Reply #18: Here is the text of Keith's speech at Cornell he was referencing

[Coexist]

http://www.news.cornell.edu/campus/Olbermann_speech.html

<snip>
About three weeks ago I awakened from my stupor on this subject and told my employers that I simply could not continue doing this show about the endless investigation and the investigation of the investigation, and the investigation of the investigation of the investigation. I had to choose what I felt in my heart was right over what I felt in my wallet was smart. I did not tell them they had 24 hours. I did not threaten them. I let them balance for themselves their professional and moral forces and set their timetable. I await their answer. Of course, I am not buying any new furniture for my home.

I heard an interview the other day with a brilliant British television screenwriter named Dennis Potter. He was ruminating on society and TV from a position which commands my attention: He knew he had less than three months to live. Potter described the change in society so well that I actually transcribed it. He said that in the mid-80s, quote, "Everything was given, in a sense, its pricetag. And the pricetag became the only gospel. And that gospel, in the end, is a very thin gruel indeed. And if you start measuring humankind in those terms, everything else then becomes secondary, or less important, or, in some sense ... laughable."

So this, ultimately, is my point. You are about to go out there and be confronted with choices. This is a real world and you may actually only be able to do this one time out of 10. But that seems to be about one time more out of 10 than those of us out here are pulling off.

Remember that everything you despise, every evil company, every corrupt politician (and I don't care if you think I mean Bill Gingrich or Newt Clinton) -- every single bad decision that affects life for the worse, has been made by a human being who, because he needed to eat -- or maybe because he was greedy -- or maybe because he hadn't used the spark of humanity that rests inside all of us for so long that it had burned out -- a human being who chose to do what he knew ... was not right.