That's the idea you might get from Monday's Hour of Spin, where Edward R Olbermann allowed his guest to smear US veterans without Olby even raising one of his plus-size eyebrows. Perhaps he was too busy thinking thinking ahead to his glorious Tuesday night triumph, without realizing 28% of the viewers who tuned in on Monday would abandon ship on Tuesday. Apparently one day of the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann is more than enough.

Discuss, resolve, and recap. Comments are open!

John Gibson does. It's the latest of many Great Moments in Olbypocrisy:

Discuss, resolve, and recap. Comments are open!

Tonight the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann is expected to report on the President's Afghanistan visit. Obama's speech to the troops showed considerable resolve--exactly the opposite of what Oralmann wanted. Just to refresh your memory, here's is Olbermahn's demand that Obama "get out" and leave Afghanistan to the Taliban:

Of course, that was a long, long time ago...four months. Is Krazy Keith going to flip-flop on another issue? Will he crank up the rhetoric and demand again that Obama "get out"? Or will he find some way to spend so much time on things like Sarah Palin that he can relegate the Afghanistan question to a few tossed off sentences and neatly avoid the issue? Discuss, resolve, and recap. Comments are open!

Bob Tur, the Los Angeles broadcast journalist whose company sued YouTube in 2006 over a copyright complaint, has been accused by Google-employed lawyers of leaking confidential court documents related to the depositions of YouTube and Google executives in a longstanding battle with Viacom over pirated content.

If Tur, who became famous for his use of a helicopter in high-profile breaking news like the O.J. Simpson car chase in 1994, was responsible for the document leak that revealed Schmidt's deposition, it would have been a violation of the protective order that he was under as part of the pending class action suit. But his counsel insisted that he would have no reason to make that risky move, and that Google's counsel is effectively bullying him.

Many were surprised that after the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann returned to the airwaves on Monday, he just as quickly vanished again, leaving Crazy Larry to man the ship. We're not sure about the wisdom of such an arrangement, given that Larry hasn't lost Keith's audience, but may actually be building on it!

But Olby never planned to return for more than that one night. His own words at his blog of choice, Daily Kos, specifically said that would be the case:

I felt compelled to come in off my grief leave, just for the night...

So don't be surprised if Herr Olbermahn doesn't make an appearance for the rest of the week. He's on 'grief leave'. And there are five stages to the grieving process. Or maybe six: an extra stage for world-shattering ruminations on baseball trivia...

• His own personal plan for redistributing teams among the Major Leagues
• Speculation on cortisone shots and replacement ball players
• A lengthy dissertation, with pictures, on one player's helmet

Inside Cable News reports that the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann will be returning to his throne tonight. Perhaps he will bask in the glow of another victory for President Obama. But wait, how can that be? Let's set the wayback machine for a long, long time ago...all the way back to December! As the mists clear, we find Edward R Olbermann pontificating on health care reform and the evils of mandates and why the Senate version of the health care bill should be...killed!

This is not health, this is not care, this is certainly not reform.... They must now not make the defeat worse by passing a hollow shell of a bill just for the sake of a big-stage signing ceremony.

You have just agreed to purchase a product. If you do not, you will be breaking the law and subject to a fine. You have no control over how much you will pay for the product.... The bill now is little more than a legally mandated delivery of the middle class (and those whose dreams of joining it slip ever further away) into a kind of Chicago stockyards of insurance. Make enough money to take care of yourself and your family and you must buy insurance -- on the insurers terms -- or face a fine.

This provision must go. It is, above all else, immoral and a betrayal of the people who elected you, Sir. You must now announce that you will veto any bill lacking an option or buy-in, but containing a mandate. And Sen. Reid, put the public option back in, or the Medicare Buy-In, or both....

No single payer? No sale. No public option? No sale. No Medicare buy-in? No sale. I am one of the self-insured, albeit by choice. And I hereby pledge that I will not buy this perversion of health care reform. Pass this at your peril, Senators, and sign it at yours, Mr. President. I will not buy this insurance. Brand me a lawbreaker if you choose. Fine me if you will. Jail me if you must.

Care to see the complete rant in all its histronic glory? We are happy to oblige:

Of course that was then, and this is now. Will Oralmann reiterate his principled objections tonight, call for the bill to be repealed, and boast how he will refuse to obey its provisions? Or will all that be forgotten as Herr Olbermahn does a complete about face and continues his slobbering love affair with the Prez? Discuss, resolve, and then recap tonight's Big Return. Comments are open!

