Last time I wrote you, I politely suggested that perhaps the trauma of losing your parents in fairly rapid succession, combined with the difficulties in building an entire progressive news network, had caused you to have a bit of a breakdown, and that perhaps it was time to seek help.

I see you didn't take my advice.

You kinow, we've been an odd little living room threesome, lo these many years...you, Mr. Brilliant, and I. We watched your show back when you were reporting on the Lewinsky mess every night, and it was clearly giving you heartburn to do it. We rejoiced on your return to MSNBC, we felt lost when you left, we rejoiced on your return, and when the news that you had scorched the earth at Current came down, we really felt it was long past time for an intervention.

So here we go again, only this time it's going to be tough love.

Do you really think you're the only person who works for others and doesn't get what you want? Do you really think you're the only person who didn't get what he was promised? Maybe you need to talk to guys working in automobile factories who had to swallow huge benefit and pension concessions just to keep their jobs. Maybe you need to talk to guys like Mr. Brilliant, who never met a network or PC problem he couldn't solve or a user whose ignorance he couldn't get through to solve that person's problem -- and now finds himself all too often being eliminated from job consideration because of his age the minute he walks through the door. Maybe you need to talk to our own Jurassicpork, who was far kinder to you yesterday than I'm going to be. He hasn't worked in three years.

The hideous irony of all this is that YOU'RE the one who's been out there for the last decade shouting from the rooftops about the plight of the people and what banks and corporations were doing to them. When there was nothing else out there, YOU were the one we relied on to get the word out, because God knows Air America Radio's revolving door of executives (who were just as bumbling as the people you're dealing with now, and indeed, more so) couldn't get their shit together to make their product work.

And you throw a tantrum over production values? You didn't realize that when you signed on with Current, you weren't getting General Electric-type funding? How could you not? Current is a startup, and contrary to what you saw in The Social Network, startups tend not to go immediately from white genius in a hoodie in a dorm room to slick, post-industrial office space in California overnight. Most startups have to build slowly, and many of them fail. Current may yet fail, and it seems you are going to do your damnedest to see that it happens, just as the lineup is starting to fill out and turn into something. You can't do market penetration until you have the talent. Air America spent a shitload of money amassing the talent (and oh, boy, did they ever amass talent) and trying to buying the market penetration at the same time, and you saw where that left them. You were the centerpiece, and you would have remained the centerpiece, but you had this idea that Current was going to start out with studios like you had at MSNBC and hi-def and all the gewgaws that come AFTER the product is built, not before.

I bring up Air America for obvious reasons, not just because some of the very people you've had subbing on your show while you've been home sulking because the lights went out on your set a couple of times and the very people who are now the brightest lights in progressive newsotainment ccame out of there. It's because something good can ultimately emerge from the smoking wreckage of failure. Rachel Maddow is the most shining example. She is so big a kahuna now that David Gregory, that Washington hack di tutti hacks can barely contain his disgust when he has to tolerate having her on his show. But everyone else whose purpose for existence ISN'T stuffing his face with cocktail weenies at Sally Quinn's parties and at Bohemian Grove loves Rachel. Even some sane conservatives who fear Teh Gay love her, like the mother-in-law of a friend of mine who has said, "I know she lives with a woman and all, but I just LOVE her." But you probably think she's a sellout now too, as you sit at home fuming. Many of us would disagree, especially on weekend mornings, when Chris Hayes spends two hours bouncing in his chair and leading a rotating panel that's so diverse and so smart that you need a nap after watching it just because of an overdose of Smart. But you probably think he's a sellout too.

It's interesting how you hear the name "Marc Maron" show up so often in the comments of blog entries about your exit from Current, perhaps because podcasting from your garage is clearly your next step in the willful immolation of your career. It's interesting because in many ways, Maron was a guy just like you -- a ferociously talented, passionate, mercurial guy who poured his energies into self-destruction. He did it with booze and drugs for years and was pretty much a dick to everyone in his industry and everyone around him, until Lizz Winstead suggested he try for the morning show gig on this new progressive radio network. The result was Morning Sedition, a show which as readers of this blog know, lives on in the hearts of the show's fans, who stuck with Maron through a thick and thin that included being fired three times and re-hired twice by AAR. You want to talk about someone who was pulled through the wringer by his corporate employers? Here's the thing, though: Maron has never once been at the top of his profession the way you've been. It's one thing to immolate a career that's the residence equivalent of a box under a bridge. It's quite another when that career is a historic mansion, beautifully furnished with priceless artifacts.

I've often had the sense, and Maron has obliquely confirmed, that WTF started out as a kind of audio suicide note -- a way for Maron to make amends to the people to whom he was awful before blowing his brains out. He's even alluded to this at times, since he was broke, newly divorced, and unemployable after his last firing from AAR. I don't think even he knows how it happened, but barely two years later, the interviewing skills he learned during a year and a half in morning drive-time radio and the same self-revelatory stuff that was always his stock in trade, have made him such a hot property that a pilot he did for a sitcom about being a neurotic Jewish guy living in a house full of cats and running a podcast has just been picked up by IFC for 2013. Now Marc Maron's challenge is how to stay funny and edgy while being successful. Maybe if you'd hired him to be the "neurotic Jewish occasional comedian" on your show instead of Richard Lewis, you might have gained some perspective.

