280 Keith Olbermann-Ken Starr Circa 1998: Why the Fall of the Legacy Media was a Long Time in Coming
The rapid implosions of the MSM post November 5 has been breathtakingly rapid and has left I suspect many of us with conflicting emotions. In one sense it’s a truly awful occurrence the effects of which we are only beginning to see. OTOH-they sure did have it coming. They’re be a little more schadenfreude in this if what’s replacing the legacy media isn’t much worse. But there still is SOME schadenfreude amongst the more predominant feeling of deep anxiety and dread. Because in many ways the MSM built this. The did so much to degrade their own product the last 30+ years.
When did it start initially? Hard to give things like this a hard beginning-but I tend to think the current roiling catastrophe begun in 1992 with the rise of Bill Clinton. I’ve often felt this way since 2016-seeing how the Savvy Punditocracy weaponzied their special brand of Clinton Derangement Syndrome to elect Trump 1.0 before repeating the tragedy as farce in 2024-though calling it a face belies the fact that it’s hard to laugh too much at this moment with constant daily headlines like this all the time
‘There are worries’: Republicans reportedly near ‘full freak-out mode’ over Trump economy
Trump doubles down on tariffs as stocks sink: ‘not going to bend’
Greenland PM blasts Trump talk of U.S. annexation: ‘Enough is enough’
There’s nothing even particularly unusual in these headlines you can find them every hour on the hour. We can decry normalization and I do that as much as anyone but what’s more normal than this?
As I’ve discussed in other chapters the more I think about it post 11/5 this book is Orwellian as much as anything-it comes from his problematic it’s an attempt to combat a problem that was very much top of mind for Orwell’s later career at least. I still remember reading Chomsky dismiss Orwell’s 1984 as “the most totalitarian society in the world”-Chomsky was a big fan of Orwell but not 1984 or Animal Farm. Which is understandable-as 1984 was used against socialism at least as it existed in the Soviet Union.. Not wrongly either I would add.
FN: Chomsky himself to be sure was not a Marxist but more a Bakuninist -self identified “liberaltarian socialist” but even still his focus was always what he called “state capitalism” and he saw 1984 as at best diversionary. Let’s just leave it here for now that Chomsky had a checkered history-he was very right about some things very wrong about others.
But 1984 was certainly not only about socialism either-if it were then it’s historical interest would have long since expired. He clearly saw totalitarianism as a clear and present NEW threat in the modern era. In our current-postmodern?-era this may not seem as radical a point in some ways as it was in the early postwar era. After all the modern progressive era-tin the Age of Enlightenment-mankind had supposedly-so the early progressives certainly supposed-had matured past certain-pretty awful-things-ignorance, superstition, error.
But what Orwell saw is that while the age of Kings had been thrown off new kinds of yoke, tyranny and authoritarianism were made possible in the modern era. As Focault whoed knowledge goes both ways as a weapon which particularly responant now as so many of us during the Obama years embraced the all too comforting premise that “the Universe bends towards Justice” and that technology served progressive ends-it seems that the rise of the Arab Spring was the highwater mark for the rise of democracy. But the Right has roared back since-much of it administered directly by Vladimir Putin of course. There were other facts like that most of the leading tech bros were never progressives-think of who was in the PayPal mafia: Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Zuckerberg himself is more a political chamelion but that has made him suspcetible to his more ideological bros-Thiel who was his mentor and now his nemesis who kicked sand in his face, Elon Musk.
In any case it’s already become clear to me post 11/5 how relevant Orwell is for the Trumpian Era (2015-) we will see how long it goes on for!
This book has focused on three facts in the rise of Trump-the reactionary Republican party which is willing to do literally ANYTHING to win. The MSM which the Right wing calls “liberal” but in reality is milquetoast Centrist both-sides-ist. And then the often milquetoast timid overly studied Democratic party
This chapter is going to focus predominantly on the milquetoast Centrist both-sides-ist media. The chapter is inspired by an episode I listened to this afternoon on Keith Olbermann’s podcast.
UPDATE
Note Keith did this excellent episode 20 hours ago-tonight the news seems to be Schumer is caving to giving Musk even more power to destroy the government the next 6 months. Serious question: when was the last time Schumer did a public town hall?
IF TRUMP AND MUSK REALLY WERE FOREIGN AGENTS what would they be doing any differently?WHY is Schumer pandering to them?GEORGE CLOONEY DEBUTS ON BROADWAY AS ED MURROW: my review of a subtly updated “Good Night And Good Luck”GET THE COUNTDOWN PODCAST: tinyurl.com/zare5cct
— Keith Olbermann (@olbermann.bsky.social) 2025-03-13T04:09:52.569Z
Yesterday’s episode of Olbermann’s show was excellent-indeed this was the same point I made about Trump-if he’s not a Russian asset what more would he do for Trump IF HE WERE a Russian asset-indeed I quote from this show in Chapter Russian Asset.
What I found especially arresting though was the last part of his show where Keith went down memory lane for the first time he worked at MSNBC back in 1998-this was before MSNBC became known as the liberal #Resistance cum Rachel Maddow News network-which as is clear if you’ve read this book at all I and many liberals love. #OnlyTrustRachel has long been an article of faith amongst #ResistanceLibs. Of course Keith himself has some very interesting stories of his own experience on the network-it was he who initially hired Maddow-for which he had to go the mat and challenge management to accomplish.