UPDATE: One way to disguise an imminent flip-flop is to camouflage it by changing the subject. Olby has posted a preview of tonight's Special Education Komment. The theme: Republicans are racists, and people shouldn't call names. Yes, Keith Olbermann, the man who spews epithets like 'psychotic', 'schmuck', 'facist', 'whore', 'fat ass', 'slut', 'monkey', and 'c-nt', is just the guy to make that case!

...He was my inspiration, and will always remain so. His bravery these last six months cannot be measured. He is as much my hero now, as he was when I was five years old.

More at Baseball Nerd.

We reported earlier on the vicious personal attack Keith Olbermann spewed at Floyd Abrams. Mr Abrams is the father of Dan Abrams, MSNBC legal analyst, but as a first amendment attorney he dared to represent a client Oralmann didn't like. So Keith maniacally smeared Mr Abrams, who is Jewish, by comparing him with a Nazi.

Now the Media Institute, dedicated to defending the first amendment, has demanded that Edward R Olbermann issue a public apology for his slander. Their open letter, which deserves to be read in full, pulls no punches:

For any Jew to be compared to a Nazi collaborator is vile, but in the case of Floyd is simply beyond comprehension.... If you believe that attorneys should be personally vilified whenever they advocate a cause you oppose or a client you dislike, we would like to know how you believe our system is supposed to work. Many of the freedoms you enjoy as a journalist exist because of the work of Floyd Abrams throughout his exemplary career. Yet even if Mr. Abrams had not blazed important paths for the rights of the press, he does not deserve to be personally insulted, which for you may have seemed like nothing more than a clever turn of phrase.... But we also look forward to your public apology to Floyd Abrams for your unwarranted personal attack.

Our advice to the Media Institute: don't hold your breath waiting for that Olbypology. Comparing people to Nazis is nothing new for the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann. Whether it was giving the "Sieg Heil" salute (for which he was admonished by the ADL), or comparing Fox News to Nazis, not to mention calling the Bush administration facist and likening it to the Third Reich, Herr Olbermahn has never been able to purge himself of the compulsion to demean his enemies with the Nazi comparison.

From the OlbyWatch archives, a little remembrance of Keith's love/hate relationship with the Nazi smear:

Discuss, resolve, and recap the week's last Hour of Spin. Comments are open!

He hasn't been on The Hour of Spin for a while, but don't get the impression that the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann hasn't been busy. Maybe just not busy doing what you thought. The posts continue of course over at the (now heavily moderated) baseball blog. Meanwhile he's picking up the pace at his blog of choice, Daily Kos (proprietor: Markos 'Screw 'Em' Moulitsas). Mediaite noticed that he posted a blast at Jesse Ventura:

Keith Olbermann responded to an interview between Cenk Uygur and Jesse Ventura with a lengthy blog post on Daily Kos last night. Then he followed it up with 18 more comments to fellow Kos commenters. All concern his history with MSNBC, Ventura's, Ashleigh Banfield's time at the network (and leaving the network) and...more.

Jesse's crime? He criticized MSNBC. It is ironic that for all his rhetoric, Oralmann proves at heart to be the quintessential 'company man', flacking for his bosses even when he is supposedly preoccupied with other matters.

And yet the obsessive-compulsive nature of this cannot be understated. It was after 3:00 am, and Keith was presumably back home (he claims he wrote the lengthy original post at the hospital, using an iPhone!). But though it was the middle of the night, Edward R Olbermann was still tap-tap-tapping away. For some reason he thought it necessary to produce a detailed list of every person who held the 8:00 pm slot on A-Mess-NBC. We suppose that's nice bit of ego-onanism for someone who can then claim "I had it longest", but really, it's just...well...weird:

Notice how he puts that line break in to highlight 2, and again to separate 21 from the entries preceeding it? Self-absorbed much?

Discuss, resolve, and recap. Comments are open!

People are starting to wonder if Keith Olbermann has spiraling toward the career meltdown so many have speculated about for years. It was just a few days ago when he attacked ESPN's Bill Simmons as a hack with "no discernible insight or talent". (Keep in mind that ESPN and Olby parted company on less than friendly terms.)

A storm of commenters reacted to Oralmann's rant to the point where Keith had to cleanse the comment thread of those pesky dissenting voices. Sort of like he does every night on The Hour of Spin.

But Olby believes that no opportunity to personally attack someone on his 'enemies' list should go to waste, so he has doubled down and launched a new invective-filled salvo at Simmons. If you don't believe that paranoia strikes deep, then how else to explain Olbermann's latest delusion--that Simmons is cyber-stalking him in the comments while disguising himself under a panoply of pseudonymns:

And we now encourage Mr. Simmons to again falme [sic] the comments section under various identities, to his heart's content.