Yes, sometimes Khal Drogo can die and Daenerys Targaryen emerges from his pyre with three newborn dragons and is ready to battle for the Iron Throne. It can happen. But in your case, I'm not optimistic. It's one thing to hit bottom and then rise when your top wasn't that high in the first place. But you've been such a pioneer of progressive news/opinion television, and so influential, and so damned IMPORTANT, that it's heartbreaking to watch you throw it all away.

A podcast in the garage was a step towards healing for Marc Maron. Maybe it can be for you too. Maybe you too have to hit bottom before you can start to climb back up. But first you have to realize that you have a problem. When the same thing happens to you over and over and over and over again, it's called a pattern, and you HAVE to start looking at your own role in it. Because in your recent broadcasting career, we have a whole bunch of variables and a constant. That constant is you. And this is going to keep happening (assuming anyone else gives you a chance, which given your determination to burn Current to the ground, is highly unlikely).

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. There's help out there. FOR GOD'S SAKE, MAN, GET SOME!

Labels: Keith Olbermann

I hope you don't take this the wrong way. No, maybe I do. Or maybe I don't care. Because that Howard Beale thing that used to make you a lone voice in the wilderness is spiraling completely out of control, and we don't want to lose you to your own lack of perspective.

I'm not sure you realize how important you were at one time to those of us out here who knew that there were no WMD in Iraq but had no voice other than yours in the media affirming what we already knew. At a time when outrage at what the Bush Administration was doing. You hit the air on MSNBC on March 31, 2003 -- just a year before The O'Franken Factor had its first broadcast on the now-defunct Air America Radio, thus giving us more hope for progressive media. And for nearly eight years, you were the voice of sanity, the person we could rely on to get the experts, to get the facts. Yes, you were bombastic, and that bombast had a style so idiosyncratic that Ben Affleck of all people was able to do a spot-on parody of you on SNL. But at a time when there was so little passion in the media about what the Bush Administration was doing, YOU were out there, almost literally reaching out of the TV set to grab the lapels of America and shouting, "Open your eyes! See what they are doing to you? What they are doing in YOUR NAME!"

Those young adults out in Zuccotti Park and elsewhere may not even remember what it was like then, back when only you were out in the mainstream media making the case for truth. Yes, a year later, Air America went on the air, but that company's continuous financial problems, lack of airwaves, and mismanagement hardly made it an alternative to cable news for most people.

Today, progressive cable news is not only alive, but thriving -- largely thanks to you. It was YOU who pushed for Rachel Maddow to have her own show, making her the first out lesbian and truly outspoken and unabashed progressive to sit on front of a camera on a cable news channel. Today it is Rachel, not you, who anchors the weeknight political coverage. It is Rachel who has displaced the hacktacular Chris Matthews as the center of MSNBC's primary coverage. And in true Biblical fashion, The Rachel Maddow Show begat Up With Chris Hayes, which has become the smartest Sunday morning panel show on TV. And now Chris Hayes has begat not only his own actual daughter (about whom he waxed adorably rhapsodic after her birth), but also a new show for Melissa Harris-Perry to follow his own, starting next month. Devotés of Lockdown may moan, but fans of smart, progressive news and commentary that tells the TRUTH rejoice.

And where are you?

You couldn't get along with the suits at MSNBC. OK, MSNBC is owned by two odious companies, GE and Comcast. So maybe you didn't want to work for those guys. But when you can no longer say you're selling out to The Man, when you become the public face of an emergent news organization, when you're given practically the whole enchilada to build as you see fit, and you STILL can't get along, well, you have two variables and a constant, and the constant is YOU.

You've been difficult to watch lately. What used to be justifiable outrage at the injustices being perpetrated by the corporate/Republican Axis of Evil is turning into the strange rantings we usually associate with crazy people on street corners. Every night, you seem determined to do whatever you can to piss off the people you now work for. You aren't even entertaining anymore. Now what I see when I watch Countdown is a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Your audience isn't the frothing masses of Network. We're smart, we're aware, and what we see is someone falling apart before our very eyes.

I know you had a bad year. I know you were close to both your parents (and let us get close to them too), and you lost them both in fairly rapid succession. I know the debacle at MSNBC couldn't have been easy. I even know that watching Rachel eclipse you must have hurt. But you had a chance to really build something at Current -- and you're blowing that too. What do you think happens next? Do you think CBS dumps Bob Schieffer and gives you Face the Nation? Maybe ABC jettisons Stephanopoulos after he can't revive the ghastly This Week? On the contrary. Your next step is webcasting from your garage. Now, if you're a stand-up comic like Marc Maron, for whom a podcast becomes a means of apologizing to everyone to whom you've been an asshole over the years, it can be a great career move, as it's been for him. But where you're headed is as if Marlon Brando in his fat, declining years had re-enacted that scene from The Wild One, answering the question "What are you rebelling against, Johnny?" with "Whaddya got?" -- while glimpses of belly emerged from under the now-far-too-tight leather jacket.