Back in 1998 though this was when MSNBC was a kind of “centrist” cum “apolitical” news network or so it packaged itself. Keith went on to tell a truly stunning story of how MSNBC simply told him he was NOT ALLOWED to stop covering the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Keith hated being forced to cover it night after night-indeed he wrote a column in the NY Times about it at the time.
The Scandal That Ate My TV Program – NYTimes.com
It was evident that Tim Russert and I were trying to out-gravitas each other, and just as evident that he was winning.
It was Jan. 21, and Mr. Russert, the host of ”Meet the Press,” was at the calm center of the hurricane that was a new story involving President Clinton and someone named Monica Lewinsky. ”One of [the President’s] best friends told me today, ‘If this is true, he has to get out of town,” said Mr. Russert, more in sorrow than in anger.
I looked as worried as I could — as newscasterly, as stricken. This was undermined somewhat by the fact that while Mr. Russert was sitting in the New York headquarters of my MSNBC program, ”The Big Show With Keith Olbermann,” I was in the kitchen set of the sitcom ”Third Rock From the Sun.” He had the full weight of NBC News as his backdrop. Behind me was a refrigerator with a banana magnet.
This flourish of the contrast between Russert sitting at the headquarters of his own program and himself standing in front of a refrigerator with a banana magnet is classic Keith Olbermann. But this is amazing and it crystallizes a point I have made throughtout this book regarding the treatment of Hillary’s Emailgate scandal in 2016-on this show on January 21 note that Russert was already giving viewers the punchline-‘IF this is true’-and obviously it was true-Clinton was done. It was the first day but in a sense the media had already decided. But again this is January 21.
It was then that my show began to mutate into an entity called ”White House in Crisis” that for 228 consecutive programs — ending with my final appearance last Friday — would be wholly or mostly about the Lewinsky matter.”
Think about THAT-over a period of 11 months the 1998 version of MSNBC had 228 episodes about this just on Olbermann’s show. That doesn’t even talk about other hosts much less other networks-CNN and Fox. How many shows about Lewinsky did Fox have?
Again what I keep coming back to is the pattern-in Chapter Cillizza I talked about how he had 60 editorials about Hillary’s Emails by September 2015-these numbers are similarly stunning. One recurring paradox that has fascinated me is how the allegedly “lberal media” has always been far more vigilant in changing scandals about the Clintons than anything lobbed against Donald Trump. Olbermman’s story underscores the temper of the times back in 1998.
This story fascinates me so much because I remember this period so vividly and never understood the almost entirely lockstep hysterical coverage of the Whitewater years in the media a la HRC’s Vast Right Wing Conspiracy-after you see Olbermann’s story the claim HRC overstated it becomes even less compelling a narrative. Indeed this is how you become a “conspiracy theorist” as at the end of the day there’s no other explanation even remotely compelling. It’s like if you deny out of hand the possibility Trump could be a Russian asset you basically just have to accept constantly being “bewildered” as to why Trump acts AS IF he’s a Russian asset-but really isn’t.
Olbermann argues persuasively that the eytmology of the media’s both sideism disease-Keith accurately speaks of Chuck Todd disease-was Roger Ailes. No doubt. I’d add that Rush Limbaugh also had a key role but then Ailes also was important in making Rush. Indeed it’s been argued persuasively that if Roger Ailes’ Fox News had been around in 1973 Nixon would have survived then you remember that this was Ailes’ expressed purpose-what inspired him to create Fox was so what happened to Nixon would never happen to another Republican President again.
What Olbermann revealed for the first time on his Wednesday show was the lengths NBC went to trying to coerce him not to stop doing the show-again 228 episodes in under 11 months centered on Lewinskygate. Again what I find so revelatory and important about this is a major gripe of this entire book-one of three
FN: The three big themes of this book are A. The GOP is so evil B. The media is so inept in reporting this evil if at all C. The Democrats are so inept at fighting this GOP evil. You might add D. Much though not all of the Left ends up colluding with the GOP as we saw in 1968, 2000, 2016, 2024-for more see Chapter Roger Stone. Then I guess you could add E: Russia’s utter penetration and infection of our politics the last 14 years or so-as I discuss in Chapter Useful idiot-I consider both Julian Assange and Edward Snowden to be Russian assets if not worse.
End FN
is the bothsideism of the media and how they always seem to come with these terrible narratives that seem to have no rhyme or reason for but for which you can never get a straight answer from them-they mostly pretend narrativization isn’t a thing ie classic peeing down your leg and telling you its raining.
Like I have been obsessed with this since 2016 why the media so relentlessly blows up some stories and then lets others die by the wayside. Of course, as I’ve discussed elsewhere in this book it started with Emailgate-why was the media so obsessed with this dubious scandal in the first place? What explains the share volume and hysteria of the coverage? Does anyone feel even a little silly over how hard they freaked out over it considering where we are now in Trump 2.0-with Trump cracking down harder on media every day? But Emailgate was really familiar as this was how the media had covered the Clintons in the 1990s. Again I get so frustrated precisely because nothing is new under the sun if you have an ounce of memory-of course so many don’t.
