Olbermann aims 'Special Comment' at Clinton campaign David Edwards and Mike Sheehan

Published: Wednesday March 12, 2008



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Print This Email This MSNBC's Keith Olbermann for the first time turned his "Special Comment" sights on a Democrat: Sen. Hillary Clinton. Olbermann pulled no punches in a withering attack on events surrounding the Clinton campaign in recent days regarding Geraldine Ferraro's controversial statements about Sen. Barack Obama and race. "I have fought with myself over whether or not to say anything," Olbermann begins tentatively, before saying, "Events insist." Directly addressing Clinton, Olbermann says, "[A]s it has reached its apex in their tone-deaf, arrogant and insensitive reaction to the remarks of Geraldine Ferraro, your own advisors are slowly killing your chances to become president. "Senator, their words and your own are now slowly killing the chances for any Democrat to become president," he continued. "In your tepid response to this Ferraro disaster, you may sincerely think you are disenthralling an enchanted media and righting an unfair advance bestowed on Sen. Obama. You may think the matter has closed with Rep. Ferraro's bitter, almost threatening resignation letter, but in fact, senator, you are now campaigning as if Barack Obama were the Democrat and you were the Republican." Olbermann said of former vice presidential candidate Ferraro, who stepped down from the Clinton campaign today after days in the spotlight, "[S]he was ... dismissing Sen. Obama's candidacy as nothing more than some equal-opportunity stunt." Olbermann warned that by associating her campaign with the "cheap, ignorant, vile racism that underlies every syllable" of Ferraro's resignation letter, Clinton was hurting herself. "Senator Clinton," said Olbermann, "this is not a campaign strategy. This is a suicide pact. "This week alone," he added, "your so-called strategists have declared that Sen. Obama has not yet crossed some 'Commander-in-Chief threshold,' but he might still be your choice to be vice president. ... A midterm succession, but you only pick him if he crosses that threshold by the time of the convention, but if he does ..., he will only have done so sufficiently enough to become vice president, not president. "Senator, if the serpentine logic of your so-called advisers were not bad enough, now thanks to Geraldine Ferraro and ... your new relationship with her, ... if you were to seek Obama as a vice president, it would be to Ms. Ferraro some kind of social-engineering gesture..." Olbermann continued, "Her only reaction has been to brand herself as the victim and resign from your committee and insist she will continue to speak. Unless, Senator, you say something definitive, the former congresswoman is speaking with your approval. "You must remedy this, and you must reject and denounce Geraldine Ferraro," he concluded.