A 50+-year-old man's trajectory from anchoring prime-time at MSNBC, to acting out at Current the minute you yourself bring in the younger Cenk Uygur, to podcasting from your garage, is not going to be seen as fighting the power and it's not going to be a springboard for a revived career and peace with oneself, as it's done for Maron. On the contrary, it's going to be seen as the pathetic end of a once-great career.

I'm sure you're hurting. But there's help out there. For God's sake, GET SOME.

Best regards,

Jill

Labels: Keith Olbermann

Keith Olbermann has seen The Book of Mormon five times and is planning a sixth. Last night he talked to show lead Josh Gad about politics during the show, and about the show in this web extra. Have fun watching Keith giggle like a fangirl:

Labels: Broadway, Keith Olbermann

Fresh on the heels of the Bealean portrait of Keith Olbermann in the Sunday New York Times Magazine section comes this hit piece by Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley on the morning after the return of Countdown:

Keith Olbermann returned to cable television on Monday mad as hell and pointedly madder than other self-described liberal anchors on his former channel, MSNBC.

[snip]

Mr. Olbermann’s new show looks the same as the old one, even down to the features, music and title, “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” but the pulpit is markedly different from his old perch at MSNBC. Current TV, a small, earnest network co-founded by Al Gore in 2005, favors civic-minded programs and averages about 50,000 viewers during prime time. Mr. Olbermann was wedged between two documentaries, “The OxyContin Express” and “Gateway to Heroin.”

[snip]

And his guests stoked his ego. Mr. Moore praised Mr. Olbermann for “keeping the good fight going.” Markos Moulitsas, founder and publisher of the liberal Web site Daily Kos, who is also a contributor to the show, called Mr. Olbermann a “national treasure.”

And it could well be that Current TV is better suited to Mr. Olbermann’s personality than even his politics. Rachel Maddow and Mr. O’Donnell, the liberal commentators he brought to MSNBC and helped showcase, have developed their own followings, and Mr. O’Donnell has done respectably in his stead. Both anchors share Mr. Olbermann’s righteous indignation, volubility and even his snarky sense of humor, but they come off as reasonable, respectable and even-keeled. ( Unlike Ed Schultz, the host of “The Ed Show,” who follows Ms. Maddow and seems like the cranky uncle who rants in post office lines — in May, Mr. Schultz was suspended from the network after calling the conservative firebrand Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut” on his radio program.)

Mr. Olbermann, who has a colorful history of fighting with bosses and getting fired, is famously mercurial and thin-skinned. (Full disclosure: this critic was named “Worst Person in the World” at least once by Mr. Olbermann when he was on MSNBC.)

Oh. THAT's why. Well, that explains everything. And it goes on and on like this. Clearly Ms. Stanley is not find of Mr. Olbermann.

But how did he do?

Here at Casa la Brilliant, where depression has pretty much ruled the roost of late, it was one brief and shining hour where it seemed that the world had somehow been put back on its axis. We've been watching Lawrence O'Donnell up until now, who in recent weeks has been clearly trying to get his Olbermann on, as when he recently assured people that the world isn't going to end soon. But O'Donnell is at heart an even-tempered kind of guy; he even used to be part of the Morning Schmoe crew for a while. He's good, and his heart's in the right place, but when you're living in a house where one person is perpetually exhausted from working at least 10 hours a day, seven days a week; and the other one can't find a job, even-temperedness is sometimes the last thing you need after a difficult and exhausting, or futile and frustrating, day. It's kind of sad that we have to make a choice at 8 PM, especially if watching one and recording the other would result in unwatched old news stacking up on the DVR like planes at LaGuardia during a thunderstorm.

The new Countdown is very much like the old one. Yes, the graphics are different, and "Oddball" is now "Time Marches On", so as not to incorporate Chris Matthews' laugh. And it's clear that while Olbermann is ecstatic at being turned loose in a broadcast environment where no one is going to smack him around because Scarborough gets pissy, there's a certain aura of kid who just bought not just candy, but the entire candy store.

The correspondents for the new show are a mixed bag. I'm not sorry to see a lack of Richard Wolffe, but Michael Moore isn't the kind of correspondent who's going to give the show mainstream gravitas, and neither is Markos Moulitsas, though the Great Orange Satan has shown in the past that he can comment on a story in a professional manner. I'll cut him a little slack this first time out, because I do think it's important that the question of exactly why he was banned from MSNBC be brought out into the open (even if he didn't reveal that the tweet that got Scarborough's knickers in a twist was a reference to a dead intern in Scar's office during the Summer of Condit. But now that THAT's out of his system, I hope he gets down to being the solid commentator he's shown he can be.

