Looks like Keith picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

As the Democratic National Convention approached Keith Olbermann must have been feeling pretty good about himself. Over the past two years Olbermann has systematically gutted MSNBC of anyone that did not meet Keith's "high standards" for journalistic ethics*. Rita Cosby - gone, Don Imus - gone, Bernard McGuirk - gone, Tucker Carlson - gone, Larry Johnson - gone, Dana Milbank - gone, Dan Abrams - gone. The plane ride out to Denver must have felt like a victory procession for the conquering hero. Never in his career has Keith Olbermann achieved the type of power and prominence he enjoys now at MSNBC. Over the past two years he has become the number one star of the network, posted the biggest ratings the network has ever seen, and "broken out" in media parlance with appearances on Leno and cameos on Fox Television comedy shows. He even has his own baseball card. Keith is now bigger than Countdown, bigger than MSNBC, bigger than cable news. Keith is now a "playa" on the political scene where he has become the primary conduit into the mainstream media for the far-left and "his" candidate just captured the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States.

Unlike Caesar however no one was whispering "all fame is fleeting" in Keith's ear as his Boing 757 touched down at Denver International Airport. Olbermann, who now gets more coverage from TV critics, political bloggers and gossip columnists than Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams gets in a year, has managed to turn what should have been the greatest week of his life into a train wreck of epic proportions. Not satisfied with single-handedly remaking the entire day of MSNBC programming to comport with this vision of wrong and right, Olbermann has now picked very public fights with the two remaining holdovers from past administrations - Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews - sicced his attack pup, David Shuster on Morning Joe, run around the set peripatetically shutting off the microphone of any guest or analyst who dare question Obama's supremacy or say something nice about John McCain. All this as Keith's blog calls for Scarborough's firing. Now, into the mix comes a report from the New York Post's Page Six that Keith has sought to ban Tom Brokaw from appearing on "his" network. Despite this, Olbermann manages to work himself into a tizzy, coming as offended that anyone would believe Keith capable of this sort of thing when it comes to Tom Brokaw, the last remaining news icon at NBC.

So, with his world collapsing around him, what better time to publicly embrace his wildest paranoid delusions in a disoriented, rambling late night blog post on the kookiest of the far-left web sites. A sequence of events predicted with startling accuracy by Irina Briganti, a Fox News spokesperson who said of Keith two years ago:

Because of his personal demons, Keith has imploded everywhere he's worked," Ms. Briganti said. "From lashing out at co-workers to personally attacking Bill O'Reilly and all things Fox, it's obvious Keith is a train wreck waiting to happen. And like all train wrecks, people might tune in out of morbid curiosity, but they eventually tune out, as evidenced by Keith's recent ratings decline. In the meantime, we hope he enjoys his paranoid view from the bottom of the ratings ladder and wish him well on his inevitable trip to oblivion.

We are happy to report that Olbermann Watch did its share to fuel Keith's persecution complex:

Having been staked out at my home by a Post flunkie, I can tell you from experience that there are a lot of effective self-defense steps one can take. A small video recorder is a useful device, the stalking equivalent of a bright light for cockroaches. Also, exposing them in a public forum like this, helps.

The "flunkie" in question is blogger Evan Gahr who stopped Keith on the street near his apartment building to ask him about our reports on Keith's tax warrant problems.

To defend himself against the rumor that Keith is now seeking to ban Brokaw from MSNBC, Keith reveals he carries in his wallet a printout of a complimentary email that Brokaw sent him in March. What, is Keith like ten years old? Once again the classless Olbermann confuses the professional courtesy of a compliment, something unknown to him, with friendship and respect. Olbermann tried to put forward the same canard after the death's of Tim Russert and Tony Snow both of whom Keith attempted to claim as "friends" in the hours after the news of their passing.

I can't say anything about Russert beyond finding it hard to believe that Tim had anything but contempt for Keith's work but I knew Tony Snow and talked to Tony about Keith many times. In fact, I was with Mark Levin and Tony just last April where we discussed Olbermann. It is absolutely revolting to me that Keith would try to claim Tony as a friend or colleague or anything else. I can assure readers here that Tony Snow never had anything good to say about Keith Olbermann. As White House Spokesman, however, Tony was intent on having good relations with ALL members of the press including Keith no matter what he thought of them personally. I will not get into that here so let me just say that to my knowledge, Tony commented publicly about Keith on two occasions - once on his radio show and once as White House Press Secretary when he was asked about Olbermann's role in covering a GOP debate. It was on his radio show, just after Tony had been offered the White House job and was attacked by Keith, that Tony made the now famous quip about Keith being able to fit all of his friends inside a phone booth.

We can only hope that Keith is including us when he talks about bloggers and commenters on cable news blogs working for Rupert Murdoch.

Within the television news industry it is generally accepted that a lot of the stuff bashing other networks on blogs is too inside to not be literally composed by somebody in the Murdoch chain. This was done by one Fox Sports PR person, to my personal knowledge, when I worked there in '99-'00. The comments of one poster at TVNewser read so similarly to O'Reilly's "Talking Points" that his/her/its posting privileges were revoked. So the one here this morning - consider yourself privileged - somebody may have done this while on the clock working for the Aussie Pirate.

Ha! Apparently Keith is not reading enough blue blogs. If he did he would know we all get paid by Karl Rove not Murchdoch...although to be fair we can't be sure where Rove gets his money.

UPDATE

*Keith Olbermann has now succeeded in having Time magazine columnist and NBC News political analyst Mike Murphy banned from MSNBC for claiming that Bill and Hillary Clinton were secretly supporting John McCain and would vote for McCain.