The Emailgate coverage was just like Whitewater in the 1990s-remember Lewinskygate emerged out of Whitewater-this is the beauty of being able to do the kind of fishing expedition Ken Starr did which had no limits our bounds-sort of like David Weiss’ investigation of Hunter Biden. Indeed Lewinskygate was to Whitewater what Emailgate would be to Benghazi. Just keep investigating forever until you find SOMETHING no matter how tangential to the original alleged allegation.
Comparatively by late 2018-early 2019 the mainstream press was full of the sentiment that the Mueller investigation had dragged on TOO LONG. Trump had whined about a “witch hunt” which was a bad joke except the media picked up his narrative-it had gone on about a year and a half-comparatively Whitewater-and Lewinskygate-went on five years and the subsequent investigation of the investigators after Mueller including Hunter Biden went on for six years. As noted elsewhere Kasey Hunt had said the quite part out loud the night of Bill Barr’s fake exoneration letter-‘People are tired of Mueller’ by which she meant she and her Savvy mainstream colleagues.
This chapter can profitably be read alongside Chapter Craig Unger which together shed a lot of light on the major themes I listed above that have obsessed me in this obsessively long book! LOL. Like in Chapter Unger he explains why the “liberal media” (!) got tired so quickly of the October Surprise and Iran Contra stories-again they never got tired of Ken Starr, Hillary’s emails, or Hunter Biden.
I find Olbermann’s personal story of the Ken Starr years very clarifying-as is Chapter Unger. When he tried to leave the network to get away from Lewinskygate they did everything but literally threaten his life-though certainly his livelihood and by implication the life of his parents.
Again he argues that thanks to the legacy of Ailes they gave Ken Starr’s witch-hunt against Clinton credence despite Starr’s clear political agenda in a way the media would not have in the past
FN: Note the parentheses contain my corrections to the spotty transcription.
“American News once said to the SAS balls of any party like Joe McCarthy or father Cogin (Coughlin) cogin or any of the others which was screw you we’re going to write or broadcast about your perty (party?) every day until you die they looked at Ken star’s readed (read) thin persecution of Bill Clinton and said well no they found nothing in in two months in in six months in two years but what if they find something later and it turns out we opposed them and we were wrong we’ll get killed by right-wing media and our fascist bosses like Bob Wright Ken star and his Thugs who went after Bill Clinton played the American news media especially TV news like the proverbial $2 banjo no news in the Clinton Linsky Scandal no problem a quick phone call to Lisa Meers at NBC or any of several correspondents at CNN ABC or CBS or anybody at Fox and suddenly there was breaking news and another alleged victim ready to do a te on camera interview which had already aired a dozen times with Clips on every Network before anybody realized the alleged victim hadn’t actually alleged anything it was putrid but worse it was profitable…”
41:17
IF TRUMP WAS A FOREIGN AGENT, WHAT WOULD HE BE DOING DIFFERENTLY? – 3.13.25 | Keith Olbermann
I really appreciate Keith’s long run on sentence of an excursion into Lewinskgate because for he really gives you the flavor of it from his own perspective from inside the belly of the beast. I recall this all too well as someone who had voted for Bill Clinton in the first election I was legally eligible to vote and then seeing his entire eight year Presidency submerged in faux scandals. But Keith’s first hand story from inside the beast shows I DID remember it correctly-it’s rather amazing that in retrospect the Clinton years have been held up as a simpler more bipartisan time-I mean if you remember that time at all this doesn’t even pass the laugh test. The Republicans basically went on an eight year temper tantrum. Yes the economy was stellar-as the economy usually is under Democratic Presidents-and Bill Clinton to his credit really was able to somehow able to get a fair amount of bipartisan legislation passed aka “triangulation”-though as a liberal I didn’t love some of the compromises he made-IMO gutting ADFC was a big mistake.
But at the time these things were sidelines with the level of 24/7 media obsession on the Clinton scandals-remember Olbermann is focusing on Lewinskygate but there had been 5 years of Ken Starr’s fishing expedition prior to it-again as I analogized above Whitewater begat Lewinskygate much as Benhgazi begat Her Emails. Basically fomenting phony investigations for years-ie a fishing expedition-may well finally get you to something that is actionable-if not legally at least politically.
Indeed to this day it’s not understood at all that the real scandal of the 1990s was not the faux scandals that Ken Starr investigated-starting with “who REALLY killed Vince Foster” which was the original mandate of his investigation-Robert Fiske had investigated and confirmed there was no there there to that phony investigation so a Right wing federal panel got Ken Starr installed-kind of like the 1990s version of what David Weiss would be for the faux Hunter Biden investigations-but the corrupt, abusive tactics of Ken Starr and his GOP henchman-Brett Kavanaugh et al.
To be sure by the end of the 1990s Starr’s reputation had taken something of a hit-since then it’s argued he engaged in “excesses” which is the understatement of the century, beyond euphemistic. What’s so frustrating about the Democrats is they always take GOP accusations so seriously-like they work hard to respond to them and worry about doing anything that would give the appearance that there’s truth in these phony allegations. But beyond the fact that GOP allegations are NEVER in good faith they’re usually the purest projection-most Republican accusations are confessions of stuff they themselves have done, are doing. or maybe will soon do.
Like the Democrats-and MSM-really worried that the Mueller investigation went on TOO LONG when it lasted a little over a year and a half-which Trump called a “witch hunt” and his GOP allies insited was a fishing expedition. Meanwhile we got your witch hunt, and your fishing expedition right here-Ken Starr basically had no limits in term of either time or scope-of course Janet Reno signed off on everything-to be sure the Independent Counsel had a much broader mandate; Clinton’s first big mistake was agreeing to appoint an IC in the first place. Once that happened he was very reluctant to push back too much on Starr’s mandate.