Other unfortunate choices include for some strange reason actor Donald Sutherland, and "comedian" Richard Lewis doing the Neurotic Jew comic beat. I realize that Lewis and Olbermann are friends, but the propsect of the spectacularly UN-funny Lewis makes me weep at the lost potential of what a WTF moment on the show could mean for both Countdown and that OTHER neurotic Jewish comic we promote here all the time -- you know, the one who's actually FUNNY.

More promising are the people with gravitas that MSNBC hasn't already tied down with contracts -- Matt Taibbi, John Dean, Jonathan Turley, and Jeremy Scahill.

So how does it look out of the gate? Very much like the old show. If you've always needed to bring Olbermann into your house in the evening to feel sane, you'll feel relieved that he's back. If you think he's a lunatic blowhard, you'll still feel that way. And it remains to be seen how the Ego of Keith fares given complete license and the power to build a lineup around his brand. I do miss the end-of-show banter between Keith and Rachel Maddow,and it grieves me that there seems to be this gulf between them (at least for now), but it's good to have him back, and it's good to know that if the still-uncertain MSNBC (which has recently hired former Republican chair Michael Steele as a correspondent and is said to be working on a show for Chris Hayes) decides to tack right, Rachel will have a place to go.

Now how about bringing The Majority Report to, say, the 10 PM slot?

Labels: Keith Olbermann

The web site is up. The show hits Current TV on June 20.

DVRs are going to be busy, because once Olbermann left MSNBC, Lawrence O'Donnell cast caution to the winds and keeps getting better.

Labels: Keith Olbermann, Lawrence O'Donnell

Huzzah:

Keith Olbermann formally announced the start date and the name for his new program on Current TV Tuesday – and it sounds a lot like the old program on MSNBC.

At least the title and the location on the prime-time schedule do. In a presentation on his Web site, FOK News Channel, Mr. Olbermann declared, with some fanfare, that the new show will be called “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” just as his previous show on MSNBC was, and it will begin on June 20 at his old time of 8 p.m. eastern.

If expropriating the title was not enough of a tweak to his former employers at MSNBC, in the video of his announcement on the Web site (FOK stands for “Friends of Keith” but is also an obvious play on his old rivalry with the Fox News Channel,) Mr. Olbermann also declared that this show, which he several times labeled a “newscast,” will be a place where “journalistic integrity and analytical honesty would never be compromised by corporate synergy.”

An MSNBC spokesman said the network would not comment on Mr. Olbermann’s decision to import the “Countdown” title.

Good on Keith to have the foresight to keep ownership of his show's name. Having left MSNBC once before, he must have had a premonition.

I guess this is why Larry's been going full-on Howard Beale this week.

Labels: Keith Olbermann

The FOK News Channel!!

Doin' it live!

No video yet, but "Worst Persons" is back.

Is that a light I see at the end of the tunnel? Or just an oncoming train?

Labels: Keith Olbermann

Even if on a smaller, more reliably progressive scale:

Keith Olbermann, the former top-rated host of “Countdown” on the news channel MSNBC, will announce his next television home on Tuesday, and people familiar with his plans pointed Monday to a possible deal with the public affairs channel Current TV.

Neither Mr. Olbermann, his representatives, or executives from Current TV would comment on the move, but they did not deny that the channel, which counts former Vice President Al Gore as one of its founders, will become at least one partner in Mr. Olbermann’s future media plans.

One of the people with knowledge of the plans said Mr. Olbermann would have an equity stake in Current TV. The people insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized by their employers to comment in advance of the official announcement.

On Monday a public relations agency hired by Mr. Olbermann scheduled a Tuesday morning conference call for an announcement about his next job. “He and his new partners will make an exciting announcement regarding the next chapter in his remarkable career,” the agency wrote in an e-mail.

Current TV has set up a presentation with advertisers for Wednesday afternoon in Manhattan to announce its future plans. The channel may be betting on Mr. Olbermann to put it on the cable map. The low-rated five-year-old channel needs the help. Targeting young people, it originally subsisted on YouTube-style submissions and video journalists. More recently it started producing and acquiring traditional television series, like repeats of “This American Life.”

If you were trying to decide whether to dump Comcast and switch to Dish Network, there's your reason right there.

The usual suspects will snicker about the smaller stage that Current represents, bringing in the inevitable Dan Rather comparisons. But anyone who has actually been watching Dan Rather on HDNet knows that Rather is still doing some damn fine journalism over there, while the networks continue to spend their time on Amanda Knox, Missing White Women™, Sarah Palin trademarking her name, and whether Lindsay Lohan stole a necklace. And if that is what network "journalism" has turned into, why NOT move to a smaller stage and try to turn it into a bigger one?

