True to form, as a guy who just can't hold a job, KO has bounced from employer to employer over the years. Stints at MSNBC, CNN, ESPN, ABC, Fox...these are well-remembered embarrassments, especially in the boardrooms of the organizations who made the mistake of hiring him. But how many recall what Keith was doing for the latter half of 2002? That was when we got some glimpses of the "real" KO, through the medium of his column in Salon.com.

Salon is the agit-prop site presided over by David Talbot, who is to lefty propaganda what David Duke is to hooded sheets. And if you have any lingering doubt about Salon's mission in life, just check their list of "contributing writers", a veritable Who's Who of the far left: Joe Conason, Eric Boehlert, Sidney Blumenthal, Arianna Huffington, Robert Scheer...a "fair and balanced" lineup that runs the ideological gamut from A to B.

That Olbermann would join this gang of miscreants should come as no surprise to regular readers of this site (although it might serve as enlightening to those who cling to the belief that KO is just an impartial anchorman rather than an "analyst"). Skimming through some of the OlbyArticles that can still be found at Salon turns up some items that reflect in interesting ways on some of KO's current obsessions (and raise new questions about NBC's notion that he could ever be an "anchor").

For example, on the subject of Ann Coulter (Keith despises her so much that recently he smashed an Ann Coulter doll to pieces--on air!):

...a veritable out-of-control firehose of venom, whipping around crazily, streaming invective wherever she happens to point.

Keith goes on to assign partial blame Coulter for the 9/11 attacks, because of her "small but significant role" in distracting the country from the looming terrorist threat. And then there's NewsCorp whose crime was printing an erroneous blind item in a gossip column and later issuing an apology:

I worked for News Corp. -- for its Fox network and one of its cable sewers, Fox Sports Net, for three years. They were swine.

It must have been the retraction that upset Olby. We know he usually doesn't bother with them himself. Even though he once thought otherwise:

No retraction, no correction, no acknowledgment of doubt...No scolding of the correspondent, no spinning by his colleagues to place it in some kind of context. Nothing.

There are other OlbyThoughts that have a strange resonance vis-a-vis some of his recent antics. Olbermann's wisecracks about celebrities ("Keeping Tabs" segment)? How about his cheap shots at Bill O'Reilly? No Countdown would be complete without both, yet he was singing a different tune for Salon:

This is about the institutionalized ridiculing of public figures, especially actors, politicians and athletes. It is safe to say that all respect has been erased...

We're sure "respect" is the first thing one thinks of with regard to Olby's jabs at those who are more successful than he is. And then there's RatherGate, a scandal Keith has already dropped in favor of the Armstrong Williams kerfuffle. Rather's responsibility? Heyward's culpability? KO couldn't care less. But there is a different view:

Where is the reprimand against Infinity Broadcasting? Or its mogul, Mel Karmazin? What's his punishment?...One cannot overestimate the convenience for broadcasters and executives of this process of letting responsibility fall between the cracks. The prima donnas of management whose lust for publicity makes us mere on-air folks look Amish don't get blamed. The on-air folks don't get fired.

KO's own words, unfiltered, from Olbermann: The Salon Months.