Tuesday's Hour of Spin opened with Olby pretending that there were two huge news events in Washington competing for attention. One of these: the Alito hearings. The other: the Abramoff scandal. Keith's excuse for making the latter his lead story was that a lobbying firm that employed Mrs DeLay has closed. Stop the presses!

Mention of DeLay gave KO an excuse to run, for free and in its entirety, an anti-DeLay ad allegedly running in his district. Is this the only ad running in his district? Who knows. But it's the only one Olby has given this much free publicity to. Since Dana Milbank was in yesterday to chew over the political news, today Keith interviewed...Dana Milbank. Tonight's moment of unintentional humor was Olby pronouncing Republican Congressman Boehner as "Bonner". Too bad Boehner's not in the cabinet--Keith wouldn't get his name wrong then since he wouldn't even know who he was.

Lots of recycled video from NBC tonight: the Alito hearings, the kidnapped journalist in Iraq, the whereabouts of Bin Laden, a dead cat, and a fact-challenged bestseller. You'd think the author of this last would be a natural choice for "worst person" (if Olby could verify that the author worked for Fox). But no, Keith had bigger fish to fry. Tuesday's worst was Andrea Peyser, for reporting this.

Olby described her as a "sniveling eavesdropper" and used the age-old defense of mistaken identity (I didn't say it, it was that guy next to me). Keith neglected to mention what he replied when that other guy purportedly said these insulting things about one of his coworkers. He also went out of his way to make fun of Ms Peyser's name ("Andrea Pays-her, Pies-her") not just once but twice. (What was that all about?)

It was another OlbyEmbarrassment, but we couldn't help noticing that when he read the quote from Peyser, he cut it off in the middle of the sentence. The part he didn't read:

...and [Olbermann] groused jealously about Bill O'Reilly's superior ratings.

That part he didn't try to palm off on some innocent bystander. That part he didn't deflect with a tall tale and a few personal insults. That part he didn't deny.

Sometimes it's not what you say that counts. It's what you don't say.