Besides, this gives Rachel Maddow a place to go when the suits at Comcast decide that the evening lineup at MSNBC should consist of It's Pat, with Pat Buchanan, Suckup Chucky with Chuck Todd, The John [Heileman] 'n' Mark [Halperin] Republican Toady Show, and Dave [Gregory] 'n' Karl [Rove]'s Rockin' Republican Party.

Labels: Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, progressive media

If it seems like I haven't written much lately, it's not your imagination. Lately I just don't have it in me. There are a number of reasons for this. Part of it is the ridiculous hours I'm working, which has been seven days a week, 65-80 hours over those seven days. Some of it is outrage fatigue. After all, there's only so much internal resources that one has at the ripe old age of 55, and I have to keep my priorities straight in the age of American Diminishment. Since it looks like the guy we put into the White House is getting ready to fulfull the Republican dream of pulling the rug out from under the Social Security system into which I've been paying for thirty-eight years, if working seven days a week is what I have to do in order to have a roof over my head and some mac and cheese on the table in my old age, well, that's what I do. But some days I have to conserve my internal resources for work, and I don't have the luxury of expending it on the State of the World.

As Ian Holm says as Bilbo Baggins in the film version of The Fellowship of the Ring, "I feel thin, sort of stretched... like butter spread over too much bread." Well, I can't remember the last time I felt thin, but you get what I mean. The way it's manifested over the last couple of weeks is a kind of hair-trigger emotionality.

It really started with the Tucson shootings. For two weeks I simply could not look at a photograph of Christina Taylor-Green, or even THINK about her, without bursting into tears. Every step that Gabrielle Giffords, a Blue Dog Democrat who had I known more about her, might have been the focus of one of my anti-DINO rants, makes towards recovery, brings me a kind of joy that only comes from a small beacon of light shining on an otherwise dark, dark world.

Here in the New York area, it's Jets Fever, as the boisterous, goofy, brash, perhaps overachieving New York Jets prepare to take on Ben "Sexual Assault" Roethlisberger, Troy Polamalu, and the rest of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC Championship game tomorrow. For those who hate the Jets, Rex Ryan is an ass, Mark Sanchez is a pretty boy hype machine who doesn't have the goods, and the assortment of scrap heap cast-offs who have found new life with this team are a bunch of scrubs. But for those of us who have been captivated by this team, this asshole of a coach, for whom everyone in the NFL seems to want to play because he seems to galvanize a team the way no "gentleman coach" can, there's something endearing about this bunch of cast-offs like Santonio Holmes and LaDainian Tomlinson and Jason Taylor, this Byronesque quarterback who befriends dying children and loves musical theatre. I won't cry into my beer if the Jets lose tomorrow (or maybe I will, who knows?) because it's been a good long run for them. But a win would again send me off into a transcendent joy that far outweighs any degree of football fandom I might have.

Yesterday I was reading Roger Ebert describing his new chin prosthesis, which he will wear in his segment on a new At the Movies (which premiered last night on PBS). Ebert is such an American institution, and his very public journey with a disfiguring salivary gland cancer has been such a moving one, that simply having him back in the balcony (if in a limited capacity) is a cause for celebration. Again -- something far more significant to Ebert than to those who don't know him, but a small beam of light just the same. (Note: You'll be able to stream the show soon here.)

And then last night we lost Countdown, and it's all part of the same thing. I didn't know Christina-Taylor Green. I don't know Gabrielle Giffords, or Roger Ebert, or Keith Olbermann. And unlike people like, say, Rich Lowry, I do know the difference between actual people and images on a TV screen. But whatever happened to push Keith Olbermann off the air (and despite some rumblings that he just quit, whenever I hear "mutual agreement", you know it always means "asked him to resign"); whether it was outrage fatigue, grief over losing his father last year, an inability to conceive of how to keep the show sharp while "dialing it back a notch", the fact is that many of us invited this man into our living rooms every night for eight years. If it's eight o'clock, it's Olbermann. And now it isn't.

It isn't that we LIKED him, not in the way we LIKE, say, Rachel Maddow. Keith Olbermann never came across as someone you'd actually want to know. Those of us who watched every night knew that he was a bombastic, egotistical ass. But he was OUR bombastic, egotistical ass, and we loved him warts and all. When he was suspended for making the same kind of political contributions that everyone at Fox does (and even Joe Scarborough at MSNBC does), over 250,000 viewers signed a petition for reinstatement. We recognized his faults, but he wasn't our friend. He was the guy we turned to for a voice of sanity in a world full of climate change deniers and Christofascist zombies and ignoramuses who regard facts as just other opinions. At first it was just Keith Olbermann, but he's also the guy who gave us Rachel Maddow in prime time -- a gift for which we can never hope to repay him. And if you saw Rachel refuse to capitulate to the inevitable and ubiquitous filibustering of Club for Growth shill Stephen Moore on Real Time last night you too will be grateful to Olbermann for giving her a well-deserved break:

Olbermann was important to us, but despite his good work in setting up free health care clinics and making it possible for Americans to donate to help provide transplants to Arizona residents doomed by Jan Brewer's REAL death panel, he kept us at a distance. Rachel is more like the big sister of the narrator in a Carson McCullers story -- the happy, athletic, popular big sister who is always there for you when your parents don't understand you because you're nerdy, bookish, and anxious. Her success has allowed her to be filmed doing segments and promos without full makeup, in the blue nerd glasses and the Converse All-Stars. And the fact that she exudes passion and unabashed liberalism, and then puts on Kent Jones in a funny costume, may help insulate her somewhat from the kind of controversy that has always shadowed Olbermann.

