When I was a child and completed my chores I went in search of amusement. Here it is, some 60 years later, and I find old habits don’t disappear with age.
For amusement purposes after scouring the news sources for partisan politics, the sour economy and the dreadful oil blowout that is a daily soap opera, I head directly to the Huffington Post to indulge in their vast assortment of offerings.
The HuffPo never fails. Monday it was Schieffer, Beck and Olbermann. What dastardly deeds were these guys up to, I wondered.
The answers: Jealousy, narcissism and ostrich-ism.
Not exactly subjects of those four pale green horsemen symbolizing pestilence, war, famine and death.
CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer, in 
the fertile mind of Fox’s Megyn Kelly, destroyed journalism as we know it for not asking Atty. Gen. Eric Holder about the New Black Panther scandal intimidating voters at a Philadelphia precinct in November 2008.
Schieffer said he was on vacation the week Kelly and Fox unloaded on the Panthers as viciously as police turned fire hoses on civil rights demonstrators during the 1960s.
Had he known, Schieffer said, he would have asked. He said he was sorry. It was just a case of more pressing questions to ask the attorney general, notwithstanding Kelly’s news judgment.
“This happened — apparently, it got very little publicity. And, you know, I just didn’t know about it. I mean, you know, God knows everything, but I’m not quite that good. Every once in a while, something will slip by me. And in this case, it just slipped by me. If I’d have known it, I would have asked about it.”
It’s not as if Scheiffer erred in factual presentation, huh Ms. Kelly?
Glenn Beck, meanwhile, broke into tears for the 10,000th time, telling his “American Revival” audience of 6,000 he was going blind.
“A couple of weeks ago I went to the doctor because of my eyes, I can’t focus my eyes…he did all kinds of tests and he said, ‘you have macular dystrophy …you could go blind in the next year. Or, you might not.’ I said, did you just charge me a thousand dollars for knowing what I knew my whole life?”
Blindness is no laughing matter. Beck joked he was too dumb and lazy to learn Braille.
I don’t want to be a sourpuss skeptic, but if it is okay with the rest of you, based on Beck’s bizarre track record, I will extend my condolences when the time comes.
Keith Olbermann, host of his “Countdown” show on MSNBC, told his dwindling audience Friday he was taking several weeks off.
One of his “fans” tweeted that was ominous. Olbermann tweeted back: “What a scandal! A vacation!”
Now, that fan may be a member of a conspiracy theory who thinks Olbermann is toast as a news anchor.
My only complaint about the guy, other than his off-the-wall rants, is he’s been off the air too often these past 1 1/2 years even though most of the time it was for compassionate reasons, the death of his mother and long illness leading up to his father’s death.
In some respects, Olbermann is as much a flake as Beck. When the going gets tough, he goes to a baseball game much like an ostrich when danger looms, it sticks its head in the ground.
To imagine the public, my self included, focusing on these three media stars and their foibles is nothing short of killing time between meals.
Cross posted on The Remmers Report
Comments are welcome. Link to my blogsite or go to my email address at [email protected] . Remmers’ varied career spans 26 years in the newspaper business. Read a more thorough resume on The Remmers Report.
Jerry Remmers worked 26 years in the newspaper business. His last 23 years was with the Evening Tribune in San Diego where assignments included reporter, assistant city editor, county and politics editor.