W.E.B. Du Bois
03-31-2012, 09:59 PM
Long time liberal firebrand Keith Olbermann is out from his second home in the media, Current TV. Olbermann was once the star of MSNBC, hosting his own show "Countdown" at the prime 8PM slot. He is largely credited with guiding MSNBC's shift to a mostly liberal network. He left MSNBC after some incidents where he donated money to Democratic candidates as well as the network probably chiding him about his fiery rhetoric in the wake of the Gabriel Giffords shooting. Olbermann has a somewhat notorious reputation for being difficult to get along with and basically being an asshole.
Olbermann signed on with Al Gore-owned Current TV, which is positioning itself (I guess) as further to the left than MSNBC. The entire Current network was supposed to be built around Olbermann initially. O got a big contract, probably for tens of millions of dollars, but his own show "Countdown 2" had some technical problems and O made a big deal over it. I like what I read by one blogger at Mediaite: O bitching about the technical problems at Current was like someone taking all your money and bitching about what shitty furniture you have. Current spent probably a huge amount of their total revenues just to recruit O, so that's where the money went, how can you bitch?
So anyway, here's my thoughts on it:
* I did not like O THAT much. I like his Worst Person's awards, and O could be funny.
* I think O was a bit pathetic in some ways, like the way he drummed out his sidekick Dana Milbank of WaPo over some possibly dishonest comment he wrote in his column about Obama. Friends need to show a bit more loyalty than that. I also think that O tended to recycle the same left wing guests which went back and forth trashing the GOP, which was boring. His last buddy was Richard Wolfe who was practically on every night. A good political show needs to mix up the pundits and have some variety; that's one of the strengths of MSNBC's Hardball: you get a good variety of pundits each night.
* O was foolish to get himself thrown out at MSNBC considering he once had very formidable ratings there (1 million some nights) and then to once again get himself thrown out at Current. If you can't even get along with your own liberal allies, who can you get along with? You also don't want to lose your greatest asset: your primetime show. A person with common sense would make the changes he needs to keep it. That is your privileged ability to influence hundreds of thousands of people.
* O was better than the man who replaced him on MSNBC: Ed Schultz. O was funnier and seemed smarter. Schultz does not feel very genuine to me. Schultz seems like he has Romney qualities to me: he might be naturally economically liberal, like Romney is naturally a friend to Wall Street, but I just don't buy it when I see Ed being a friend to gays and racial minorities. It just doesn't seem like it should be his first instinct. Also, Ed just doesn't seem to be as clever as Olbermann in terms of opinion or wit. Ed is intellectually clumsy and blunt, which is consistent with him physically as a fat guy.
* I never forgave O for saying that Obama needs to grow a pair. O's stand on the public option and the entirety of the Obama administration was wrong and misguided.
Most people and probably even most liberals had forgotten about O after he left MSNBC, now it will be even more so.
WEB
Olbermann signed on with Al Gore-owned Current TV, which is positioning itself (I guess) as further to the left than MSNBC. The entire Current network was supposed to be built around Olbermann initially. O got a big contract, probably for tens of millions of dollars, but his own show "Countdown 2" had some technical problems and O made a big deal over it. I like what I read by one blogger at Mediaite: O bitching about the technical problems at Current was like someone taking all your money and bitching about what shitty furniture you have. Current spent probably a huge amount of their total revenues just to recruit O, so that's where the money went, how can you bitch?
So anyway, here's my thoughts on it:
* I did not like O THAT much. I like his Worst Person's awards, and O could be funny.
* I think O was a bit pathetic in some ways, like the way he drummed out his sidekick Dana Milbank of WaPo over some possibly dishonest comment he wrote in his column about Obama. Friends need to show a bit more loyalty than that. I also think that O tended to recycle the same left wing guests which went back and forth trashing the GOP, which was boring. His last buddy was Richard Wolfe who was practically on every night. A good political show needs to mix up the pundits and have some variety; that's one of the strengths of MSNBC's Hardball: you get a good variety of pundits each night.
* O was foolish to get himself thrown out at MSNBC considering he once had very formidable ratings there (1 million some nights) and then to once again get himself thrown out at Current. If you can't even get along with your own liberal allies, who can you get along with? You also don't want to lose your greatest asset: your primetime show. A person with common sense would make the changes he needs to keep it. That is your privileged ability to influence hundreds of thousands of people.
* O was better than the man who replaced him on MSNBC: Ed Schultz. O was funnier and seemed smarter. Schultz does not feel very genuine to me. Schultz seems like he has Romney qualities to me: he might be naturally economically liberal, like Romney is naturally a friend to Wall Street, but I just don't buy it when I see Ed being a friend to gays and racial minorities. It just doesn't seem like it should be his first instinct. Also, Ed just doesn't seem to be as clever as Olbermann in terms of opinion or wit. Ed is intellectually clumsy and blunt, which is consistent with him physically as a fat guy.
* I never forgave O for saying that Obama needs to grow a pair. O's stand on the public option and the entirety of the Obama administration was wrong and misguided.
Most people and probably even most liberals had forgotten about O after he left MSNBC, now it will be even more so.
WEB