Reuters/Hollywood Reporter:
But while using his platform in part to protect what he sees as truth, justice and the American way and its ongoing assault from the Bush administration, Olbermann has suddenly evolved into more than merely Bill O'Reilly's sardonic whipping post. He's morphed before our eyes into the second coming of Howard Beale.
Surely you remember Howard. He was the character (played with Oscar-winning brilliance by Peter Finch) who took on the establishment with his televised "mad as hell" rants in the seminal and prescient film "Network," which this fall marks 30 years since its release.
While Olbermann has fully embodied the Beale zeitgeist more than ever, he has done so with decidedly more clear-eyed focus than the manic rage practiced by that particular fictitious icon. Over the past three weeks, he has crafted and delivered a pair of impassioned, acerbic essays that first slammed defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld (on August 30) and then, on September 11, one skewering President Bush for his politicizing the events of five years before.
[...]
Unlike Beale, Olbermann maintains that he is not going nuts and has simply been inspired by his senses of history and right and wrong to take to the air with both lungs breathing fire. While he has increasingly become an enemy of the state, the support he's received from his network bosses has been complete. In fact, MSNBC reran his September 11 "Countdown" commentary on Friday night and featured him as a guest on the "Today" show that same morning, which the host obviously appreciates.
"Yet at the same time I actually don't feel I've changed what I'm saying much at all," he maintains. "I believe it's this administration's continued move away from reality and toward rewriting our history that has made what I'm saying finally seem more relevant. That's the truth."
In Network, Howard Beale has a fit of rage on the air. "We sit in a house and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller and all we say is, 'Please don't leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster, and TV, and my steel belted radials and I won't say anything,'" he tells his audience, "Well I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. All I know is first you've got to get mad...So, I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about about the depression, and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first, get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out and yell. 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!'"
In the movie, everyone does just that and Beale's ratings go through the roof.
According to the piece, "Olbermann's household numbers are up 73% in the first two weeks of September from August." So a lot of people are are mad as hell.
Tags: news politics media MSNBC Olbermann populism
