Joe Hagan is taking no prisoners in his NYTV column in today's New York Observer article on KO - OLBERMANN'S RECOUNTDOWN. Appropriately, KO was knocked down the page by the breaking Dan Rather story so you need to skim down a bit to find the piece.

As KO's #1 Blog-critic, I was interviewed for the piece. TND readers may have a bit of deja vu in reading through Hagan's line of argument - that Keith is openly embracing a bunch of left-wing crackpot conspiracy theories and putting a good deal of phony, false and erroneous information in the air at MSNBC.

It is worth noting that The National Debate is the only non-lefty web site that Keith mentions reading. It's not clear, however, that he is terribly receptive to the criticisms I have made since he desbribes his critics as "belligerently uninformative."

Hagan describes TND as "right-wing" and Olbermann references "partisan Republicans" so let me add, for the record, I was a Democrat up until 1996 and am now a registered independent who would greatly prefer to see the demise of the two-party system. I tend to criticize the left far more because they are far more likely to be journalists and journalists are more likely to claim they are non-partisan and objective when it is obvious they are not - as is the case with KO.

I recommend reading the entire piece but here are a few highlights:

The bespectacled newsman has dedicated numerous broadcasts and copious blogging hours to "voting irregularities" since Nov. 8 - every scrap of evidence or even feeble insinuation was kindling for a burning obsession that has largely been dismissed elsewhere in TV - land. Nowadays, Countdown is Recountdown.
.....
Mr. Olbermann is going Watergate on the Ohio recount, making his show a major-media beachhead for dozens of lefty quasi-conspiracy theorists who clearly wanted to one-up the guys who hog-tied Dan Rather over the summer. These bloggers, said Mr. Olbermann, were his allies: They "can go places I can’t go. They are my minions—like an unpaid research staff."
...
...however far-fetched his project, Mr. Olbermann - a Watergate buf - dug in his heels. One out of every 20 e-mails he has received "literally says, 'Hang in there. Keep doing it.' And it's been very moving and very eye-opening." And so down the wormhole he went. It didn't bother Mr. Olbermann that most of his cheerleaders were Web-based Democrats. He said he read a number of blogs, including the left-wing Daily Kos and the right-wing [The] National Debate.

MORE FODDER FOR OLBERMANN: A federal judge denied a request by third-party presidential candidates who wanted to force a recount of Ohio ballots even before the official count was finished.

CORY BERGMAN AT LOST REMOTE: a reality-based take on Hagan's piece.

UPDATE: Joe Hagan left The New York Observer and this column is no longer available for free. Follow this link to Dan Rather Says He'd Have Liked Another Decade; the Keith Olbermann "profile" entitled "Olbermann's Recountdown" is contained within that issue's column.