However, I am not 100% happy with Keith.  For one thing he has been gone from HIS show way too many times in recent weeks.  His female replacement is just fine, very articulate and very, very attractive.  But she is not Keith.  She does not have his eyebrows, his hairline, or his sense of humor.  When she throws paper, glass does not break.

It’s hard to find humor within daily news of our soldiers being blown up, innocent Iraqis, Israelis, Palestinians, and Afghanis being killed ruthlessly and almost at random.   But Keith fnds humor in just about everything else.  He manages to find clips of our beloved President stumbling over his tongue and loosing his train of thought almost daily. He locates contradictory statements from practically every candidate running for President – all of them telling us “trust me” and “support honesty in government” while lying and obfuscating the facts at every opportunity.

So I love the news and Keith’s humor.  His stand-ins must have different writers, because even though they are reading off the same teleprompters, the replacements are never as funny.  But his guests that are supposed to be funny?  Rarely do any of them come up with something truly humorous or provide incisive comments that will bring a smile to my face.

I find Michael Musto, Mo Rocca, and Paul F. Tompkins particularly unfunny and grating.  Keith’s writers give him a series of setup lines that should generate at least some funny responses, but most of the retorts by entertainment reporters Musto and Tompkins tend to have unpleasant sexual or gay overtones, and for the most part simply fall flat.  Keith gives an obligatory chuckle and then goes on to deliver the next setup line.  Keith – terminate these guys and any others like them now!  Please!

On the political side, Craig Crawford is a knowledgeable commentator, but seems to want to deliver every line like it was an aside.  Craig acts like he wants to be funny, but he’s not.  I’ll give him a break because he is right in the middle of the political mix and seems to understand the particulars of Washington personalities and processes. 

I have similar feelings about Dana Milbank, although he does not go out of his way to be humorous.  My favorites are John Dean and some of the ex-military officers that appear regularly on the show.  They pretty much tell it like it is and their humor tends to be natural, not forced.

So Keith – don’t be like Abbott to your guests’ Costello.   Don’t be Martin to their Lewis.  Costello and Lewis forced their humor too, but we were all a lot younger and more naive in those days.  We knew that we were supposed to laugh at everything the “funny guy” said or did – so we did.   But not any more.  We’ve grown up.

Just be yourself and let your own humor (or your writers’) flow naturally.  Yours is a news show, and some of your comments are based on your view of the absurd.  But it is not standup comedy.  Let it be what it is and you should do what you do.  We’ll all be better off that way and I’ll enjoy your show a lot more.

Back on May 23rd I posted an article about Dateline MSNBC’s program on identity theft.  I’ve received almost daily comments on this article that are nothing but pure gobbledegook spam and make no sense at all.  It just makes the whole daily process of working on the Internet a real chore, rather than a pleasure.

There are only two ways that we will ever really destroy spam.  The first and most important is that all of us as users of the Internet simply refuse to buy anything that comes to us via an unrequested email.  The other is for the United States government and those of the European Union to get serious about this assault on all of us by the criminal elements that are financing and running the spamming operations.

If you don’t know what “spam” is by now, then you’re either an idiot or have been locked in the closet for the past ten years.  To borrow a phrase from the GEICO Insurance commercials – “Even a caveman knows what spam is.”

Spam basically boils down to somebody trying to (1) sell you something of questionable quality from some unnamed country that you’d be afraid to travel to on your own, (2) pique your interest in some new penny stock or worthless investment scheme, or (3) to get you to open a meaningless message that might contain some destructive computer virus or spyware so that they can either (A) turn your computer into a zombie to forward their spam, or (B) damage your computer or its software programs because they think it is “fun” for them to be able to do it.

I have about a dozen different email accounts that I use to make legitimate inquiries on the web – inquiries that I initiate.  Within days, most of those accounts were flooded with new spam messages that I have no interest in at all.  No matter what I do, the spam continues to flow in unabated.  I don’t want these email messages:

I don’t need a “bigger penis” because mine is huge already (for a white guy).

I don’t need Viagra made in Asia or Africa, cause I don’t NEED Viagra (at least that’s my story).

I don’t care about the penny stock that is “sure to go up 500% in the next 5 days” because I’ve already lost all my money in the stock market (I only invest in “sure things” like the Lotto).