Regarding Whitewater Ken Starr sent Susan McDougal to prison for 18 months because she wouldn’t lie about Bill Clinton.
FN: Chapter Whitewater? Or just use this chapter?
End FN
As for Lewinsky you can’t even count all the ways she and this entire scandal were pure entrapment starting with how Linda Tripp manipulated her into not washing the infamous “blue dress.” Tripp of course had friends in Ken Starr world. Speaking of how the MSM got us here, how proud is Michael Isikoff for his role in fomenting this phony scandal that arguably contributed to Trump’s election in 2016-via the trashing of the Clinton brand? You can argue his reporting would have significant historic impact but all to the bad. Forget afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted the MSM prefers the opposite-since Trump has won again how much has the media done to comfort him?
It all reached its nadir when Ken Starr and his team held Monica Lewinsky hostage in a Holiday Inn for 24 hours and threatened to put her and her mother in prison for the next 27 years if she didn’t testify against Bill Clinton. It gets even worse when he-illegally-refused to let her call her lawyer; ie Starr literally set up a perjury trap-which is exactly what Kavanaugh had been privately recommending to the Starr team.
But to get back to Keith Olbermann what’s amazing is that there’s more than a little family resemblance between what Starr did to Lewinsky-and Susan McDougal-and how hard NBC tried to extort and coerce Olbermann into continuing Lewinskygate-again there had been 228 shows centered on it in the past under 11 months.
Yet the media had freaked out when Hillary Clinton had broached the subject of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy-clearly she hit a nerve. Indeed the substantive rejoinder had been “it’s not that vast’-to which I would argue perhaps 2016 was even more vast-as it included Russia and other foreign countries-but as Olbermann’s own ordeal will show the Ken Starr years was a pretty vast Right wing conspiracy in its own right. Agan again this goes to a major theme in this book-that once the Beltway media gets a narrative you will never get through to them you can never get them to question the narrative itself. A great example of this was Katy Kay who dismissed the news the Mueller team was complaining Barr’s memo wasn’t accurate-she dismissed this as the Democrats-it wasn’t the Democrats it was members of the Mueller team-“relitigating” the Mueller investigation. The media had decided pace Kasey Hunt “People are tired of Mueller.” So even as in the next few weeks and months Barr’s own credibility would be sharply questioned and discredited these were just details the narrative didn’t change. Indeed the media sentiment after Barr was that while the Democrats were demanding to see the actual report not just Barr’s misleading summary was that nothing that the report would likely say would in any way change the narrative-‘Mueller found no collusion.’ That topline media takeaway has never changed since.
Similarly at the height of the lunacy of 1998 there was no way to question the obsessive not to say psychotic level of coverage of the Lewinskygate story-you could at most quibble around the edges in terms of details but the overall narrative remained. Back to Keith:
“…if you questioned it if you said this this isn’t journalism the other networks the other newspapers the others invested in story a realtime 247 soap opera would go to any length to attack you and what would your own network do well sir that’s why I wanted to tell this story in full I haven’t…”
Well I certainly appreciate that Keith decided to tell this story as it’s a very important-certainly for my own personal crusade going back Emailgate Circa 2016-once again the central question being of narrative like how does the media so consistently and often come up with such terrible narratives that contrary to the Right wing narrative of the “liberal media” repeatedly line up with the GOP narrative? What explains the pack mentality where it becomes almost impossible to find any counternarrative during periods like Emailgate Circa 2016 or Lewinskygate 1998?
FN: In Chapter Craig Unger this book looks at how in the late 1980s early 1990s the “liberal media” decided overnight both the October Surprise and Iran-Contra scandals were cringe and not worthy of attention by respectable journalists-implicitly letting reporters know that covering these scandals were very bad for their careers.
Olbermann was in the belly of the beast at the height of the Lewinskgate moral panic as someone who literally became the self described face of Lewinkygate:
“…before almost by accident I had become the face of the star Clinton Lewinsky story on cable news early in 1998 and one day I had enough I decided to get out…”
Ok. What follows here is simply astonishing in terms of the lengths NBC would go to prevent him from ceasing to be the “face of Lewinskygate.’ One of the many questions that have obsessed me post Emailgate is why does EVERYONE seem to fall in line why seemingly NO ONE dissent? Is it cowardice is it greed? Probably both but still how is this SO PREVALENT. Like why starting in March 2015 did almost everyone on cable news pretend that Hillary Clinton’s emails was the biggest moral travesty since the Holocaust at least? In Chapter Chris Hayes we’d noted that ‘even Chris Hayes’ asked for his final question to HRC if she was afraid of going to jail-once again further cementing the false premise she was at all likely to go to jail-as we saw in Chapter No Probable Cause this was never at all likely which is why it’s pretty arguable Comey should never have opened the investigatoin in the first place
Keith certainly provides an important piece of the answer-THEY GIVE YOU NO CHOICE or try to convince you YOU HAVE NO CHOICE. The lengths NBC would go to convince Olbermann HE HAD NO CHOICE but continue being the face of Lewinskygate simply beggars belief. It’s is fascinating, disturbing, fascinating in a truly disturbing way, disturbing in a truly fascinating way.
