A Good Laugh: Watching Glenn Beck, Olbermann Goes off the Deep End

First a H/T to the loony bin bloggers here in Alaska like Jesse Griffin..

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This is hilarious watching Olbermann literally lose it with trying to make fun of Glenn Beck...

Over the edge: Beck goes into descriptive architecture on the Rockefeller Center Building and it makes Olbermann go over the edge on his schtick...

However, what does Columbia University have to say:

Rockefeller pitched this new complex to two different kinds of businesses. He was very interested in the idea that you could have world peace through international trade, so he hoped to attract a lot of companies involved in international trade. The small buildings on Fifth Avenue were going to be given over to the great economic powers of Europe. There would be a British Building, a French Building, an Italian Building, and a German Building. And the tall building behind would be known as the International Building; it would be for the offices of trade organizations from other countries all over the world.

One example of the international recognition in the architecture was Italy

It is further stated:

Their interest also in world trade is very evident at one of the entrances to the International Building, where you have symbols of trade, of the New World and the Old World, and of the northern and the southern hemispheres. You have a clock at the top that is actually a sun, and the sun is shining on Mercury, the god of commerce. Just below the sun is Mercury. You can always identify him, because he has a little, winged helmet on. To the left and right of Mercury are the four elements: earth, air, water, and fire. Below him are symbols of technology and industry. That is flanked by a mosque, signifying the Old World, and a Mayan or an Aztec temple, symbolizing the New World. Below is a ship of exploration, and the ship is going between the castles of Europe and the industry of America. And below that are figures of the four races that are identified by racial characteristics. To the left and right are the eagle of the New World and the lion of the Old World. So all of this is about the different parts of the world and about world trade because of Rockefeller's view that through trade you would have international understanding, and all the peoples of the world would come together.

(...)

Now Rockefeller Center was built during the Depression, when very little new construction was occurring in New York. So with the exception of the center's buildings, there was a long hiatus in the construction of commercial buildings in New York, first because of the Depression and then because of World War II. During the 1930s many of the great modern masters of Europe came to America. When the Nazis closed the Bauhaus in Germany, many of the Bauhaus masters, like Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, came to America and began teaching at architectural schools. By the late 1940s there were many graduates of these schools who were no longer interested in art-deco ornament or in the planning of the École des Beaux-Arts, but they had been inspired by European Modernism. So when building begins again in New York, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the older ideas are no longer satisfying.

Now European modern ideas come to the forefront. One of the ironies is that, at the Bauhaus in Germany, much of this modern design was used to further a socialist agenda. A lot of it was for reform housing, for the creation of household arts that would be industrially made and beautiful and affordable to the people. But in America, where this becomes popular in about 1950, Americans could not have cared less about the philosophy behind the Bauhaus ideas. Instead of being a vision for a socialist future, it becomes a vision for a corporate future. The modernist, or international, style becomes synonymous with American corporate towers, and some of the most beautiful modern buildings are built as the headquarters for American corporations. Interestingly, though, the two greatest early monuments of modernism in commercial architecture in New York were built not by American corporations but by an Anglo-Dutch corporation (Lever House) and a Canadian distilling company (Seagram). Yet they become symbols of New York, and its modern outlook, as a great city moving into the future.

This coming from Columbia University..... (emphasis added to show the socialist history/agenda behind the architecture)

Looks like Olbermann has been watching too many National Treasure movies and not doing enough reading of American history via Columbia University.

But then again there is that saying life imitating art...Unless it is an olive fruit fly in France not North Carolina.

Come to think of it, Olbermann must have missed geography in school.