Impotent Rage?

Keith Olbermann's Ego is not amused. But at least Conde Nast Potfolio got one thing right: The Ego regularly crushes Campbell Brown's little news show over there on CNN. Apparently no one is watching that network anymore.

Conde Nast is Nasty

Portfolio does not like me. I'm not wild about them either. Some of the lies they have chosen to print about the Greatness that is Keith Olbermann's EGO can be found here.

MSNBC has finally come to its senses and taken Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews off anchor duty -- and Olbermann's reaction perfectly illustrates why it was necessary to do so. MSNBC president Phil Griffin has said this arrangement worked because the two men "put on different hats" to anchor straight news coverage. But no one seems to have briefed Olbermann on the whole hat-switching thing. He capped off two weeks of embarrassing convention hijinx by launching into a lecture on Thursday night after the Republican National Convention featured a tribute to the victims of 9/11. Olbermann decreed the video "inappropriate" and exploitative. Olbermann claims he initiated the conversation about taking himself out of the anchor chair -- but he also tells the Times, "I found it ironic and instructive that I could have easily said exactly what I did say, exactly when I did say it, if I had been wearing a different hat, and nobody would have taken any issue." But there's nothing the least bit ironic about it, and if it was "instructive" then Olbermann knows frighteningly little about his chosen profession. The divide between news and editorial is one of the fundamentals of journalism. Some people are able to move back and forth across that divide, taking care not to allow their personal views to color their news reportage. Olbermann is evidently not one of those people. Incidentally, the Times says Olbermann has three years left on his contract, and NBC wants to re-up it through 2013. Here's a prediction: No way is Olbermann still at MSNBC in five years. This is a guy who loves to leave jobs in a mushroom cloud of righteous indignation. One or two more pirouettes by NBC management like the one that happened this weekend and he is out of there.

See? Lies. All lies. ALl of it. Every single word. I'll be there at MSNBC long after this idiot has been fired (and rightfully so) from Portfolio. Just you watch and see.

Conde Nast can kiss my ass.

So this idiot at Portfolio says that MSNBC can't be the liberal Fox. I beg your pardon. That's who we already are. First of course he references legitimate news organizations who are of course quoting the NY Post.

What on earth is going on at MSNBC? Politico, Variety and The Wall Street Journal all have stories today about how personal friction between Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough has increasingly been spilling over onto the screen. "They have to just grow up," says Connie Chung. Or, you know, whip out a measuring tape and get it over with.

Rumor-mongering idiot.

Everything on Fox is subordinate to this sensibility. If Bill O'Reilly were to go off the reservation, Roger Ailes would just dump him and make a new O'Reilly from scratch. At MSNBC, it's all different. There's no top-down governing sensibility; whatever sensibility there is has emerged willy-nilly. Because there's nothing bigger than the personalities, the personalities have expanded to fill the vacuum. Keith Olbermann knows he can't be easily replaced because what would you replace him with? He's an accident. There's no mold to refill. NBC hitched its wagon to his star, and now it's hostage to his whims. And if those whims include humiliating his co-anchors on-camera or refusing to share a stage with Tom Brokaw, what are you going to do?

Damn right it's built around me. And what's the problem with that buddy? I've got them over a barrel and they know it. I own those bitches dammit.

When Rupert Murdoch decided to start a news network with a political slant, it was in the spirit of "If we build it, they will come." MSNBC's mantra, in contrast, has been "If they come, we'll build it." Politics aside, which is a better way to erect a lasting edifice?

I'll show you a lasting edifice. By the time finished I'll be on the side of Mt. Rushmore.