“…and the reaction at NBC News was to try to prevent me from leaving it was going to be a hostage situation to literally threaten my career my income my future my family to try to force me to keep working there to keep pushing whatever Ken star was cooking until you were in the middle of that you can never really imagine what television Executives will do for Ratings or money…”
FN: Although to repeat they don’t always seem to act this way-again with the October Surprise, Iran-Contra, or Russiagate clearly the media got “bored” much more quickly. Because another major piece of this that has obsessed me post October 28, 2016 is the clear asymmetry between Democratic scandals-that the media never tires of-and Republican scandals that within a year and a half it’s ‘People are tired of Mueller’ a la Kasey Hunt. Again more on this in Chapter Craig Unger.
End FN
Interestingly, as Olbermann documents Andrew Lack was NBC President then as well-it had been Lack who had a few years ago toyed with the idea of dropping Lawrence O’Donnell and wanting MSNBC to be more “Centrist”-though after the public furor he dropped it.
“… had not however seen NBC News President Andrew lack nor had I imagined that he would actually have ready to go at a moment’s notice an employee who would be willing to try to Blackmail me literally threaten to bankrupt me and my parents and put them as LAX (Lacks) employee phrased it quote on the street…”
Basically if Keith stopped doing Lewinskygate 5 nights a week he’d never work in “this town” again and his elderly parents would be on the street.
“…this was in the spring of 1998 as I said I had decided I didn’t want to do the nightly show anymore that was devoted to covering the Bill Clinton Monica Linsky story whether there was any news about it that day or not and especially since the network was devoted to portraying the Clinton Lewinsky story as the worst thing to happen to America since the Civil War…”
This is another aspect of my obsession over mainstream media narrativization post Emailgate-the utter lack of proportion. Lewinskygate was treated as the worst thing to happen since the Civil War but it clearly wasn’t-that was as self evident then as it is now except for the curious fact that everyone in the mainstream media acted as if it were. Comparatively NOW in Trump 2.0 the Absolute Immunity edition where quite arguably the country is in the worst position politically since the Civil War much of the media coverage certainly in legacy media like CNN or the Washington Post is quite sanguine.
FN:
Regarding MSNBC it depends which show you talk about-certainly Maddow more than ever is the Gold Standard tough to imagine her leaving after April 30 as she’s currently scheduled to do-still hoping somehow they convince her to stay three more months-at least! LOL
Back to Keith-and Andrew Lack.
“… through his Personnel vice president Elena nackman off an otherwise fairly pleasant person there came a message from Andy lack in May of 1998 if you go see our Personnel consultant a woman named Deborah burn and you talk to her frankly we will consider letting you leave NBC…”
With the appearance of Deborah Burn in the story-who was supposedly a company social worker things take a truly bizarre, disturbing, dystopian and truly luridly frightening turn though in a very darkly fascinating way.
Indeed as I discussed in Chapter Ken Starr-if that chapter is still here-the real-and still largely unknown-scandal of the Ken Starr wars was Ken Starr who as noted above railroaded Susan McDougal into a one and a half year prison term for NOT lying about the Clintons and Monica Lewinsky into a genuine perjury trap by illegally barring her from calling her lawyer while holding her hostage for 24 hours-while threatening both her and her mother with 27 year prison terms. Yet Deborah Burn’s own conduct in her conversation with Olbermann bore more than a little family resemblance to the Ken Starr treatment. Again the more you investigate the Ken Starr years the more clear it becomes that one reason everyone seems to get in line in these moments of societal psychosis is people are giving no choice-or everything is done to make them feel like they have no choice.
Enter Deborah Burn aka the NBC social worker. Back to Andrew Lack’s assistant Elena:
“…you’ll like Deborah burn she’s a certified social worker and she’s done great things for us she’s saved a lot of people who are in trouble I don’t mean ethical crises like yours Keith I mean people who were passed out drunk at their desks I didn’t stop to ask her which she thought was worse in any event Elena walked me through a Labyrinth of hallways at 30 Rock in New York to the office of this Deborah burn she was a bespectacled bent looking woman of about 60 with badly dyed hair and a fiercely aggressive handshake she was not big but frankly I was not convinced I could take her in a fight if it came to that and from the get-go her manager suggested it might come to that I am not an employee of NBC…”
Now the alleged certified social worker started her groove:
“… ‘Im not here to be critical of NBC or MSNBC or Andy lack I’m not here to be critical of you I’m an impartial Observer and I’m simply here to help ncof the talent,,,”
“…Elena I need you to describe the company’s position about Keith’s employment Keith Elena said understands that if he chooses not to work for NBC as NBC wants him to work he will have to face consequence…”
Hmm-consequences. In answering my conundrum as to why everyone seems to comply in this kinds of feeding frenzies this it would seem is a big part of the answer-if anyone doesn’t they are threatened with consequences. And Keith Olbermann is fairly well known as what you might call a rebel at least in his time in mainstream journalism. Much more than typical in these circles. As he pointed out this was not the story Elena had given him.
“… this was a slightly changed story from the one Elena nakov had given me even minutes earlier but one she’ given me in her own office gone was The Good Sport Award winner crap obviously she said we’re not going to release you from your contract Keith if you want to be on the beach for the next two years plus whatever remains after that so be it that’s his contract status Deborah with a crisp thanks Deborah burn now dismissed the vice president of NBC.”
