Once upon a time, I was a talking head at MSNBC. It was a brand-new cable channel then, and I was still more writer and cultural critic than seminarian. But my weekly gig there–courtesy of Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter (please don’t ask how long we’ve known each other!) and his booker-wife, Emily Lazar–was how I worked my way through seminary and my internship for the first year. It was kind of fun to get picked up by the limo, brought to the studios in Secaucus, NJ., and head straight to makeup, while a researcher handed me clips on the news events I’d be talking about in the next several hours with John Gibson, or whoever else was wandering around as anchor. (It was even more fun, and slightly surreal, to have the limo bring me, in full TV makeup, back to my real life in Montclair, NJ, especially during church board meetings!)
But I digress. The studios in Secaucus housed a host of different NBC programming, and other stars from the GE firmament were almost always in orbit around the place. Some of them, like John Gibson, were fixtures; others were just passing through, like Brian Williams, who was working for “big NBC” at the time ( and thought for some reason that the studio ought to be 60 degrees!!!) Still others were off my radar screen, in part because they were working on things I had no interest in whatsoever–like sports. Keith Olbermann was one of those sports people I used to see all the time in the studios. He liked (ick!) football, so I never paid him any mind at all. Besides, I was trying to figure out how not to choke Ann Coulter while we were on the air together….
Fast forward what seems like a thousand years, to the advent of “Countdown.” When I first saw that Keith Olbermann was anchoring this little show, I chose to watch it because I couldn’t imagine how or why “a jock like him” would be doing prime-time news. God really does have a wicked sense of humor, though, because what began as a point of curiosity in our home has become a ritual, as well as a bittersweet reminder that people think they know a lot more about folks than they actually do. Children doing homework in our house at 8 p.m. have to leave the living room if they need quiet time, because at 8 pm, Keith is on–no exceptions. And even my 11 year old can do a perfect imitation of Olbermann’s faux-eerie voice announcing “Today’s Worst Person in the World!”
My admiration for Keith, though, is less an issue of entertainment than the refreshing sound of honest and heartfelt feelings, combined with actual news and genuine facts. (The only person on television even remotely like him was the underappreciated CNN cult figure Aaron Brown, who eventually had to make way for society journalist Anderson Cooper. I resented Cooper for a long time as the person who contributed to Brown’s departure from CNN, but that was unfair. Besides, the post-Katrina interview Cooper conducted with Sen. Mary Landrieu earned him mad props in the McNatt household; Bob and I were sitting in front of the TV when boyfriend went *off!*)
Okay, I digressed again. So: once upon a time, our elected political leaders acted as the appropriate outlet for moral outrage, but that time is gone. Thank heaven for Keith, who is smart and snarky, relentless and refreshingly patriotic in all the ways you might expect, and some you might not. In my house, we live for the “Special Comment,” a minutes-long monologue, rife with historical references and thinly veiled contempt for our country’s leadership in times of crisis. Last night, for example, Keith tore Hillary a new one over her racist pandering and support of Geraldine Ferarro. In all that he reports and comments upon, Keith Olbermann represents the single, bright, shining light in an otherwise shadowy morass of news coverage that amounts to pandering and bull@(^.
One night, after he had gone all the way off, (but in a good way!!!!!!) I remarked to my husband that Keith Olbermann had the smarts, skepticism and love for America that singled him out as a first-class candidate for Unitarian Universalism. “But he probably wouldn’t know us if he fell over us,” I sighed, remembering my halcyon days as an intern in the Montclair church when the class-act actor Andre Braugher and his family, fresh from many seasons of Homicide, joined the congregation even as Bob was debuting as director of the children’s holiday pageant.
So imagine my feelings as I Googled Olbermann one night for an unrelated reason and found the words, “Unitarian Universalism.”
Oooh, Lord, have mercy.
I can’t find out how true this speculation is. The closest I have come to definite information are a couple of blogs that assert that KO was raised UU, but has no current affiliation. Guess who doesn’t care?
Message to Keith: if you are heir to our liberal religious tradition, come on home, dear one. You have been living our faith and fighting the good fight, and you will need to renew yourself for all that lies ahead. If you are not part of our free faith, let me introduce you: www.4thu.org. Either way, we hope to see you soon. And thank you for all that you have done, and continue to do, to keep faith and hope alive.
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