Olbermann is back with two clips courtesy of Mediaite. Olbermann vies for the self-effacing guffawing “aw shucks you really love me” but it’s odd to see him not snarling about Fox for more than a minute.

In one of the clips he thanks Jonah Goldberg, Bill Kristol, and yours truly, which was a bit of a surprise as just two weeks ago he called me a “b*llsh*t mouthbreather” and blocked me on Twitter, but I guess things have changed. I never thought the donations were a big deal, the only thing was MSNBC’s own policy and how employees, if they like earning money, should listen to their employer or at least approach them about it before breaking it.

It did strike me as odd that he admitted we probably treated him better than he would have treated us. He would have been unnecessarily harsh simply because of ideological differences? Principle is principle and frankly, I couldn’t care less about the cosmetic stuff surrounding it. I hope at some point Olbermann cares less about that, too. (more…)

Should reporters who believe that most of America is stupid and insane be in the journalism business? Let’s consider the question.

Take left-wing journalist Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic. He’s not bad at his job. His insights are often worthwhile and occasionally wise. Yet Ambinder sometimes writes things so foolish that one might expect to read them at the leftist propaganda site Media Matters for America.

His latest adventure in pseudo-intellectual self-absorption passing for journalistic analysis is, “Have Conservatives Gone Mad?” It brims with elitist condescension.

Ambinder observes that:

Serious thinkers on the right have finally gotten around to a full and open debate on the epistemic closure problem that’s plaguing the conservative movement.

The issue, to put it in terms that even I can understand, because I didn’t study philosophy much in college: has the conservative base gone mad?

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Two years ago today, William F. Buckley moved on to the great Firing Line in the Sky where he is, no doubt, still debating the wisdom of turning over the Panama Canal with the Gipper. Buckley’s legacy lives on, not only in the remarkable generation of writers that he spawned after he first dared to stand athwart history and yell stop but, in an odd sort of way, in the manner in which some of the liberals he defied over the course of five decades seem to pine for the great man’s genteel ways.

On a personal note, Buckley was one of the two great influences in the creative life of this particular – not particularly humble – correspondent. The other was that irascible Chicago newspaperman/Everyman: Mike Royko. It’s difficult to imagine an odder couple, but Buckley and Royko shared at least a couple of common characteristics. One took them on at one’s peril (and very few ever successfully did so) and neither could be neatly constrained within an ideological box. Royko was classically liberal, but he openly scorned the liberal elite. Buckley became the symbol of the conservative movement, but he refused to let the movement define him, cutting his own path through the ideological jungle when necessary, most famously when he argued for the legalization of many illegal drugs. Agree or disagree, both Royko and Buckley were thinkers, and honest thinkers to boot, who had a knack for expressing their thoughts with the kind of panache that left their readers breathless in awe. (more…)