Now it really gets good-in a bizarre, crazy, deeply dystopian, upsetting and truly astonishing way. Stephen King couldn’t have dreamt up such a wild turn of events. Deborah Burn goes on to “explain” to Keith that there was no escape he had to continue doing the Ken Starr cum Lewinskygate show every night for five days per week. But what’s truly amazing is HOW she goes about it.
“…burn produced an open an improbably large folder with my name on it in improbably large letters so I could see they had a folder on me ostentatiously shuffled quickly through a 100 assorted documents got to a blank form of some kind and asked me to describe the circumstances that had brought me into her office…”
So already a lot going on here but the overall intended effect is pretty clear-intimidation. Everything is meant to suggest-Deborah Burn the NBC “social worker” knows everything and she knows everything about Olbermann maybe more than he knows about himself or at least more than he remembered. And-Olbermann had NO CHANCE at winning against Burn and NBC. NONE. Classic “shock and awe”-not so different you could argue than what Trump-Musk-JD Vance are trying to do to the entire country the last few months-you simply can’t win. So make it easy on yourself and give up graciously-or maybe you too will end up “disappeared” in El Salvador.
This on its face is pretty clear. But Burn only knows one speed-heavy handed acceleration. And the exact tact she’s taking becomes more and more shocking. Anyway to get back to the moment at hand note she also does a classic tactic that is so often used by large corporations or bureaucracies-make you explain yourself and reexplain yourself again and again. It’s subtle but it knocks you off balance.
“…I explained I was asked to come…”-note that he’d already explained to the NBC VP and she had explained to Burn why I he was asked to come… “in I also explained my conviction that I had made a complete mistake going into news in the first place that I missed doing sports and that on top of all that there had now emerged this new kind of news which I felt was against my personal ethics and beliefs about what I should be doing or in fact what the media should be doing I threw in the word pollution a couple of times very Grand of me I thought she didn’t look up at me once…”
But then Burn decided it was time to explain something to Keith: all media today-today as in 1998-was now-by then-polluted.
“…all of media is becoming polluted in the way you’ve described she yanked off her glasses and staring at me not with anger but with annoyance you should learn how to live with it it’ll be a lot easier for everybody if you just do that you’re not a child grow up…”
This was an interesting tone for Burn to take-GROW UP. To tell an adult to grow up is-actually treating them like a child. The idea that 24/7 Lewinskygate coverage conflicted with Olbermann’s personal ethics and beliefs she was saying was childish. In other words it’s childish to complain that something you’re required to do at work conflicts with your personal ethics and beliefs-being an adult means knuckling under and selling out. Basically she and NBC were reducing his concerns to the silliness of a naughty child.
“…maybe next time you’ll learn to read the contract before you sign it I had to fight a smile this wasn’t some sort of counselor this was Andy laak’s enforcer she’d be threatening to break my legs before we were done…”
Keith responded:
“…uh I did I did read the contract um thoroughly I said suppressing my laughter this isn’t about the contract this is about my morals and and no body else’s morals I said not NBC’s not Mr LAX just mine I don’t like the way the news industry is handling this story I have no delusion about being able to change the news industry I don’t even feel it’s my responsibility to try to change the news industry this is about my ethics and my incorrect choices related to TV news and TV sports now she put her glasses back on she wrote some notes she chuckled as she wrote them you may indeed Miss Sports as you put it and you may may feel that sincerely but it’s nonetheless an adolescent fantasy and as to the pollution of the media that’s also part of this fantasy world…”
Again she speaks to him as if he’s a wayward misguided adolescent. She urges him to learn to be a grownup:
“…you live in you’re a grownup now and you have to live with the consequences of your actions you heard what Elena said if you try to break this contract NBC will punish you severely…”
Being an adult means you just cave entirely to the Company.
Again YOU HAVE NO CHANCE of winning this YOU HAVE NO CHOICE but cave. Deborah Burn then makes it even more explicit in a strikingly vivid and blunt way:
“…this is David and Goliath here Keith and you’re just not seeing…”
David and Goliath.
“…I started to reply something about how I had come down there as a as a gesture of compromise at their request and then she shouted down you’ll have to learn to compromise she emphasized the word as if I had not only not just said it but as f she had just invented it this is what the company wants this is what the audience wants and you sign the contract that’s your responsibility I’ve been an NBC employee for 20 years and they’re very big and they’re very successful…”
She then repeats the Daivd vs Goliath situation framing:
“…and they just won’t sit idly by this will be David and Goliath and I’m very sorry to have to break it to you but you are not Goliath…”
This is a David and Goliath situation and you are not Goliath… Deborah Burn warned him that in two years no one in the television world would remember who he was-more implicitly threats. If he doesn’t keep doing Lewinskygate his career is over.
“… people will forget you that’s the real world now…”
Now she rachets it up to an even higher level:
“…Deborah burn paused and looked over at nothing over in the corner of the room I have a daughter who isn’t realistic she suddenly whispered just like you lives in a world of her own she judges others and moralizes to them too…”
This mention of her own daughter further reduces Olbermann to a child or adolescent while elevating Burns to the level of his mother-ie this has become an oedipal scene. As the representative of NBC ie Burns’ elevates NBC to the level of his kind of evil mother-who is evil for his own good. She-NBC-just wants the best for him and what’s best is for him to “grow up” and forget the silly idea of having his own ethical beliefs and principles. This is very revealing on many levels of how abusive power works-at the end of the day the abusive corporation or bureaucracy appeals to the idea that it’s doing it for the abused subjects own good.
