Keith Olbermann: 'My Father Asked Me to Kill Him'

Keith Olbermann creeps me out. His Wednesday night performance was absolutely creepy.

Last night, in a "Special Comment" on the eve of the Obama health care summit, he shared the story of the health problems and tremendous suffering his father has endured.

Although he promised "[n]ot to get too clinical or too grotesque on you," he did get too clinical and way too grotesque.

He also divulged to his audience, pathetically small as it is, that his father asked Olbermann to kill him.

Good grief.

I think Olbermann wanted to establish that all-important "moral authority" in his commentary, as though detailing his father's experience would lend his words the weight of divine revelation.

Just because his father has struggled with severe health issues, Olbermann seems to believe that puts him in a position to mercilessly slam Sarah Palin, Betsy McCaughey, the Republicans attending Obama's health care summit, and anyone opposing Obama's health care plan. He seems to think that he has the moral high ground.

He's wrong. He doesn't.

Video.


NewsBusters has the complete transcript of Olbermann's rant.

Transcript excerpt

KEITH OLBERMANN: And as I left the hospital that night, the full impact of these last six months washed over me. What I had done, conferring with the resident in ICU, the conversation about my father's panicky, not-in-complete-control-of-his-faculties demand that all treatment now stop, about the options and the consequences and the compromise, the sedation, the help for a brave man who just needed a break. That conversation, that one, was what these ghouls who are walking into Blair House tomorrow morning decided to call "death panels."

Your right to have that conversation with a doctor, not the government, but a doctor and your right to have insurance pay for his expertise on what your options are when Dad says "kill me" or what your options are when Dad is in a coma and can't tell you a damn thing, or what your options are when everybody is healthy and happy and coherent and you're just planning ahead, your right to have the guidance and the reassurance of a professional who can lay that all out for you, that's a, quote, "death panel," unquote.

That, right now, is the legacy of the protests of these subhumans who get paid by the insurance companies, who say these things for their own political gain or like that one fiend for money. For money, Betsy McCaughey told people that this conversation about life and death and relief and release, and also about no, keep treating him no matter what happens, until the nation runs out of medicine, she told people that's a death panel and she did that for money.

It's a life panel, a life panel. It can save the pain of the patient and the family. It is the difference between you guessing what happens next, and you being informed about what probably will, and that's the difference between you sleeping at night or second-guessing and third-guessing and thirtieth-guessing yourself. And it can also be the place where the family says, "We want you to keep him alive no matter what, we believe in miracles," and the doctor says yes. Nobody gets to say no except the patient and the family. It’s a life panel, and damn those who call it otherwise to hell!

Oh, God.

First, best wishes to Olbermann's father, that his health will take a turn for the better and he'll be glad to be alive.

Second, Olbermann doesn't get it. He thinks Obama's plan will bring freedom for patients, families, and doctors to choose their course of care. That's not it all. Under Obama's plan, it's likely that Olbermann's father would be dead, a victim of rationed care and Ezekiel Emanuel's "complete lives system." Chances are, bureaucrats would have cut off care for Olbermann's father long ago. He may have died before ever asking his son to kill him. I don't think Olbermann has been paying attention to the plan.

Robert Reich put it best:

We are going to have to, if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It's too expensive, so we're going to let you die.

Third, Olbermann isn't the only one with a close family member who has been in agony. He doesn't have absolute moral authority when it comes to the issue of health care. His experience doesn't make him right.

Olbermann says: "It's a life panel, and damn those who call it otherwise to hell!"

I could say: "It's a death panel, and damn those who call it otherwise to hell!"

I could say that but I wouldn't. I wouldn't damn someone to hell for disagreeing with me.