But as much as we adore Rachel, it's Keith Olbermann who has been the pioneer, the voice cursing the darkness when no one else could have. Without Keith Olbermann, there's no Rachel Maddow. There's no Ed Show. There's no Sam Seder in front of the cameras in prime time. There's no Cenk Uygur forcing Republican former Congressman Bob McEwen to admit that there's no money in the Social Security trust fund because they stole it and we have to just suck it up. Without Keith Olbermann, Lawrence O'Donnell (who is still too "centrist" for my taste) is still an occasional third banana on Morning Schmoe. Without Keith Olbermann, the only voices of opinion journalism on the medium in which most people still get their news are the reality-challenged hatemeisters on Fox News.

Who knows...perhaps with the "friendlier faces of liberalism" that now constitute the MSNBC lineup (because Cenk Uygur's seat-warming at 6 PM is still only filler), the "both sides do it" claim will be mitigated. But for those of us who invited Keith Olbermann into our homes at 8 PM every weeknight for eight years, there's a big empty chair today. And just another weepy-trigger for an exhausted blogger.

More on Olbermann:

Greg Sargent
Steve Benen
Nicole Belle, focusing on the crowing of the right.
Brad Friedman
John Aravosis
Justin Rosario
Steve Kornacki
Some speculation about what's next (I'm not buying it.)
Adrastos
Richard Bey (with some inside dirt)

Labels: America Gone Mad, Big Blue Smurf Blogging, Cenk Uygur, Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann, Lawrence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow, Real Time with Bill Maher, Roger Ebert, Sam Seder

Comcast got the OK to buy NBC on Wednesday.

Keith Olbermann got the boot today. This disgusting piece of shit rants on:

Citizens United is the worst thing to ever happen to this country, and yes I am including Pearl Harbor and 9/11 in that consideration. Yes, more people died in those events. But freedom and democracy itself died the day the Roberts court decided that corporations should be able to buy government and control the public airwaves utterly.

If you have Comcast, AND YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, you might consider speaking to these fuckers in the only language they understand, and cancel your subscription. I've had Dish Network for over a decade. Yes, it costs me a bit more, and I have no triple threat or triple trouble or any of the other packages the giant behemoths who control the information flow are putting out. I also often have coupons. If you want more information, contact me. Dish Network also carries FSTV, where you can see Democracy Now and Thom Hartmann's new show. You won't find that on Comcast.

UPDATE: You can thank Keith Olbermann for speaking truth to power for the last eight years here.

Labels: corporate assholes, Keith Olbermann, media consolidation, We Are So Screwed, what liberal media

And that's exactly what MSNBC's Chief Scumbag, Phil Griffin, did today:

07 Nov 2010 8:51 PM
STATEMENT REGARDING KEITH OLBERMANN - SUNDAY, NOV. 7

From Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC:

After several days of deliberation and discussion, I have determined that suspending Keith through and including Monday night's program is an appropriate punishment for his violation of our policy. We look forward to having him back on the air Tuesday night.

Oh, I'm sure he deliberated. Right here.

Labels: corporate assholes, Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, what liberal media

It's starting to look like Keith Olbermann has the biggest asshole in the known universe as his boss.

Turns out Olbermann wasn't suspended for the political donations, he was suspended for refusing to apologize ON THE AIR, in a form of ritual humiliation to be replayed endlessly on Fox News:

Politico’s Mike Allen added another layer of speculation to Keith Olbermann’s sudden and indefinite suspension on Friday: Olbermann was suspended for refusing to apologize on air. From Playbook:

Network sources tell Playbook that Keith Olbermann was suspended because he refused to deliver an on-camera mea culpa, which would have allowed him to continue anchoring “Countdown.” Olbermann told his bosses he didn’t know he was barred from making campaign contributions, although he is resisting saying that publicly. Olbermann may not hold as many cards as he thinks. He makes $7 million a year and MSNBC’s prime time is not as dependent on him as it was before the addition of Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell, who make considerably less.

MSNBC’s ratings certainly back up the last line about Olbermann not holding as many cards as he thinks, something Steve Krakauer pointed out on Friday: “Rachel Maddow is getting better ratings than Olbermann in the key A25-54 demographic, and Lawrence O’Donnell isn’t far behind. Olbermann is no longer the center of the strategy either – as the network has unveiled a vibrant, massive new campaign “Lean Forward” which focuses on half a dozen members of the MSNBC talent pool.”