18 Comments

By Mike C. on August 28, 2008 3:02 PM

There goes Keith with his Krazy Konspiracy Theories again.

By CountDung on August 28, 2008 3:33 PM

Excellent analysis Robert.

I love how he complains about bloggers picking up stories from the Post as gospel without even checking it out.

"Once the Post publishes, either let the gossip sites with no interest in doing anything but echoing (Radar Online, sometimes Gawker or Jossip) repeat the story. Hey, once it's in the Post, you can quote them! Why bother making a phone call?"

Hell, he gets his "facts" right from the blue blogs to his teleprompter without even checking if it's from a newspaper or from some hack in his Mom's basement.

Liar, hypocrite and political hack.

By cee on August 28, 2008 3:34 PM

It is amusing to read the childish worries and antics of the left's go-to-guy in the media.

Keeping a folded piece of paper in one's wallet to take out when those little, inevitable insecurities come around is so CUTE!

VERO POSSUMUS!

By cee on August 28, 2008 4:07 PM

Thank you Mr. Stewart....

Ah, Mupput references....gotta love them.....

http://tinyurl.com/5uxgvs

Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann = Statler & Waldorf, NBC should be proud!

By Media Critic on August 28, 2008 4:09 PM

It's okay when he does it but wrong when everyone else does.

By Media Critic on August 28, 2008 4:09 PM

It's okay when he does it but wrong when everyone else does.

By dcmeyer on August 28, 2008 4:33 PM

When it rains, it pours....

MSNBC Anchors' Fights Go Live
By REBECCA DANA
August 28, 2008

Since the start of the Democratic National Convention, ratings have exploded for the cable news channel MSNBC.

So have tensions among the network's top anchors.

The convention was supposed to be the network's coming-out party as a hub for politics. But a year of programming and personnel changes have led to behind-the-scenes strain, which bubbled to the surface repeatedly this week in open arguments between hosts.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121989105850778775.html?mod=blog

By cee on August 28, 2008 4:40 PM

You know who should be worried, Chuck Todd. Now there is a talented, mostly straight-up-the-middle journalist who should avoid MSNBC with Olbermann and Matthews like the plague.

By dcmeyer on August 28, 2008 4:47 PM

Even Brokaw is starting to lose his objectivity. He keeps repeating that hackneyed line of, "...worst economy since the great depression..." Hey Tom, read the actual news much?

Economy Grows Faster Than Predicted in Second Quarter

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/business/july-dec08/economy_08-28.html

By cee on August 28, 2008 4:59 PM

The mantra about the worse economy 'evah' is ridiculous. Listening to Biden's speech last night made me think.....

- How did the movie industry achieve their record for summer box office this year?

- How come there has not been 2 consecutive quarters of negative economic growth?

- How can people send the millionaire, SNOBamessiah, donations for his presidential campaign?

- Why was I waiting on a 1 hour line with my three year old son at our local water park if there are so many not able to care for their basic needs?

I mean I look at the footage of the great depression and I would think I should see some food lines and shanty towns if the democrats are to be believed!

This country is SO bad that we need a savior! A man who deserves his own temple for his acceptance speech!

VERO POSSUMUS!

By spearule on August 28, 2008 5:37 PM

ahhh the slow descent into madness. i see him there sweating and pounding the keyboard. a snifter of brandy and razor blades at the ready. murmuring "im pretty im pretty, they love me they love me". there is a god.

By pluck on August 28, 2008 8:45 PM

You wrote: "All this as Keith's blog calls for Scarborough's firing."

You linked to your own blog in that sentence. I followed the links there, and there's nothing to Olbermann's site. Where's the connection to Olbermann?

By The Factor on August 28, 2008 9:46 PM

Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann = Statler & Waldorf

Johnny$ or Robert, I think it's time for a new picture. Oh, how happy it must make Keith that one of the left's icons is making fun of him and his network and there is nothing he can do to defend himself.

By Media Critic on August 28, 2008 10:19 PM

He's at Kos now claiming all of this is made up. Are the Kos Kids that stupid or are they just not watching MSNBC. Those fights were all televised not figments of Fox news's imagination (he blames them for the rumors).

By ramjet on August 29, 2008 12:19 AM

Low Blow KO, not satisfied with professional assassinations and on-air tantrums directed at co-workers, WPITW gigs of his competition and Spittle Comment character assassinations of anyone R, or Con, or Rep, or even someone who is, by no stretch of the imagination, close to being any one of those, but who had the AUDACITY to compete in the primary against Obama in the HOPE of winning the nomination, now he's telling an AP writer who wrote a convention analysis critical of the O'Speech to "find new work."

Good Golly Miss Molly, Great Balls of Fire, Roll Over Beethoven, Chances Are, You Ain't Nuttin' But a Hound Dog

By johnny dollar on August 29, 2008 12:49 AM

Chronology:

Markos slams AP writer 11:38 pm:

http://tinyurl.com/54r8x2

Keith slams same AP writer c. 11:50 pm:

http://tinyurl.com/6oamwg

Keith was online and even posting at Daily Kos while doing his "show" tonight.

We report, you decide.

By MLong on August 29, 2008 5:25 AM

Latest from the KO front..he's threatening to walkout from the Republican convention unless MSNBC provides him with more protection..the paranoid loon thinks someone will gun him down. LOL!!! New Murrow indeed.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08292008/gossip/pagesix/secret_service_due_for_keith__126549.htm

By Media Critic on August 29, 2008 9:12 AM

Is he manic depressive or what?

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