Keith Olbermann is an Awful Human Being

Look, Glenn Beck is crazy. Like, clearly a maniac. I accept this. I usually put Keith Olbermann on the same level, although I find him somewhat more self-righteous and annoying. Maybe it's because he should have stuck with sports commentary and left politics to the better-informed. In any event, I'm more than content to let these two raging maniacs get fodder for their own shows from the other and continuously rant and rave at each other like a couple of children fighting on the playground

But now Olbermann's gone after one of my guys. According to Olbermann, Mr. Dallin H. Oaks, one of the global leaders of my church and someone whom I respect very much, both for religious and non-religious reasons, is one of the "Worst People in the World." I guess it's a kind of segment he does on his show where he puts a bunch of people on blast for saying or doing ridiculous stuff. Entertaining, right?

Well, according to Mr. Olbermann, Oaks is one of the worst people in the world because he equated the religious persecution in the wake of the Prop 8 vote to voter discrimination practices directed at blacks back in the day. So what could Oaks have possibly said to deserve such vitriol?

Oaks gave a speech at BYU-Idaho on October 13. In it, he documented what he believed was a continued assault on the open expression and practice of religion in America. As an aside, this is something I've been talking about since my first Con Law class, but that's an issue for another day. In my experience, media commentary is often wildly overblown, to the point that even Stephen Glass would have to blush. I read the whole thing to find out what exactly Oaks said. Here's the only excerpt I could find that relates to black voter discrimination:

It is important to note that while this aggressive intimidation in connection with the Proposition 8 election was primarily directed at religious persons and symbols, it was not anti-religious as such. These incidents were expressions of outrage against those who disagreed with the gay-rights position and had prevailed in a public contest. As such, these incidents of “violence and intimidation” are not so much anti-religious as anti-democratic. In their effect they are like the well-known and widely condemned voter-intimidation of blacks in the South that produced corrective federal civil-rights legislation.

Okay, let's break this down. Oaks makes the argument that the Prop 8 backlash wasn't so much anti-religious as anti-democratic. Essentially, the people that lost Prop 8 weren't so much angry about religion as they were about losing. It's probably a little of both, to be honest, but I've always believed they were just mad about losing and decided to take it out on those who won.

Let's look back at voter intimidation incidents in civil-rights America. We all know that, despite being given the constitutional right to vote, blacks were often intimidated into not voting, and it took an act of Congress to get it to stop. Here we have another example of a winning party (minorities) being antagonized by a losing party (whites) after losing a democratic contest (voting amendments).

So how, exactly, is Oaks the "worst person in the world" for making this comparison? Seems like a legitimate analogy to me. Sure, African Americans experienced some of the worst discrimination in modern history. But does that mean it's not okay to draw an appropriate comparison? Sure, Mormons aren't getting lynched in the wake of Prop 8, but that's not the message Oaks was trying to send. The analogy is a philosophical one at best, not a practical one. It's a general comment that in many instances, losers in the democratic process often demonize the winners and use violence to intimidate them.

If Oaks had wanted to say that Mormons are persecuted today just as much as blacks were back in the day, I think he would have said so in clearer terms. Since when is it improper to talk about violence and intimidation in the democratic process and use one of the best-known examples in American history as a yardstick? And if this is so improper, why doesn't Olbermann make the same accusation at the gay rights groups who routinely compare themselves to blacks in the civil rights era?

Screw you, Keith Olbermann. Leave us alone.