I don’t want to be employed by a mysterious British company that has to remain anonymous, but needs hundreds of workers in the USA that can invest a few hundred dollars for the privilege of getting a job (well maybe I would if the job has good medical insurance).

The spam messages that confuse me the most are the ones that sound like code generated by some encryption machine.  If they are actually coded messages, what do they think I am going to do?  Decipher it, read it, and then go out a commit some unspeakable crime while calling upon the name of Mo, JC, or Adolf?  Why would I do that?  Why would anyone do that?

If the US government is really tracking all of our email messages looking for terrorist messages, how about the trackers identifying the sources for all the spam that is passing through their filtering computers.  If small companies or individuals are making money off of spam, shut them down and arrest them.  If big companies are involved (and this is a huge probability), expose them and either shut them down and fine the bejesus out of them.  I think the American public would show outrage and actually boycott the products of any big corporations that were financing and benefitting from spam if we knew who they were.

I think that truth may lie in that last sentence.  The reason that the USA and EU have not chosen to shut these spamming devils down is that some influential Fortune 500 companies are actually financing and using spam as cheap advertising.  Ever notice how many spams you get for mortgages?  It is so bad now that even legitimate emails that mention home loans or mortgages can’t get through because they are eaten by spam filters.  If a homeowner has a legitimate inquiry to an online lender, they may never see the answers.  Yahoo! or Hotmail’s junk mail filter or the spam detector on their own ISP’s server will kill the messages off first.  Yet hundreds of unrequested spam messages about mortgages still make it past the filters and clog up everyone’s Outlook files.

There is so much going on behind the scenes that keeps these devils of the Internet doing their dirty deeds.  Almost every response I receive for articles written on this site and others is a spam message that I have to kill off.  If I allowed unrestricted and unmoderated comments to this blog, it would soon fill up and become hundreds of pages long with nothing but one and two line spam messages.

Goddamned Spam!!!

On the surface their charitable activities seem to be well intentioned, but I often wonder who is really behind these massive undertakings. Do we really know who is administering the non-profit organization that will be responsible for distributing the funds?  And I have a few other questions too:

How much of the money comes off the top for administrative costs?

How much money actually reaches the poor people who need help?

Is there a government agency that is providing oversight?

My biggest concern was the fact that the charities were trying to do too much.  In one case it was feeding school children in Africa.  In another it was providing food and shelter for the displaced poor due to Katrina. The next time they were back in Africa dealing with orphan children.  Then we are back in the USA dealing with poor children’s schools and after-school clubs.  Then we are back in Africa dealing with children and adults dying from AIDS/HIV. 

It went on and on and on.  Fifty-plus million dollars sounds like a lot of money, but when it is spread out across at least two continents, a dozen countries, and hundreds of charities, what real good will it do?  My guess is that most of the money will go to pay the expenses of the celebrities that are traveling all over the world and getting their pictures taken and the administrators of the charities.

Do you really think that Ryan Seacrest and Simon Cowell spent one night in one of those orphanages or mud huts in Africa?  Do you think they flew to Nigeria and Mozambique in economy class? Do you think they ate the rancid pork and gruel that the Africans had to pass off as food? 

Where do you think Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul stayed when they went to New Orleans or in some of the cities in the south?  Motel 6?  Did they drive there in a compact rental car?

All of the money raised for Farm Aid, Live Aid, the “We Are the World” song and video has simply evaporated and no one seems to know where those funds were actually spent.  Celebrities put on benefit concerts all the time, often donating their performance fees and covering the costs of their bands and support teams.  They should be thanked and praised for their generosity.  But have you ever met one single poor or disabled person that can say that they got a single dollar from one of these benefit concerts?

I am so frustrated when I hear about poor Americans who try to get help from local government entities and private aid groups, but always seem to get turned away.  With all of the money that is raised for charities every year, there should not be a single starving person in this country.

I’ve watched Keith since his days at ESPN.  He takes his job seriously.  From time to time he can go into a rant about President Bush’s running of the Iraq War or the mistreatment of injured veterans at Walter Reed Hospital. But most of his stories are right on, to the point, and delivered with his own impish sense of humor.

Most importantly, Keith outshines his other MSNBC news anchors, and those of Fox News as well, simply because of one simple fact:  He lets his guests (usually one at a time) speak their peace without constantly interrupting them.  Most of his guests are articulate and credible, so it is usually a pleasure to hear them give their opinions, filling in the facts of the news story without being shouted down or constantly interrupted.

