be taken credibly on the topic.  He lists other things about Jesus that are not as certain but are very well or less well evidenced.  Even atheists who specialize in the relevant fields such as Bart Ehrman hold that view of the historicity of Jesus, a couple of those with such credentials on the fringiest of fringes denying that high probability.  The same cannot be said about many people and events of the ancient and classical eras, though I've never heard anyone doubt that even the most developed stories about them are factual.  

Given the milieu in which Olbermann works and in which both of us live in 2024, how many English speaking People these days believe they know all about figures such as Sparticus, such as Caligula and Claudius when all they know they got second hand through a TV series made from the NOVELS by Robert Graves, or how many believe they know about Thomas More based on the movie The Man For All Seasons, what they know of the Scopes Trial on the grotesquely anti-historical Inherit The Wind?  Basing a knowledge of Jesus on the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles is practicing a heightened level of historical review from what I'd guess is typical in Olbermann's and my milieu.  I have, on occasion, heard Olbermann make the typical historical and other factual gaffs and errors common to our generation of college-credentialed people, maybe some of them gained currency through such show biz.  Maybe I'll start keeping a tab when I hear those, from now on.  I would welcome anyone finding any in what I write to point those out, after documenting that they are actually gaffs.  

I still like Olbermann and will listen to him on politics,** on the media, even on sports (though I cannot listen to Thurber even when he reads it) but on the topic of Christianity, I'll listen to those who have some basis higher than the village barroom atheist school of oratory, such as apparently ill-served Clarence Darrow when he unwisely debated G. K. Chesterton on the topic.  As I've noted here, even such a Christianity unfriendly organ as The Nation said that Chesterton knew what he was talking about and Darrow just repeated that kind of stuff as a boy would try to offend his pious aunt with.  I do thank Olbermann and whoever it was who mocked me over his commentary for making me think out the real nature of the Olympics opening brew-ha-ha even though it made me speak up for the likes of Bishop Barron and the Archbishop of Paris.  Most of those named among the complainers I don't like much at all, I'd rather not have to speak up for them.  Of all of those expressing disapproval in this matter, they were the ones least hypocritical about it.  I might like Olbermann better than them, but in this, they were more in the right than he is.  I just wish they'd ignored the stupid thing and it deflated like I hope Trump is.  

* Olbermann's observation on "TV journalism" that it's not journalism because it's all TV is one of the most valuable and succinct summations of what's wrong with it.  TV is all about getting ratings, reporting of facts coming well down in the list of its priorities.  My thought on that was that the more production involved in "journalism" the farther away from the reporting of facts.  So I've long distrusted TV "journalism" and "journalists" especially as the 24-7 format invented by Ted Turner took over and they flooded TV "journalism" with "opinion journalism" over the far more expensive and slow and risky reporting of verified fact.  And with the idiotic permission of the Supreme Court and the gutting of broadcast standards, the reporting of conjecture, polling and predictions.   

** Another thing, I suspect it's his unstated scientism that leads Olbermann to spend so much time on polling, which, if there's something obvious about it, it's highly unreliable pseudo-science of a particularly dishonest kind.  I think most of it is planned to get the results those commissioning the polls want.   I wish he'd spend less time on the polls which I find myself scrolling past.  I try to let the Youtube play through because I assume it's to his financial advantage but I'm pretty much past the point of tolerance over polls.