Watching MSNBC last night was a good deal of fun. Rachel Maddow lost her smirk and went glum all night, Chris Matthews babbled incoherently and engaged with some Democrat activist woman at the bar he broadcast from all night—and Keith Olbermann decided he wasn't quite crazy enough of the election eve.
While Fox News played BOTH concession speeches in their entirety without comment, Olbermann broke into Brown's victory speech with this rant:
OLBERMANN My God, he's still talking! Senator-elect Brown is still giving his victory speech tonight in Boston. Howard Fineman will help me wrap it up — if he wraps it up — in a moment. First, the second of tonight's "Quick Comments." The tea baggers have elected their first guy tonight, and, thus, they will expecting legislation by tomorrow making it a death penalty offense to call them "tea baggers."
And that wasn't even the worst of it. Olbermann doubled down on his fraudulent accusations of the day before by repeating unfounded rumors and demanding that Brown disprove a negative:
OLBERMANN: I wanted to apologize for calling Senator-elect Scott Brown an "irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea bagging, supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees." I'm sorry, I left out the word "sexist."
Later, Keith outdid himself in a simply amazing self-immolation on national TV– okay, MSNBC, but you know what I mean.
OLBERMANN: And I left out the story of the day Brown, upset by online criticism from some students, went to the school and swore at the entire student body. I'm very sorry. For all the blowback from the right on this comment from people who regularly mutter worse things about Barack Obama in their sleep, when it came to the facts that I cited to paint this picture of this horrifically unqualified Senator-elect, we have heard nothing – no contrary evidence, no refutation, not even a plausible excuse. And to the point of excuse, it can be argued that Brown should have been given the benefit of the doubt after a supporter shouted at him that they should "shove a curling iron up Martha Coakley's butt" that he did not hear that, that when Brown then said "we can do this," he was not responding to the lunatic in the crowd.
…. In Senator-elect Brown, we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, sexist, ex-nude model, tea bagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees. And if he or you don't like that characterization, my answer to you is simple:Disprove it because he hasn't.
Okay, just because Junior High students learn in 8th grade physical science that it is impossible to prove a negative, doesn't mean we should hold Keith to the same standard—and besides, one should never take TOO seriously the statements of the grieving…
But just for a moment, let's take a look at a Senator whom Keith Olbermann does NOT consider "horribly unqualified."
Brown has been in Massachusetts State Government since 1998, when he was elected State Representative. He was elected State Senator almost 6 years ago in 2004.
That's a lot less "horribly unqualified" than our next candidate who started running for President when he only had about 2 ½ years experience as a State Senator (since he started his Presidential campaign 5 minutes after his U.S. Senate election).
Click here for previous installments of Meltdown with Keith Olbermann