Olbermann Loves Obama Enough to Advocate Murder on His Behalf? UPDATED--Olby Reponds and More about the (Male)

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. That's the sound of me getting more popcorn.

Yesterday (?) on Olby's show, he talked with Howard Fineman about the need for "threats of retribution" to get Clinton to drop out of the race. He sort of suggests that a superdelegate "takes her into a room, and only he comes out."

Now, some on the Left (Obama supporters) say he was just joking and that he didn't mean that someone should kill her. Others on the Left (Clinton supporters and feminists) are absolutely losing their shit:

What Keith Olbermann said yesterday is not symbolic. He flatly said a (male) Democratic super delegate should take Hillary Clinton into a room, and only the man should emerge.

Keith Olbermann is openly advocating the murder of Hillary Clinton.

[...]

I have myself read comments advocating rape and murder. I have read main posts saying she was inciting violent acts against her, or saying they could "understand" the position of those who wished violent harm to befall her, her husband and her daughter. The descriptions of what Obama should do to Hillary verge on the pornographic. Not a day goes by that some prominent voice on the left or in the MSM does not demand her submission, subordination and public humiliation.

And now a major MSM celebrity and talking head, not some anonymous commenter on some obscure blog, has openly and unapologetically advocated that Hillary Clinton be marched into a dark room and murdered.

I think it's pretty clear that Olby wasn't actually asking someone to murder her, but I'll happily watch while Democrats tear themselves apart arguing the question. In February, Clinton dramatically demanded an apology from an MSNBC reporter for saying that the campaign had "pimped out" Chelsea to shill for her mother. I wonder if Clinton will demand a similar apology from Olbermann.

The video is tucked below the fold. You decide.

UPDATED: That was fast. Drew just 'mailed to tell me that Olbermann has an answer:

Olbermann responds to TVNewser: "It is a metaphor. I apologize: the generic 'he' gender could imply something untoward. It should've been 'only the other comes out — from a political point of view.'"

I still don't get it. The murder or beat-down threat isn't any better if a woman is doing the murder, is it? Or do Leftists think that only a (male) superdelegate is a reasonable suspect for violence?

Because, clearly, if he'd said and "only she--the superdelegate--comes out" then we'd just have assumed that they had a happy little quilting bee and Clinton conceded because her running stitch just wasn't as fine.

The reason I ask is because Rachel Sklar at HuffPost used the same parenthetical reference to men when she was writing about this:

There really seems to be only one interpretation here, and the only point of debate is on whether it's okay or not. I'm going to cut that one short: It's not. To the fellow (male) journo I wrote to about this yesterday, who waved it off as just some colorful film-noir imagery, I say: can you IMAGINE if someone had said that about Obama?

Are we about to start listing our identity groups every time we're mentioned? Yes, I know that Democrats perceive the world by slotting individuals into well-defined identity categories, but this is a new step. This is Gabe (male) signing off...

The full segment is hosted at MSNBC (for excruciating context, if you must).

posted by Gabriel Malor at 02:39 PM

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