Keith O: "nobody ever asked me why I made those donations ..."

[eppur_se_muova]

We had - I had done my last interview with Grijalva, and later that night I made my donations. And my - nobody ever asked me why I made those donations to those...

GROSS: I'm going to ask you. Why did you make those donations?

Mr. OLBERMANN: Yeah. To those particular candidates, I knew people who knew those campaigns very well and it really angered me that so much money had had to have been spent in each of those cases for protection, for security against death threats and threats of violence against staffers, against people just showing up at events, and against the candidates themselves. And I thought that in this case I needed to put my money where my mouth was. And I had no problem with it coming out. There is, to me, a defeat of democracy if the threat of the gun is always there. And as I think we saw, certainly in terms of the symbolism is not the actual, as I said before, kind of straight line from A to B here. I think what we saw with Gabby Giffords is the kind of chilling thing that has happened in this political dialogue in the last few years, and I literally felt angry enough to want to donate to campaigns for the first time in my life.

GROSS: So you felt a foreshadowing of that.

Mr. OLBERMANN: Yeah. Well, I mean if you hear that, you know, there in addition to all the publicly reported things, they were dozens of other incidences that - incidents that were not made public, I - yeah. It just seemed to me to be a very dangerous time in American politics, and I think Gabby Giffords could tell you that right now.

This interview first aired a couple of weeks ago, and was re-aired today. For more, see the transcript at http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=136931640
Audio/podcast at http://www.npr.org/2011/06/07/136931640/keith-olbermann-the-countdown-to-his-new-show




Emphasis (bold font) added by me

[grasswire]

1. KO, a man of compassion, intelligence, and courage.

The Real Deal.

[JI7]

2. because they didn't care, they wanted any reason/excuse to get rid of him

if not that they would have brought up something else.

[Scuba]

3. JFK, MLK, RFK, Wellstone, Gifford, etc. would agree with KO.

[lob1]

4. OK, K.O.

K&R.

[originalpckelly]

5. Jared Loughner is mentally ill.

He's not even well enough to stand trial, probably after receiving a few months of anti-psychotic medication.
This man was NOT a politically motivated man, as far as anyone can tell.
Evidence to that affect might come out later, but it has not at the current time.

You could read into this tragedy and think it was politically motivated, but that would conceal the real problem: America pretty much doesn't give a fuck about the severely mentally ill. We are demonized at every turn, and of course, because the worst of us always get attention, those of us who can triumph over our illnesses are not focused on frequently enough. We are 10 times more likely to victims of violence ourselves than to commit violence, but no one gives a shit about that. When you're sick, your credibility is diminished and people think they can treat you badly and get away with it. In addition to that, someone like me might just be so sick that we can be mistreated, and we might be sick enough to just go along with it.

[bettyellen]

7. and you could easily say the same about any politically motivated assasin

the truth is, these days, it is harder to tell who out there is sick- who may be a danger to self or others.
That's because people like Palin and Beck have normalized hate speech, and they have shown in the past they have inspired people to go over the deep end and act on their anger. They are providing targets and instructions - orders even to hurt public figures. It goes without saying it is going to be people who already have mental issues who decide to act.

You're right about the treatment of the mentally ill in this country, but we also can;t afford to allow the violent hate speech to become the norm.

[Motown_Johnny]

8. if any statements of politicians motivated him then by definition he was

politically motivated


he went to kill a politician after all


yes he was/is mentally ill, that doesn't mean it wouldn't have happened if the hate speech from the right didn't exist

[ooglymoogly]

6. We have K.O, R.M., L.O., and G.G. and a few more at the top of the I.Q. ladder;

go down about 30 points or so and you have the higher end of the "journalistic" input bought and paid for by the corporations...go down another 50 points or so to the bottom of the barrel and you have the G. B.'s the R. L's. and their ilk, painting the country insane.

[myrna minx]

9. K&R n/t