As for whether a public apology would solved all of Olbermann’s problems at the network? History suggests otherwise. Back in 2008 David Shuster apologized on air for his “pimped out” remarks and still faced a two week suspension. So perhaps the likelier scenario is that Olbermann was offered a reduced suspension for an on air apology and turned it down. That said, Olbermann is no David Shuster and his absence on the network, despite any inner strife at MSNBC is huge.

Meanwhile, a thousand more people have signed the Progressive Change Committee's petition to restore Olbermann to the air in just the time it took me to write this, for a total of over 276,000 people.

If Phil Griffin thinks he's going to keep this audience in the 8 PM slot by putting Christine O'Donnell on the air with her lunatic delusions, he'll join Mr. Olbermann in exile very soon.

Labels: corporate assholes, Keith Olbermann, MSNBC

New York Times May 11, 2010 article about Peter I. Chernin, former Murdoch #2, and a conversation he had with Comcast CEO and Bush fundraiser Brian Roberts:

Mr. Chernin, meanwhile, offered few hints at an unusual meeting on Tuesday with another media mogul, the Comcast chief executive Brian L. Roberts. The two men chatted during a brunch session at the Cable Show, an annual gathering of the cable television industry. One of the more powerful figures in media-as-it-is went toe to toe with a new player in media-as-it-might-be.

Comcast is in line to acquire control of NBC Universal, once regulators sign off on the $30 billion deal. Mr. Chernin asked Mr. Roberts how he planned to handle daily editorial control of such an immense news operation. “Are you saying that you’ll never interfere?” he asked.

Mr. Roberts blanched slightly at the question, which included a hypothetical situation that had Keith Olbermann, an MSNBC host, attacking a couple of Republican congressmen just as the approvals were being finished.

“Let’s have that conversation in six months or 12 months,” Mr. Roberts said.

OK, so it was 6 days short of 6 months. Can't say Roberts didn't warn us.

Does anyone still believe that the Comcast takeover of NBC/Universal won't happen?

(via)

Labels: Censorship, corporatism, Keith Olbermann, media consolidation

Today's honoree: Matt Taibbi, weighing in on the Olbermann foofarah.

Money quote:

We had a whole generation of journalists who sat by and did nothing while, for instance, George Bush led us into an idiotic war on a lie, plus thousands more who spent day after day collecting checks by covering Britney's hair and Tiger's text messages and other stupidities while the economy blew up and two bloody wars went on mostly unexamined... and it's Keith Olbermann who should "pay the price" for being unethical? Because, and let me get this straight, he donated money, privately, to politicians?

Labels: bloggers, double standards, Keith Olbermann

That didn't take long.

Phil Griffin, who heads up MSNBC, has suspended Keith Olbermann indefinitely without pay for donating his own money to political candidates.

As Kos points out, Pat Buchanan donated money to Republicans between 2005 and 2008 (not to mention what a virulent hatemonger he is) and he's still on Morning Schmoe on a regular basis.

This morning Meredith Viera had a cuddle with Christine O'Donnell, who in case anyone forgot, LOST her election bid on Tuesday, but is somehow still a more valuable commodity on television than the guy who actually WON.

I can add 2 + 2, can you?

Meanwhile, Faux Noise doesn't seem to care about its on-air talent advocating for candidates on their own time with their own money. Here's a list of Sean Hannity's donations.

UPDATE: I'm shocked, I tell you...shocked...SHOCKED...and APPALLED...that Joe Scarborough -- but Phil Griffin has no problem with that.

UPDATE #2: Greg Sargent calls bullshit.

Labels: double standards, Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, what liberal media

For eight years, progressives gnashed their teeth as the media and people on the right blindly applauded everything George W. Bush said or did. Chris Matthews would call a speech (yes, read from a teleprompter) "Churchillian." Wingnuts everywhere referred to him as "our president" and demanded that we all support "our president" -- blindly, utterly, completely -- as the heinousness escalated.

We've always felt we were different because we didn't always have to march in lockstep. I felt Obama's speech was lackluster, with more-of-the-same futile gestures towards "post-partisanship" with people who would like to see him dead, empty calls for commissions to talk the BP spill to death while the oil continues to gush into a dying Gulf of Mexico, and finally, because he seemed to not know what else to do, a call to prayer -- perhaps designed to try to get the Dominionist right to like him but instead sounding like a gesture of futility. Over at Balloon Juice, the sense is that the speech was sober, reasoned, and showed leadership. I respect John and Doug and the others for that opinion, even if I disagree with it, because where they're coming from is NOT some kind of blind faith in 11-dimensional chess, but a different interpretation of the speech.

No one was expecting Barack Obama to put on a wetsuit and fix the spill himself. What we were hoping for is the courage to use the spill as a launchpoint for a serious addressing of our dependence on fossil fuels. That doesn't make us Limbaugh dittoheads.