Note that this has a largely universal application-when you think of China the Communist party is the ultimate version of the abusive institution which claims abuses their subjects for their subjects own good. Putin himself as the representative of Mother Russia-again MOTHER Russia-makes much of the same argument regarding his “right” to invade Ukraine. Ie this tell you a lot about the US corporate media but in a larger sense the human condition itself when trying to figure out why so many prefer the safety of the pack mentality and parrot these kinds of bad narratives. It’s very difficult for the human animal to stand completely alone as we are all so dependent on human society. Once its security and benefits are withdrawn where do you go from there?
End FN
Believe it or not things get weirder-even though at this point you’d be forgiven to imagine that’s not possible. She starts asking questions about his parents. She begins to psychoanalyze Olbermann-he had a weak passive father. Keith was too tall for his parents to discipline him growing up..
“…I patiently explained to Deborah burn that I had not been born at my current height of 63 and A2 in that in fact my mother was taller than me until I was probably 12 13 years old that my father was still taller than me until I got to college…”
Of course at this point Keith is employing logic in a very illogical conversation.
“…but your mother is short she blurted with great satisfaction I need descriptions of your parents of their personalities for my diagnosis…”
Deborah Burn is supposedly a social worker and indeed she’s acting like an abusive psychoanalyst who deliberately causes transference-seeking to get Keith to see her as his mother. The idea of psychoanalysis is that transference will happen and you expect it but you ultimately need to demonstrate to the “analysand” that you’re not their mother. Burn cum NBC seek to do the opposite presumably using what she learned in college getting her degree in psychology?
Now she engages in yet more mind games reminding you of nothing so much as the Republican party-Trump himself of course is a master at this-she accuses Keith of doing something she herself is clearly doing.
“…and please stop giving me your obviously prepared answer…” LOL it’s obviously the opposite he could never have prepared answers for this as he could never have seen such a bizarre interaction coming based on her own obivously prepared statements, questions, and threats.
“…I started to describe my parents she cut me off father passive of course this time I actually couldn’t stop laughing I said that was not my father at all that he usually did what he damned well pleased this annoyed Deborah burn no he’s passive I can tell I’m a professional Keith…”
Again she knows better than him as your mother tells you she knows better than you-and only tells you this because she wants the best for you.
“…he didn’t stand up to your mother did he never told her to grow up or act her age did he that means he was passive I could see her writing the word passive in block letters on one of the forums on which she’d been putting her notes she detached this page theatrically she stuck it into the large pile of documents on the top of the thing and she grabbed a fresh page from a stack to her righ…”
Why would it be a grown man’s place to tell his grown wife to act her age? Just one more symptom of the authoritarian social relations she premises her narrative off of I guess-presumably what she learned in social worker’s college? Deborah Burn then makes an explicit threat to see to it that his elderly parents are left destitute.
“…what about your parents finances I explained they were both retired so you take care of them I began what about your parents finances I explained they were both retired so you take care of them I began to answer that they were both extremely independent when she cut me off again I said so you are responsible for them financially don’t evade me my amusement at this obviously deranged woman now began to be overcome by anger I swallowed both the anger and the amusement and I explained I handle their finances…”
Just in case her extortionary intent wasn’t clear enough she asked: “so you’re their sole financial support…” Deborah Burn elaborated further:
“…Deborah burn Rose in her chair and leaned in toward me and tell me Keith what exactly will your parents do for money what will keep them from being out on the street when their precious Superstar is blacklisted from television this purported social worker who worked for NBC or didn’t work for NBC or maybe both …”
FN: Deborah Burns-though the transcript says Burn I think it’s Burns
So she on behalf of NBC threatens to throw his parents into the street if he simply quits doing Lewinskygate
“… depending on which minute it was went into detail about the threat she was now making on behalf of NBC News MSNBC Andy La Elena nman offand our corporate parent GE even if I simply quit the Clinton Lewinsky show…”
But once again it gets worse-now even if he does quit tv NBC will continue to harass and extort him:
“…indeed quit television NBC would declare that my contract was still in force it would suspend me it would not pay me it would then sue me for the salary it had already paid me then it would sue me for the money it had spent on promoting the show then it would get a court order extending my contract indefinitely until the suspension ended and then it would suspend me some more let that sink in…”
Let that sink in… So Deborah Burns cum Keith Olbermann’s Good-Bad Mommy threatens to destroy him then dig up his grave and destroy him again and again. All for his own good-of course. Again this is not so different than what Ken Starr did to Susan McDougal and Monica Lewinsky.
Keith says this was actually the first time he’d heard the catchphrase “let that sink in”-this was 1998… She then-and this is both on one level really funny and once again really disturbing and weird as if this all wasn’t disturbing and weird enough-accused Keith of being another: Howard Stern. He says before she even let all her threats to him, his career prospects his income and his parents SINK IN she declared he has a “Howard Stern kind of personality.”