Oh there's a lot more hate from Krazy Keith so read the whole thing. And then check out Jed Eckert's latest take on all this:

This may just be a frivolous and minor spat among relatively minor media players, but it goes to a pattern of unraveling for Keith. Why gratuitously attack "The Sports Guy?" What did he ever do to you? He's a successful figure at ESPN, so there's probably some jealousy factoring in, but come on.... By the way, Simmons' reference to Keith living alone could have something to do with rumors about the stalker's once live-in girlfriend, Katy Tur (pictured below in happier times.) We hear that Katy has had enough of Keith and has flown the coop. Maybe he can reignite his affair with karmabites1!

Discuss, resolve, recap. Comments are open!

Keith has been off the air all this week, except for a taped-in-advance segment on Monday's program. That segment appeared to air from "on location", obviously intending to suggest Olby was at the hospital visiting his father. Which he may well have been.

But let's bear in mind what happened last week. The infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann launched into the most recent of his unhinged diatribes, this one at a fellow MSNBC employee, Dan Abrams. This vicious personal attack had been preceded by KO smearing Abrams's father, constitutional attorney Floyd Abrams, by comparing him to a Nazi. (Yes, Floyd Abrams is Jewish. No, we don't think Olbermann cared one whit about tossing another "Nazi" stinkbomb into the public arena.) We waited for some action from NBC honchos, who were quick to slap down Joe Scarborough for daring to criticize Edward R Olbermann. But it hasn't come. Or at least it hasn't been publicly revealed.

So that brings us to our question of the day. What has Keith Olbermann been up to? Three days away from The Hour of Spin so far this week. Odds are that today will make four. We understand if he is consumed with personal issues, and again extend our best wishes and prayers for all of his family in this troublesome time. But it's not like Olby isn't doing other things.

Just this morning he was making oh-so-witty comments over at his blog of choice, Daily Kos (proprietor: Markos "Screw 'Em" Moulitsas). Here he is jumping into a Sarah Palin bashing thread with some OlbyHumor about Todd and Levi.

And of course there's his baseball blog. He was busy there on Tuesday, bragging about how assiduously he keeps politics out of his posts, as he launched into a seemingly endless stream-of-consciousness ramble about the career of--guess who?--Jim Bunning! What's interesting is that it obviously took a while to write up--it's a long post--and it was published Tuesday at 7:34 pm. Right around the time when he'd ordinarily be preparing for Countdown.

Why he is not doing The Hour of Spin, but instead is writing long-winded dissertations on baseball, is a question we can't answer. His choice, or someone else's? Discuss, resolve, and recap. Comments are open!

UPDATE: Curiouser and curiouser. He can't do Countdown, but he can joke around with Jon Stewart.

UPDATE UPDATE: Another lengthy baseball/golf post this morning.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE: The baseball post linked above attracted a storm of comments. Today the reader reactions have been trimmed down to half of the original number. Apparently on his blog, just like on The Hour of Spin, dissent is not to be tolerated.

Thanks to our friend Broliath. Comments are open!

Another month of Olbermann spin, made more bearable only by the fact that it is the shortest one of the year. Once again we poured through the MSNBC transcripts and tallied up the guest breakdown for The Hour of Spin. The results will not surprise you:

Here are some fun facts about the stats. In an overabundance of caution we classified a number of frequent guests as 'neutral', even though they very rarely were. So they aren't counted in the chart. These include The Wolffe Man (6 appearances) as well as Margaret Carlson, Howard "Pundit for All Occasions" Fineman, and the Perfessor (Turley). Among those categorized as Dem strategists, the names that came up most were Crazy Larry O'Donnell (7) and Markos "Screw 'Em" Moulitsas (5). Among the liberal/progressives who weren't Dem strategists, David Corn led the way (6), followed by Ezra Klein (5). And these are Republicans/conservatives Olbermann had on his show:

Do you want to see that list again? Here it is:

As you discuss, resolve, and prepare to recap another excruciating Hour of Spin, you might want to check out the latest from Jed Eckert:

Sources within NBC News have confirmed that things are more dire than we originally thought. Veteran correspondents are cringing and are openly embarrassed by Olbermann's self-absorbed theatrics.

There's a lot more to this so read the whole thing. Comments are open!

Yet again the Olbermann Watch Research Division poured through the MSNBC online transcripts to see how much attention was paid to notable stories and issues over the past week. Here is what our keyword searches found:

Notes: References to Iraq do not include Olbermann's ritual closing mantra. Countdown did not air on Thursday. Crazy Larry substituted for Olbermann on Friday.

Get ready to recap another week of The Hour of Spin...comments are open!