:: Let Us Now Praise Bob Somerby

Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler is a righteous man.

Thursday's Howler starts with a section titled "PROGRESSIVE SKANKIFICATION." The jumping off point is a typical example of journalism's top talent twisting a politician's comment in order to liven up a column:

COLLINS (8/7/08): "This is energy week on the campaign trail. In honor of the critical nature of the debate, let's try to clear our heads of all thoughts of Paris Hilton ads, and questions of whether McCain knew, when he expressed a yen to see his wife compete in the bikers' Miss Buffalo Chip beauty contest, that the contestants frequently went topless."

Yes, that’s just minor skankification—and later, Collins says this, although coyly: “I truly do not believe he knew about the topless part.” Please don’t make us waste our time explaining the sheer stupidity here.

Then Somerby takes it to another level, and says exactly what needs to be said about misogyny among media hacks.

But we did want to make a note about a few of our skanky male “progressives.”

Oh heck. Let’s restrict it to Olbermann.

For the past two nights, our own Mister O has pimped this matter extremely hard on Countdown. He keeps played his bump-and-grind footage of women competing in the “Miss Buffalo Chip” contest—and he has mentioned this nonsense endlessly. On Tuesday, we were surprised to see Rachel Maddow take part in an entire segment on this topic—the segment which ended the program. “These pictures are very distracting,” she said at one point, as Keith-O returned to his bump-and-grind footage. But Maddow spent an entire segment promoting this skankified nonsense.

In our view, Maddow does excellent work; we’d even throw her Meet the Press. But she’s willing to stoop for the team. This is twice that she’s done it.

The bump-and-grind footage continued last night, as Keith-O rewarded his young male viewers. And let’s say it again: He has pimped this nonsense over and over in his programs of the past two nights. On Tuesday, he promo’ed the topic five separate times before he did that final segment. When it comes to issues like this, he’s as big a creep as they get.

Two points:

First: Older men should be dragged out and whipped when they teach younger men to look down on women. For younger men who are heterosexual, their ability to respect those younger women will define a great deal of their happiness. And of course, it isn’t great for younger women when younger men are trained to despise them. But Olbermann pimped this disrespect for years with his nightly sneering at the young blondes—presumably, a tasty treat for the foolish young men he was recruiting to drive up his ratings (and his salary). That pleasing feature was dumped this year, as MSNBC tried to stave off complaints about its endless, blatant misogyny. In the last two nights, Keith-O ran as fast as he could to get back into the game.

Second: If you don’t understand how all that gender-trashing could have been dumped on Hillary Clinton’s head, Olbermann showed you again this week. Simply put, many men just don’t respect women. The problem seems to be bred in the bone; it has always bedeviled progressive movements, and the problem recurs in each generation unless young men are taught to be more wise. Clinton had all that gender-trashing dumped on her head because many of our “progressive” men have the retrograde attitudes of a loser like Olbermann. Gender-trashing ran wild at his network. Perhaps by coincidence, it seemed that Jack Welch had hired those kinds of guys.

Earlier this year, Olbermann had to stop mocking the young blondes each night—but it seems he was awaiting his comeback. His show has now bumped and ground for two nights. “These pictures are very distracting,” one bold progressive guest said.

Not only is Mr. Somerby a mensch; he makes being a mensch look easy.