Ed Driscoll

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Olber Gantry and the Fire and Brimstone World of MSNBC

November 8, 2010 - 6:58 pm - by Ed Driscoll

As I wrote earlier today, Keith Olbermann loves to compare Glenn Beck to Andy Griffith’s Lonesome Rhodes character from A Face in the Crowd (whereas in real-life, Griffith, like Olbermann is a fellow televangelist for the Church of Obama), but reading this comment from an Instapundit reader, it’s pretty obvious that Olbermann’s own shtick is a combination of Rhodes and Elmer Gantry:

The act is not at all what Olbermann says it is. It’s a very old act: The fire and brimstone preacher.

The left has become horrifically sanctimonious. They have become what they hated in the right back in the 60s.

Every issue for the left is a moral issue on the level of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. So, their opponents are always wicked devils consumed with sin.

And, it’s their job to save us from eternal damnation.

Olbermann is just the secular version of the fire and brimstone preacher.

Just nowhere near as attractive or moving.

Still though, it could make for a helluva motion picture one day:

Filed under: Bobos In Paradise, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, Hollywood, Interrupted, Liberal Fascism, Muggeridge's Law, Oh, That Liberal Media!, The New Puritans, The Return of the Primitive

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4 Comments, 4 Threads, 2 Trackbacks

  1. 1. melanerpes

    Actually, Instapundit was quoting the comment of an Althouse reader, to give credit where due.

    November 8, 2010 - 8:27 pm   Link to this Comment
  2. 2. Brett_McS

    You’re the worst person in the world, Ed Driscoll!

    November 8, 2010 - 8:59 pm   Link to this Comment
  3. 3. Tom Grey

    Yes, the Church of PC — if you don’t believe, you’re a sinner.
    And to be damned! Publicly. With malice.
    In fact, the PC super-tolerant folk really seem to enjoy the damning of the non-PC folk the most.

    November 9, 2010 - 12:12 am   Link to this Comment
  4. 4. Peter A. Taylor

    My take on this phenomenon is called, “The Market for Sanctimony, or why we need Yet Another Space Alien Cult.”
    http://home.earthlink.net/~peter.a.taylor/midrash.htm

    November 9, 2010 - 5:47 am   Link to this Comment