In Praise of Communists, Fascists, and Good TV

As others have noted , Keith Olbermann's war with Fox News has expanded into a two-front battle. Where MSNBC's host of Countdown once fought nightly with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, he's now strafing another target: Glenn Beck.

It's hardly a fair fight. In trying to match Beck's unrestrained rhetoric, Olbermann lowers himself by using cheap bombast. It's not that Olbermann is known for his buttoned-down demeanor—fans and detractors are drawn to him for his sometimes over-the-top approach to news analysis (see Ben Affleck's spittle-flecked impersonation of the host from Saturday Night Live), but in trying to out-Beck Beck, Olbermann loses any higher ground he might've had if he'd used facts to punch holes in conspiracy-mongering. Then again, if you're devoting a segment of your nightly news broadcast to explaining why a building does or doesn't further a company's "fascist" agenda, you've already lost it.

Calling to mind the old chestnut about wrestling with a pig, Olbermann took down Beck's slipshod, conspiracy-laden exegesis of the "fascist," "communist" art at NBC-Universal's headquarters at Rockefeller Center, beginning his segment by admitting, "The jig is up. I work in… a Communist, fascist, progressive building. An evil, mind-controlling symbol-ridden, living, breathing evil building. I know this is true, because Glenn Beck has told me so."

Olbermann does some light debunking of Beck's loose grasp of Rockefeller Center's iconography—from an alleged tribute to Benito Mussolini to supposed Communist hammer and sickle imagery throughout—but also takes the opportunity to make some silly cheap-shots at Fox. "This is the ancient Sanskrit symbol for being left back a year in school," he says of a poster advertising Fox & Friends on the side of Fox News' headquarters to the west of Rockefeller Center. He also calls an image of his main target, Bill O'Reilly, "a pictograph from ancient Crete—an ancient Cretin pictograph." He then reveals that that Fox News' headquarters are technically part of Rockefeller Center, turning Beck's attack on the complex something of a self-sabotage.

Yesterday, Modern Art Notes' Tyler Green did a much better job taking down Beck's interpretations of Rockefeller Center's art. In a post headlined Glenn Beck debuts as Fox News art critic, he notes, "The sickle and the hammer have been used separately to signify agrarian interests and workmen or craftsmen in art respectively since at least the Byzantine period."

Looks like Beck missed the real conspiracy: NBC's Communist roots go all the way back to the Byzantine period.