Shuster: "There Is A False Equivalency" Between Olbermann And Fox Rhetoric -- Beck Has "Inspired" Acts Of Violence

You can expect Bill O'Reilly to go nuts with the news that Olbermann left MSNBC since the news broke on Friday. On Reliable Sources, David Zurawik, Jane Hall and David Shuster discussed what had happened and of course the narrative that Olbermann is just as bad as the FOX talkers was presented by Zurawik whoeven went as far as calling him Joe McCarthy.

OLBERMANN: If Glenn Beck, who obsesses nearly as strangely as this Mr. Loughner did about gold and debt, and who wistfully joked about killing Michael Moore, and Bill O'Reilly, who blithely repeated "Tiller the Killer" until the phrase was burned into the minds of his viewers, if they do not begin their next broadcasts with solemn apologies for ever turning to the death fantasies and the dreams of bloodlust, for ever having provided just the oxygen to those deep in madness to whom violence is an acceptable solution, than those commentators and the others must be repudiated by their viewers and listens, but all politicians, and repudiated by the sponsors and by the networks that employ them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KURTZ: Olbermann had great passion. Television likes that. But he also often made it personal. In fact, you were "The Worst Person in the World" I think on a couple of occasions.
ZURAWIK: More than once, yes. That, to me, Howie, is typical of his recklessness and his character assassination. That's why I said he wanted to be Edward R. Murrow and he was more McCarthy than Murrow because --
SHUSTER: Oh, come on, David.
SHUSTER: There's a false equivalency that you and other folks make between Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck, and it's not fair.
ZURAWIK: David, let him finish. Let's finish. This isn't one of your MSNBC shows.
KURTZ: I'm going to let you respond in just a moment.
Finish your point.
ZURAWIK: I think that he will absolutely attack people and try to assassinate their character just the way Joe McCarthy did without facts. And to say that Bill O'Reilly, who has been much more reasonable in the last year than Keith Olbermann ever was on the air, much more responsible, to try to pin that on Bill O'Reilly, link him to that, is outrageous, Howie.
SHUSTER: Look, the fact of the matter is, is there are people who have tried to carry out acts of violence who were inspired by Glenn Beck. That is not --
KURTZ: Wait a minute. Bill O'Reilly -- (CROSSTALK)
SHUSTER: The fact of the matter is you're making a moral equivalency between Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann, and it's simply not fair.
ZURAWIK: I'm not making --
SHUSTER: And the fact of the matter is, when people say that --
ZURAWIK: I'm not making a moral equivalency.
SHUSTER: -- MSNBC is the liberal antidote to Fox News, and that there's an equal balance there, that's simply not true.

David Shuster beat him back for good reason. Zurawik has been the recipient of Olbermann's Worst Persons award (See his response here) previously and you have to ask yourself if this is one reason he applied the McCarthy tag to him. David Neiwert called him out also for his bogus 'fascism' argument.
I found more stupid stuff he wrote online and wrote

David Neiwert posted about David Zurawik's frothy appearance with Howard Kurtz last weekend as he bashed MSNBC. On 'Reliable Sources,' David Zurawik decries heated cable talk by shrieking about MSNBC's 'fascism'

Zurawik felt compelled to explain himself in a little more detail online.

As you can see from the video, I am harder on MSNBC than Fox, because this NBC sister channel has outrageously decided it doesn't have to cover news on weekends and holidays -- and yet, still calls itself a news channel.I have to admit, it is a great business model: Don't cover the news. let someone fulfill that expensive task. We'll just put on ideologues like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow and let them mock our opponents as we opine about the news that others like CNN went to trouble and expense of gathering and verifying.

He's upset because they choose to run some of those Locked Up episodes during the weekend, really? Here's a little info for Z: MSNBC does cover the news on the weekends, they just don't do it 24/7. He should probably check their schedule sometime before making the claim that they don't cover the news on Saturday and Sunday. And WTF does that have to do with how they cover the news in general or if they are biased in their reporting? Which is worse, showing some non-news shows on the weekend, or pushing a political agenda 24 hours a day, seven days a week for as many years as they've been on the air?
Olbermann is a big loss for the left in the sense that we're without a strong voice to counter the wingnut intelligensia as we head to the 2012 general election and it will be all hands on deck, but at least the move probably made Tom Brokaw very happy.