Olbermann & Matthews/Palin & Ensler

Under Great Political Pressure MSNBC Removes Matthews' and Olberman's Anchor Status (about four fifths of the way down the page)

In media news, MSNBC has announced Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews will no longer anchor any of the network’s live political coverage for the rest of the presidential campaign season. NBC News’ White House correspondent David Gregory will become the primary host of the network’s coverage of the upcoming debates and on election night. In May, White House Counselor Ed Gillespie sent a letter to NBC News accusing Matthews and Olbermann of being “blatantly partisan.”

another take on it

Oh yeah! This is pretty moving:



Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and
activist best known for "The Vagina Monologues", wrote the
following about Sarah Palin:

Drill, Drill, Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares.

I dreamt last night thatshe was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around
their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears.

Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice.

Whatever it is, I need the
polar bears.

I don't like raging at women.

I am a Feminist and have spent
my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is
antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story
-- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering
women, giving young girls options, opening our minds,
deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most
dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country
chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the
destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never
recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke.

In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the
presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor.

In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list.

The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and
plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered.

As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God.

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth
control.

I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence
and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking.

From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a
tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference.

This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle.

She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right.

But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything
America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S.

but of the planet.

It will determine whether we create policies to save
the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack.

It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest
our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing.

It will determine whether America is a
free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills.

I think of
rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in
the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the
trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric
of this precious thing we call life?

Eve Ensler

September 5, 2008

~~~this is also very moving: