http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/02/keith_olbermann_played_for_a_fool.phpStick a fork in Keith Olbermann. He's done.
He has now officially degenerated into a liberal version of Rush Limbaugh, except that Rush Limbaugh is occasionally funny. Maybe he's more like Sean Hannity, particularly in his apparent dedication to the truth, or, rather, lack thereof. Hannity detests liberals and will immediately attack on the slightest pretense, even if the information given to him of "liberal wrongdoing" is dubious or outright wrong. Like Hannity, Olbermann will never turn down an opportunity to attack Bill O'Reilly or his paymaster Rupert Murdoch. Somtimes it's justified, but dubious reasons don't stop him from letting "Bill-O" or Murdoch have it with both barrels. The following is one such example.
True, I rather used to like Olbermann's broadsides against Bill O'Reilly, for example, when he took down Bill O'Reilly for blaming the Malmedy massacre on American troops. Of late, I had become less enamored of his "Worst Person in the World" schtick (and, let's face it, schtick it is) as he became seemingly more interested in entertainment and vindictiveness rather than accuracy. Indeed, when he was parodied by SNL a while back, I ate it up. Yesterday, I thought that he may have to some extent shown signs of perhaps starting to "get it" when he named the man who started the decade-long MMR scare in the U.K., Andrew Wakefield, as his Worst Person in the World yesterday. Wakefield richly deserved such an "honor," given that his undisclosed conflicts of interest uncovered by a British journalist named Brian Deer, his research incompetence, and, most recently also uncovered by Brian Deer, his scientific fraud that falsely implicated the MMR vaccine as a cause of a syndrome of regressive autism and enterocolitis launched an anti-MMR hysteria that drove vaccination rates over the last decade down to below herd immunity. As a result, the measles has returned with a vengeance in Britain.
Too bad tonight Olbermann let himself be played like a fiddle by antivaccine propagandist David Kirby, the man who, with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was instrumental in launching the American version of the MMR scare, namely the thimerosal/mercury scare that roared into the states in 2004 and is now maintained by Jenny McCarthy--still aided and abetted by David Kirby. No, Kirby played Olbermann like Itzhak Perlman playing a goddamned Stradivarius. Indeed, Kirby played on Olbermann's hatred of Rupert Murdoch, inducing him to embarrass himself so completely and utterly that I can never--ever--take Olbermann seriously again.
The bronze to Brian Deer.
He wrote the Times of London report that Dr. Andrew Wakefield had allegedly altered key research linking the Measles, Mumps and Rubella triple-vaccine to autism in children, which earned Dr. Wakefield a spot on this list yesterday.
The Times of London did not bother to mention that the British investigation into whether or not Wakefield did that was the result of a complaint by... Brian Deer.
The guy who wrote the article about the investigation never mentioned he was the complainant who precipitated the investigation.
The truth about the doctor's research may be in doubt here, but not Deer's vast conflict of interest nor the Times of London's journalistic malfeasance.
The paper is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and it's my bad for forgetting his new motto: "We have never been a company that tolerates facts."
The producers,
Countdown,
MSNBC
On Wednesday 11 February 2009 you placed into the mouth of your presenter Keith Olbermann a grievously defamatory item concerning me. You named me the third of the day's "world's worst persons" and, among other things, accused me of dishonesty and "malfeasance" in connection with my work as a journalist for The Sunday Times of London. The item has been widely seen in the UK.
On the previous day, you broadcast a similarly defamatory item concerning Dr Andrew Wakefield, whose false claims of having found a possible link between a childhood vaccine and autism have been the subject of my investigations. Wakefield can no doubt deal with his own reputation. However, it's clear to me that, although I share your apparent general opinion of Wakefield, the item concerning him contained inaccuracies, and appeared to have been crudely lifted from my work, without any effort whatsoever on your part to check your facts, or to properly describe my findings. I think that by subsequently attacking me you believed that you could somehow mitigate your previous errors.
These two instances evidence your inability to deliver three daily targets for your "world's worst person" item, and you now resort to baselessly picking on people about whom you know little. It's clear to me that you do so in order to deliver entertaining defamations, at little cost to the programme, and in circumstances where you believe your victims will have no redress.
It is untrue that, as you say, I am the complainant against Wakefield in UK disciplinary hearings. I have ample correspondence to prove this. As a journalist with public as well as professional duties, I was approached almost five years ago by the UK doctors' regulator, the General Medical Council, and asked if I would supply them with my journalistic findings, post-publication, at that time concerning Wakefield. This I did, in a manner familiar to journalists, both in the UK and the US, in dealings with statutory regulators. There can be no possible issue about this, or any justifiable allegation of misconduct on my part. Nor could there be any justification for your suggestion that this would somehow disbar me from continuing my investigations into Wakefield's activities, or that I had improperly concealed my previous actions, or that my prior supply of journalistic findings invalidated findings reported last weekend which are not yet charges faced by Wakefield. Your item implied that, in reporting my new findings, I was somehow merely reporting my own prior allegations. This is utterly false, and grossly damaging to my reputation. To assist your employer to commercially profit by recklessly attacking me appears to have been your intent.
You were apparently supplied with your baseless allegations by a New York-based freelance journalist, David Kirby, who has made substantial sums of money through attacking childhood vaccines, and who is an advisor to Wakefield. Extraordinarily, you even supplied Kirby with a copy of the script of your attack on me, prior to broadcast, and thus appear to have acted in cahoots with him. Kirby was sufficiently motivated, and stupid, to publish your script on a website before the item was aired.
Your defamation of me has been taken up by others, and you are plainly responsible for this. You have no possible defence, since your claims are simply false. They were fabricated and placed with you by antivaccine campaigners and cranks. You can argue no privilege or free speech right to make such false allegations, not least since you published them with complete disregard for their truth or falsity. NBC's lawyers will no doubt explain to you the particular difficulties of such conduct in the UK jurisdiction.
I am presently travelling, and have no access to office facilities. I write to you via a junk antispam email address.
I look forward to your prompt response, and ask that you supply a copy of this email to your legal department.
I can presently be contacted at xxx-xxx-xxxx.
With best wishes,
Brian Deer
It is quite disappointing for Olbermann to take part in what is essentially an attempt by crazy "vaccines cause autism" people to defame any and all of their critics. I actually liked most of his commentary. Perhaps the worst part for him is that this is being called out by a RABID MILITANT LIBERAL ATHEIST rather than some kook on the right-wing blogosphere.
Fortunately, the whole anti-vaccination movement seems to be collapsing with
the recent federal court ruling compounding with the Wakefield falsification. Science has something to celebrate for Darwin's 200th!