“… instead she burst out with this the greatest of all the nonsecretors on a day of non sequitors you have what I would classify as a Howard Stern kind of personality well now I was back to actually biting my tongue to keep from laughing at the image of a bunch of therapists at a conference somewhere dryly discussing the parameters of the Howard Stern kind of personality dogmatic unbending presenting absolutely forceful opinions on the air that no one is permitted to disagree with imagine going on a date with Howard Stern I tried not to all he would be doing would be talking about himself it would be unbearable you’re like him on the air and I can see that who you are on the air is who you are in life of course I’ve never seen your show I don’t have cable…”
There’s so much here in terms of the non sequiturs. It’s sort of interesting that she claims not to have cable and to never have seen his show. Is this true or is it a tactic? I mean she’s threatening on behalf of Andrew Lack’s NBC to wield the sword of Damocles down on his head if he stops doing this cable show and yet she claims to never have seen his show indeed never watch cable at all? Indeed it sort of recalls to me when I used to work as a delivery driver at Dominos back in 2003 and my manager told me he fantasizes of a world where you didn’t have to eat-you would feed yourself intravenously. Is this what the Marxists-again I’m not a Marxist-call a few of the “contradictions of capitalism?”
Still I do think I kind of understand the method behind this particular madness-it says a lot about both corporate culture in general at the time-though if anything it’s probably worse today. “Howard Stern” represented a lot of things she and NBC didn’t want to see in workers-Stern was always about violating certain social norms that are near and dear to the hearts of folks with such an authoritarian view of the workplace and society. They desire workplace conformity and obedience-Stern wasn’t that political though more recently he’s become well known as a Trump hater-which only speaks well of him. But his show always suggested a kind of cultural social contrariness. Certainly she kind of shows us a window into her own brain with her harumphing about what it might be like to be married to Howard Stern.
And from the symbolic universe of both Ms. Burns and Andrew Lack’s NBC it’s not hard to see why Howard Stern was a bogeyman and that Keith Olbermann reminded her of the Howard Stern bogeyman-Keith does have some of the character traits her version of Howard Stern had-a rebellious contrarian type who takes a certain pleasure in being polarizing-which the Andrew Lacks and Deborah Burnses of the world find both incomprehensible and very alarming. In their world good people follow the herd, find sanctuary in the pack mentality.
Again no matter how dark and truly creepy Burn’s Inquisition of Olbermann gets it can always get darker and creepier and it does again and again. Now she pivots from saying being married to him must be like being married to Howard Stern she starts demanding details of Keith’s own personal life about past romantic relationships.
(Starting at 55:42)
“… ever been married I recovered from these nonsecretors quickly enough to explain that I had not been married engaged again no I thought I might be about to be ever had a long-term relationship of any kind I told her I had oh really how longterm…”
Again this is an amazing inquisition for an adult to have at work with a supposed company social worker. It bears more than a family resemblance to what Ken Starr did to Monica Lewinsky in entrapping her into incriminating Bill Clinton as we discussed above.
“… I answered 11 years and when did that end I calculated it had ended 4 ears previously to the month i…”
Aha Deborah Burns responded: in fact and you haven’t had an 11-year relationship since…”
Keith responded by pointing out gently he couldn’t have had another 11 year relationship as it was only four years ago. Burns then pivots to-what else?-more invasive questions now about Olbermann seeing a therapist-again she was supposedly a college educated social worker.
“…you’re seeing a therapist that says here you’ve been discussing these so-called ethical issues I said we’ve made a lot of progress well you can’t resolve the work matters without getting at the core problems which are obviously personal and family related not to mention the alcohol and the drug so talking about work with your therapist is probably not going to solve this to the satisfaction of NBC…”
So she demands to speak to his therapist-“boundaries” were not exactly her thing to the contrary overstepping them was her thing.
“…so I will need to talk to your therapist and I want you to sign a release. Here and Now permitting me to do so unless that is this therapist of yours is working towards making you adjust to the facts that you signed this contract and this is your job and this is the real world and this is David and Goliath and that’s all there is to it and you’re on the air tonight at 8:00 and that’s it…”
This is the real world and in this real world this is a David and Goliath thing and you’re not Goliath. In all this inquisition went on for two hours:
“… it featured threats against my parents it had her yelling at me it had her accusing me of using alcohol and drug and yet this this was the only point where I really considered trying to make a break for the door…”
Ultimately Keith was able to get out from under this mess as he did some research and discovered she WAS a social worker but had let her license lapse and this entire fiasco went by the wayside and was forgotten. But I quoted this at length as it’s truly astonishing the lengths NBC went to attempt to coerce him into continuing to do the Ken Starr Monica Lewinsky show over 225 times a year no matter how much we didn’t want to. It kind of answers a question that has preoccupated me since the But Her Emails election of 2016 namely why when these bad narratives take shape does virtually no one in a position of power or influence seem to ever push back against it? And Olbermann’s experience makes it pretty clear-the powers that be do everything to make it impossible to be contrarian. What’s more as Keith notes he was the only one who resisted at NBC underscoring how difficult it is-again Keith unlike perhaps most people in this field takes a certain pleasure in being contrarian. Indeed as we discussed in this book in 2016 almost EVERYONE in mainstream journalism took the Emailaate story sseroiusly-despite the inconvenience that the arguably unlawful investigation lacked probable case
FN: See Chapter No Probable Cause
FN: Include part where she pushes for him to be less negative about Ken Starr
All of this
UPDATE: Jake Tapper caves to Trump goes full Orwellian says “Gulf of America”