As an invited guest of Matt Sheffield of MRC's Newsbusters, I had the pleasure of attending the Media Research Center's 2008 DisHonor Awards. For Olbermann Watch readers the highlight was certainly Keith Olbermann's hands-down victory of the coveted "Damn Those Conservatives" Award (video), beating out NBC's Matt Lauer and Fox News Channel's Geraldo Riviera.

The big winner on the night was Chris Matthews who received numerous nominations, sometimes more than one per category and ended up with 2 of the spots in the final four audience voting. The Hardball host won for his comparing Bill Clinton's speech at the funeral of Corretta Scott King to "Jesus in the Temple".

A high point for me personally was chatting with one my favorites, ABC Radio Host Mark Levin, who praised Olbermann Watch as a "great site". Despite his occasional bombast on the radio, Levin could not have been more pleasant in person. He promised more criticism of Olbermann to come so look forward to some clips from the "Great One" here on OlbyWatch.

Mingling with folks at the event it became clear pretty early in the evening that there mere mention of Olbermann's name elicited strong negative reaction from partygoers while the good work we do here at Olbermann Watch was roundly praised. Other folks I had a chance to chat with briefly included Tony Snow, winner of the William F. Buckley Award, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, Brian Mulroney of Radio Equalizer, Ann Coulter, former Hardball producer Howard "Extreme" Mortman, Larry Kudlow, Alex Yuriev the guy who keeps OW online, Rick Santorum, Tom Tancredo, Brent Bozell, Cal Thomas as well as many folks from MRC/Newsbusters including Matt, Tim Graham, Seton Motley, Clay Waters, and Warner Todd Huston.

The revelry came to close on a more serious note when MRC Chief Brent Bozell introduced a video homage to U.S. Navy SEAL, Lt. Michael P. Murphy, who last fall was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor (posthumously) for his bravery in leading his group of four Navy SEALs in a firefight with over 150 al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan. The video presentation on Murphy's heroism included, incredibly, captured video of the engagement shot by the al Qaeda fighters. Murphy's father and bother were on hand to received a $50,000 donation by T. Boone Pickens to the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. To the surprise and delight of the audience Pickens announced that after watching a preview of the video presentation he upped the donation to $100,000 and that after meeting Murphy's father and brother that evening he upped it again - to $1 million.