The Olbermann Rule
Posted on | February 3, 2010 | 15 Comments
“Anything done by any Republican is a scandal, if I decide it is, because being a Republican is such an inherently shady choice to begin with, you just know they must be up to shenanigans.”
Lefty journalists have operated by this principle for years now: “Hey, look, Joe Congressman (R-Somewhere) is on the banking committee and accepted X-thousand dollars in campaign contributions from — wait for it — bankers! Assign our Investigative Unit to this story immediately. We’ll do a five-part Special Series and win a Pulitzer. This could be bigger than Watergate!”
Meanwhile, Chris Dodd is whoring himself out to Countrywide and nobody really seems to notice. Can’t make an A1 headline out of that story, because front-page news about a Democratic scandal might lead to the election of (gasp) a Republican. Which brings us to the topic of the latest Olbermann rant: Sarah Palin acting as a distributor for her own book and perhaps making a buck or two in the process:
Olbermann decides to take a dig at Hot Air en route to suggesting that it’s somehow sinister and unethical — perhaps even felonious — for Sarah Palin to buy discounted copies of her own book and then resell them.
Arrest me, too, then. I’ve resold a few dozen books that way. Demand for Palin’s book is somewhat greater than demand for Donkey Cons, so that she’s ordering thousands rather than dozens, but so what? Lots of authors act as vendors of their own books on a smaller scale, and the fact that Palin’s book is a runaway bestseller is the only reason anybody notices. (Hint: If you click that Donkey Cons link, it takes you to my Amazon Associates page, and I collect a few cents for every book I sell. The shameful scandal of it all!)
Olbermann? He’s less popular than syphilis. And speaking of social diseases, Andrew Sullivan is operating by the Olbermann Rule when he pursues the paranoid certainty that, whenever a famous Republican woman has a baby, there must be a smoking gun somewhere.

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