From the 1976 film Network, which I still haven't gotten the chance to see.

We don't have cable TV at home, so when I see people writing about the newest shows on the Sci-Fi Channel or Comedy Central or the Food Network, I simultaneously tune them out and lament the fact that I can't see them for myself. Janet and I made a conscious effort to stay away from that particular time-suck, and I don't regret this (since I already waste too much time on the six channels we get from the rabbit ears), especially when I hear about the so-called "news reportage" from many of the cable news networks. (I get my news from NPR and the BBC; does that make me pretentious?)

However, every so often I see someone blogging about Keith Olbermann and comments he's made on his MSNBC program Countdown With Keith Olbermann, and I have to slightly adjust my view of the mainstream media (but only slightly). I'm frankly astonished that the same network that has given shows to nitwits such as Tucker Carlson, Chris Matthews, and Don Imus would also allow space for the well-written and delivered words of Keith Olbermann. Case in point, "A textbook definition of cowardice":

President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs—some of them, 17 years old—before Pearl Harbor.

President Hoover was correctly blamed for—if not the Great Depression itself—then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the Stock Market Crash.

Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War—though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.

But not this president.

To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been president on September 11th, 2001 -- or the nearly eight months that preceded it.

That hardly reflects the honesty nor manliness we expect of the executive.

Go Keith. Read the rest here.

Some of his other Special Comments (LJ syndicated at olbermannfeed) are also included on the website:

• Bush owes us an apology
• This hole in the ground
• "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"
• Feeling morally, intellectually confused?

Highlights of the show are also syndicated in podcast format. So you can stick him in your ear.

More details here.