Posted on 11/12/2006 8:18:15 AM PST by SmithL
Keith Olbermann just needed to find his voice. He'd been a droll sportscaster, a serious news anchor and a bickering critic of Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. But none of those personas really clicked.
Then he found one. A little over a year ago, as the White House fumbled and botched the Hurricane Katrina recovery, Olbermann finally blew up.
He concluded a broadcast of his MSNBC cable news show, "Countdown,'' with an indignant rant in the rat-a-tat-tat cadence of his idol, Edward R. Murrow. He called it a "Special Comment.''
And just like that, Olbermann found his voice -- the angry everyman. He became a liberal counterpoint to conservative media ranters like O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, and an Internet star, too.
The result has been a cultural earthquake.
"Here's what happened,'' Olbermann said in a phone interview this week. "Five years ago (on Sept. 11), 50 percent of the country went quiet. There was this self-imposed censorship. Suddenly it became unimaginable to criticize the administration. And no one else was brave or stupid enough to say, 'I don't remember signing that document.' ''
Today Olbermann is hot, in every sense of the word. He likes to say that the first step to creating one of his blistering editorials is to "get pissed off,'' and that's certainly how he sounds.
But there's something more to it, too. Conservatives may hate his attacks, but no one doubts that he comes across as one of the smarter guys in the room. When he laid into then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Aug. 30, he threw in references to Neville Chamberlain and the policy of appeasement. Let's see NBC network anchor Brian Williams pull that off.
Not that he would try it.
"Broadcast networks are not interested in the controversy,'' Olbermann says
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Not much of a cultural earthquake..Haven't heard of him either.
I wonder if his ratings are near O'Reily's
It's like the Twilight Zone, when he is going off on a rant.
No problem, it was a fluke that I posted first. I usually follow Dads of Marines, not lead them. :-)
Hello earth, this is Mars and, here is what we are saying????????????????????
What's interesting is that while Olbermann screams and hollers all the Democrats have gone to the same school where they have been taught to "whisper" and "speak softly" when they are on TV. Obviously to come across as calm and intelligent and "smart". But they can't do that for two years or even for two weeks. At some point their true colors will come out and in 2008 they will get stomped.
Olbermann taps a cesspool of idiocy...
Nope. He's going to look like a huge asswipe now that his liberal buddies are in power and he has to defend them.
Exactly, Olberman just monologues. He couldn't hack it in talk-radio. In talk-radio you have a dialogue with the listeners.
they will ride this guy as the nect coming as they rode Err America radio...and not a peep will be heard when he falls flat on his face....
I hear both his viewers really like him.
Olberman: The angry-white wuss.
douche bag
C.W. Nevius:
"Conservatives may hate his attacks, but no one doubts that he comes across as one of the smarter guys in the room."
WRONG! I doubt his sanity!
Olbermann is mentally ill. It has been well publicized that he has been under psychiatric care for some time. He had a Dan Rather-esque hissy-fit/walk-off moment at ESPN several years back. They fired him and MSNBC picked him up out the broadcasting scrap heap for a bargain basement price.
I should have said 'They fired him, SEVERAL YEARS OF UNEMPLOYMENT WENT BY, and MSNBC picked him up...'
That must be why Olberman is known as Mr. Prozac.
May 2004 ratings: The O'Reilly Factor: 1,894,000 viewers Countdown: 319,000 viewers June 2006 ratings: The O'Reilly Factor: 2,141,000 viewers Countdown: 286,000 viewers
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