Day 14: October 20

15 days to Election Day

The show opens with a discussion of the "new depths" of the McCain campaign, including insinuations about possible improprieties in the small donations that have driven the Obama fundraising machine and intimations from the campaign that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright could once again become a campaign issue. Olbermann accuses McCain of trying to scare people into voting for him by using buzzwords like "secret donations" and criticizes them for it. However, the level of defense Olbermann gives is a bit much, and he reaches a bit when he claims that McCain described the issue as a possible precursor to a Watergate-like scandal (McCain didn't mention Watergate in the quote used). A mocking reference to Ted Stevens and his "Internet as a series of tubes" speech by Richard Wolffe didn't help to alleviate the feeling of political bias, and the emphasis on so-called negative campaigning tends to feel like journalistic bias -- though that's significantly less intense considering that the campaign actually did say the things Olbermann purports them to have said.

They then discuss Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama. This segment is actually not too bad -- the story is covered fairly objectively, with little gushing and few attacks on Republicans. Several Powell quotes are either read or shown on video, basically explaining Powell's reasoning for the move. Clarence Page, a Chicago Tribune columnist, joins the show here, and is also fairly objective -- though he does say that Powell has "a lot more gravitas than the Republican brand." There's also some basically baseless speculation on whether or not more Republicans will switch sides.

The segment in which John McCain's "robocalls" are discussed is a bit more anti-Patterson. Olbermann mocks McCain and Palin over their supposed flip-flopping on the calls, after McCain denounced them in 2000 when they were used against him. "The moral difference?" asks Olbermann: "These are his robocalls." He also discusses the anger of parents whose children were exposed to the calls; the way in which he does that, though, makes it sound as if he's insinuating that McCain is attacking children, which isn't really honest. It's typically politically biased reporting from Olbermann.

The next segment is quite similar; Sarah Palin's Saturday Night Live appearance is discussed, and the segment is spent basically with Olbermann and Eugene Robinson laughing at Palin and mocking her performance and the idea of even going on the show. Also discussed is the fact that Obama ran an ad during the broadcast -- Robinson asks, "What show does he not have a presence in?" The feeling is that even when the McCain campaign is able to get some free advertising, Obama does an end run around them to dull the message -- Obama's stronger and better than them. Again, this may or may not be true, but it's conveyed in such a way as to be almost outright support of Obama.

The "Worst Persons" segment is typical: he calls out Mark Halperin for saying Obama flip-flopped on public financing, three people (including Rudy Giuliani) for calling for more coverage of Obama's past drug use, and Roger Ailes of FOX "Noise" for saying he had respect for Tim Russert and Tom Brokaw because they were able to report without their "liberal Democrat" biases showing. Olbermann attacks two people who spoke ill of Obama and a person with FOX News ties -- more political bias.

The show ends with a Special Comment -- which he says, because of the "disturbing" tenor of the campaign, will likely be a more regular feature than in the past until the election. He discusses the claims by people on the right wing, including Palin and Minnesota congresswoman Michelle Bachman, that certain parts of the country and certain people are "anti-America." Olbermann attacks their divisive speech as an example of something that's really anti-America (and in so doing, plays the same game his opponents are, to a lesser extent). He calls their speeches "divisive, paranoid, ugly bleatings," he calls Bachman "unstable," and, when he mentions Rush Limbaugh's claim that Colin Powell only endorsed Obama because of his race, calls him the "Grand Wizard of the school of reactionary non-thought" and says he lives in a "closed, sweaty world of blind allegiances." The segment is very harsh, and obviously directed at the Republican Party only. The Special Comment is harder to criticize, though, as it's an obvious editorial -- it's not presented as news, it's presented as commentary. Because of this, the bias here is more excusable than the bias in the rest of the show.