It's no secret that getting progressives to agree on much of anything is like herding cats -- except over at the Great Orange Satan, where any criticism of Barack Obama is met with scorn, troll ratings, and attempts at banning. For many Kossacks, the delusion that Obama is some kind of progressive visionary Superman dies hard -- so hard that trashing two of the most stalwart guardians of progressive values in the media became the order of the day, in diaries like Dear Rachel Maddow and Memo to Keith Olbermann: Go - - - - yourself.

Well, Mr. Olbermann has had quite enough of being trashed for refusing to participate in this kind of blind worship of even Democratic politicians as demigods:

If I can understand people's frustration with seeing a speech by a Democratic president criticized in a venue such as mine, why is it impossible for some people here to accept my frustration about the speech? You don't agree with me, fine. You don't want to watch because you don't agree with me, fine. But to accuse me, after five years of risking what I have to present the truth as I see it, of staging something for effect, is deeply offensive to me and is an indication of what has happened here.

You want Cheerleaders? Hire the Buffalo Jills. You want diaries with conspiracy theories, go nuts. If you want this site the way it was even a year ago, let me know and I'll be back.

Call Olbermann a crybaby if you want. But this is a guy who gets envelopes of white powder and death threats because of the things he says. When Ari Fleischer threatened all of America by ordering them to "Watch what they say, watch what they do", Olbermann was there. Night after night, as people who would turn this country into a right-wing Christian military theocracy that resembles Iran more than what we know of as America, Olbermann exposes them. This is the guy who brought Rachel Maddow out of the swamp of the dying Air America Radio and out where more people could hear the most ferociously smart commentator on American politics we've seen since Edward R. Murrow. For a guy whose ego is reputed to be bigger than Mt. Everest, that's no small thing. But let him criticize Barack Obama, and he's persona non grata among the Freepers of the Left.

If Olbermann had done nothing other than put Rachel Maddow on television, he'd deserve our enduring thanks...for segments like this:

Rachel can disclaim all she wants. I know there were people watching Fake President Maddow give that fake speech who found themselves wishing it was real. I know because I was one of them.

Labels: blind cheerleading, Daily Kos, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow

Olbermann's dad died yesterday:

My father died, in the city of his birth, New York, at 3:50 EST this afternoon.

Though the financial constraints of his youth made college infeasible, he accomplished the near-impossible, becoming an architect licensed in 40 states. Much of his work was commercial, for a series of shoe store chains and department stores. There was a time in the 1970's when nearly all of the Baskin-Robbins outlets in the country had been built to his design, and under his direction. Through much of my youth and my early adult life, it was almost impossible to be anywhere in this country and not be a short drive to one of "his" stores.

My Dad was predeceased last year by my mother, Marie, his wife of nearly 60 years. He died peacefully after a long fight against the complications that ensued after successful colon surgery last September at the New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center. My sister Jenna and I were at his side, and I was reading him his favorite James Thurber short stories, as he left us.

I can't say enough about Dr. Jeff Milsom and his team at the hospital, and all of those physicians and nurses and staffers in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit who looked after my Dad all this time, and kept him in their hearts. And I feel the same way about all of you who have expressed your best wishes and prayers to him, and to me, and to our family.

My Dad was my biggest booster. A day after I was hired by CNN in the summer of 1981 as a two-week vacation relief sports reporter, I traveled by train to my childhood hometown, and walked from the station towards my folks' house. I was stopped half a dozen times before I got to my Dad's office by people congratulating me on my impending television debut. There was, of course, only one way they could have known. My Dad, the press agent.

Of course it was he and my Mom who took me to my first Yankees games (even though my father nursed a delightful grudge against the team for trading away his favorite players, Steve Souchock and Snuffy Stirnweiss - in 1948 and 1950). But as my interest in the sport began to take the shape of a dreamt-of career, it was my Dad also sacrificed family vacations so we could buy ever more tickets to Yankee games. When we could afford both games and vacations, four times those vacations were to Spring Training.

He was my inspiration, and will always remain so. His bravery these last six months cannot be measured. He is as much my hero now, as he was when I was five years old.

Theodore C. Olbermann's final struggle has resulted in some of the most heartfelt and incisive commentary about health care that we've seen. If anyone who has seen them still talks about "death panels", that person deserves to never receive health care again.

Labels: health care, Keith Olbermann

Help indeed.

Labels: health care, Keith Olbermann

Here at B@B, we loves us some Keith Olbermann, but this is hilarious:

Labels: comedy, Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann

Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann discuss The Man Who Spawned the Worst President Ever's description of them as "sick puppies".

Keith Olbermann is exactly right: This is the man whose media operatives created Willie Horton. This is the man who hired Lee Atwater, without whom Karl Rove would not exist. And he's equating Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann stating FACTS in a snarky way with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh pulling stuff out of their asses?

Labels: George Bush, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Republican lies