Dear Keith Olbermann (& MSNBC President, Phil “Worst Person in The World” Griffin) . . .

Ruminant With A View

by Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

“It is possible to move away from a vast, unbearable pain by delving into it deeper and deeper—by ‘diving into the wreck,’ to borrow the perfect words from Adrienne Rich.’ —Barbara Kingsolver

“It’s absurd for a ring’s ‘setting’ to be jealous of its own diamond.” —E. B.-Herring

TEANECK, NJ—(Weekly Hubris)—1/24/11—Not long ago, about ten years, it suddenly occurred to me that, while my positions and epiphanies may be just a tiny bit “out there,” as compared to those of the rest of my fellow citizens, they are not so radically different as I’d imagined.

I may be out on a limb, out at the tip of a limb, even, but there are millions and millions of souls on my selfsame limb—they’re just closer to the trunk. Thus, I believe that there may be as many as five million people in America who might as well be my clones.

Five million people who think Bush and Cheney are war criminals, pot should be legalized, Medicare should be universal, and we should have never invaded Afghanistan and Iraq with ground troops.

Like Cassandra, I’m out here on the limb’s very tippy-tip, squawking at what I can clearly see coming down the pike, but everyone else, all the way back to the trunk of the tree, will soon see what I see. If I see glaciers melting, carbon dioxide burgeoning, the poor becoming poorer and dying off of their poverty, and the rich becoming richer and, essentially, having the poor for dinner, well, someday soon everyone will see what I see.

The simple fact that it might be too late by the time the couch-sitters awaken and the tea-partiers put down their teacups is just one more thing I see.

I used to think I was some kind of visionary hot shot, but old age has shown me, loud and clear, that I am simply a tiny beat ahead of a big fat curve.

Enter Keith Olbermann.

When I first saw “Countdown,” I realized I had a fellow squawker out on the tippy-tip of my limb.

Five million of us (my demographic, my peeps) realized the same thing.

I also realized that, if MSNBC were actually funding Keith’s voice, free speech was not as dead as I’d imagined.

Gentle Reader, I marveled, I cheered; my heart was buoyed up by hope and glee!

Obama might move to the center, Pelosi might lose out to Boehner, Single Payer Health Insurance might not come in my lifetime, and the seas might rise—within that lifetime—to flood Manhattan, but Keith Olbermann’s voice would still be ringing out, five nights a week, to give me courage (along with millions of other viewers).

I do not exaggerate. Not about Keith’s voice.

For me, he’s akin to biblical characters such as Samson: he has the cojones and the gravitas and the moral certainty to shiver the timbers of the Great Unwashed and Illiterate Right. In fact, way out there farther left than I, and so much louder than I, on the Great Left Wing, his booming voice carried left, right and center. I heard him. That slime, Rush Limbaugh heard him. “W” heard him. Cheney heard him. Even Rupert Murdoch heard him.

Apparently, MSNBC President, Phil Griffin is as deaf as he is dumb—and that last adjective is not a non-PC synonym for mute. Phil “Worst Person in The World” Griffin, you witless ass. Of course, Olbermann’s a handful. Of course, he’s a prima donna. Of course, he’s expensive and loud and big and has balls that make yours look like tiny lentils. He even has all his own hair. But don’t you know a Maria Callas, a Baryshnikov, a Socrates, a Picasso when you see one?

You’ve just gutted your evening line-up. Oh sure, you imagine we all have such short memories that, give us a weekend of Doritos and Bud and football and we won’t even notice he’s gone. I do love Rachel and Ed and Lawrence, but they are not Keith.

Combined all together, they are not Keith.

For Olbermann is that rare thing, an irreplaceable. He’s an integer. Like Thurber, he’s a one-off.

And you, Mr. Griffin, are an idiot. A big, fat, bald, Vassar-graduated, honking, ridiculous idiot. (But what, really, do I expect from a man who gushed about Fox News’s Roger Ailes, saying: “He’s changed media. Everybody does news differently because Roger’s changed the world. Roger early on figured it out and was brilliant.”)

Roger’s changed the world, all right, but not in a good way, Doofus!

So, score another victory for Ailes, Fox . . . and Griffin. You’ve just stripped your weekly line-up of the people’s champion, and shot MSNBC in the foot. In both feet. Which makes your cable network the moral equivalent of a dead man walking.

I sit here in New Jersey, sad, squawking, and voting with my remote.

No more MSNBC for me, thank you.

But at least I’m not alone. I’m just the first, or perhaps the 1,500^th, of some five million squawkers about to vote with their own remotes. So, get ready, Phil.

We will be heard, Mr. Griffin. We won’t let Keith go easily into any good night.

So, good-bye, Sir, and good luck: you’re going to need it.