Scarborough Country, Hannity and Colmes, Bill O’Reilly and the rest all seem to want to load up the screen with three or four “experts” who spend the entire time arguing with each other and vying for screen time.  I personally get exhausted just trying to understand what points they are trying to make and trying to determine if any of them has even the slightest idea of what they are talking about.

Keith, on the other hand, has both in-house experts and visitors that always seem to have a reasonably educated opinion on a particular story or subject.  My only real problem is that he seems to like to bring in guests that are standup comedians for some of the celebrity stories who try to be funny and aren’t.  Many of their comments sound like they are being delivered by someone competing at the local amateur night at a small comedy club in Dubuque.

Keith on the other hand has an inate sense of the macabre and the irony behind the news. When discussing George Bush, Karl Rove and other ranking politicians, he almost always leaves the impression that says, “You know these guys are lying.  How do we know these guys are lying? Because their lips are moving.”  In most cases it turns out that they were lying – or at least heavily disguising the truth.

Keith Olbermann is probably not everyone’s cup of tea.  On the other hand, if you are interested in the day’s news and are sick of the amateurish news readers on the local and main network stations, go check Keith out a few times.  You might find his show addictive and find yourself smiling a bit when he announces who the “Worst Person of the Day” winner is.

My only other choice for real news, although he is not funny, is Anderson Cooper on CNN.  This guy has lots of credibility - and like Keith – allows his guests to participate without being involved in unwanted and unwarranted debate.

Sanjaya is a very nice looking young man.  Great teeth and eyes.  He has nice hair too, but I personally think that he would be much better looking if he had a reasonably good hair cut.  I’ve noticed that East Indian and Pakistani men who let their hair grow out (we’re not including Sikhs in this discussion) tend to look like ragamuffins and poverty stricken.  Where as men of that ethnicity that have educational, government or management jobs that get a “dress for success” hair cut, seem to look very professional, credible and often handsome.

Sanjaya would like to be the Indian-American “Frank Sinatra.”  A proper hair cut might just do it for him.  We know that he can’t sing country-western, hard rock or blues – so middle of the road pop is probably the only style really right for him.  You know, kind of an East Indian version of Harry Connick, Jr.  But he’s got to stop looking directly into the camera and following it the entire time he is on the stage.  He has an audience there that he should be singing to – not to me!

There are still a couple of contestants on the “Idol” show that don’t really fit the right mold.  Lakisha is very talented as a singer, and when she is at her best she can blow everyone away.  But she really doesn’t offer anything more than dozens of more talented heavy set African-American singers already offer.  If she wins it is likely that she will fade shortly after her initial concert and recording contract expires – much like Rueben Stoddard has done.

Melinda was my early favorite.  But like Simon, I’ve gotten tired of her overwhelming humility.  I really do think it is sincere, but she is a grown woman and that is something that 12 and 13 year old girls do.  She needs to just say “Thank you” after her performances and leave it at that.  She’s very talented and professional, but she definitely needs to find a clothier and hair stylist that can dress her in a way to make her look like she has a neck.

The three fellows that are in the competition are fair singers, but they all seem to be clones of some other pop-rock singers.  I think it is odd that Simon and Randy both predicted that the girls would rule the contest, but before Sanjaya was booted there were four males and three females in the final seven.  I still think that it will end up with two gals competing for the winning position, but only because none of the guys is really unique like Clay Aiken and Taylor Hicks were.

My guess is that Jordin Sparks will be one of the last two contestants.  She is pretty, very talented, and quite memorable as well.  As long as she chooses her songs well (and on this show that is a very big “if”), she should be fighting Melinda for the prize.  But Jordin has a neck and a reasonably good figure, so on the basis of looks alone she should take it.  Head to head for talent, though, I’d have to give the nod to Melinda.

I guess my one negative comment about Jordin is that she is so big.  She dwarfs Ryan Seacrest when she is next to him.  My guess is that she is at least 6 feet tall.  Tall girls tend to have short careers unless they stick just to recording and touring.  Moving over into Broadway or movies as a career is not likely to be successful because she would tower over most of her leading men.

So now we’re down to six weeks.  Then I can go back to something far more productive like watching reruns of King of the Hill or The Simpsons – or something really entertaining like Larry King.