Intervention

I was over at Shannon's and for some reason she started describing this television show, Intervention -- I was really floored. I couldn't believe something like this actually existed rather than being the sick fantasy of someone like Starryshine -- who, by the way, sounds like she's really going 'round the bend -- that it was not only being broadcast on TV but they actually have like 30 episodes! And I even get A&E on basic cable.

"Well, what shows do you watch?" she asked.

"Oh, the ballgame... and news shows. Hey, did you see Countdown? Do you ever watch that? The guy gave Rumsfeld the biggest reaming-out I've ever heard."

To wit:

Mr. Rumsfeld's remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis -- and the sober contemplation -- of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration's track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life's blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong....

The confusion we -- as its citizens -- must now address, is stark and forbidding. But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart -- that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld's other main assertion, that this country faces a "new type of fascism." As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism -- indeed.

That was Countdown's host Kieth Olbermann. Oblermann made his name as a sarcastic host on ESPN, the sportst network, and has been holding down a slot on MSNBC for several years, feuding with Bill O'Reilly and doing a sort of Daily Show-heavy -- as opposed to news-lite -- approach to the news. Serious when called for, but usually sarcastic and skeptical. In recent years, more and more outspokenly liberal, which coming from mainstream media -- not to mention cable TV, where proto-facists like O'Reilly dominate -- seems like a real breath of fresh air. Tonight he outdid himself, and I admire what he said.

I just wish it hadn't come during the dog days of August. But maybe people will take notice. You can watch the whole thing on the Countdown website -- it's about 8 minutes long.