Posted on 06/28/2008 8:32:12 PM PDT by paltz
After recapping the five-year-old Keith Olbermann-Bill O'Reilly feud that has spilled over to other assets of their respective employers GE and News Corp., the gossip site Gawker cheerily noted: "The real winners, as always: us!"
Indeed, anyone with a taste for mud wrestling or a pissing match has to enjoy the back-and-forth that has sprung from MSNBC host Olbermann's fateful decision to "punch up" at O'Reilly, Fox News' top-rated personality and his time-period rival. As for whether viewers or something so quaint as journalistic standards are "winning" in the eye-poking Three Stooges act that has ensued -- maybe not so much.
The convoluted affair has begun to resemble "Weapons of Mass Distraction," an HBO satire written by Larry Gelbart, in which two dueling media moguls bring their various holdings to bear in an escalating war to ruin each other. Yet what passed for satirical farce in 1997 seems almost restrained by comparison now.
For those who have somehow ignored this food fight, Olbermann started it by regularly jabbing at O'Reilly and naming him the "Worst Person in the World," a nightly segment on his MSNBC talker.
Thin-skinned in his best days, O'Reilly has grown especially sensitive to criticism (or as he's prone to call it, "vicious personal attacks," emanating from "vile left-wing smear sites") since the embarrassment of having a sexual-harassment suit filed against him in 2004. That irritation has rather transparently led him to retaliate against NBC higher-ups, including NBC News and even parent General Electric, going so far as to have a producer ambush GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, stretching to accuse him of shady dealings with Iran and, this week, of personally despoiling the Hudson River.
All of this has been fodder for Olbermann, who has gone public with claims that O'Reilly and Fox News CEO Roger Ailes have threatened retaliation if NBC doesn't rein him in.
News Corp.'s assault, whether coordinated or not, is now happening. The company's New York Post Page Six column has joined the fray with several unflattering items about Olbermann. Those rumors are then parroted by Fox News' dimwitted morning show, "Fox & Friends," creating a circular echo chamber.
Olbermann responded, of course, by preemptively lashing out against the Post on air, calling Page Six "entirely disreputable" and crowning Richard Johnson and Paula Froelich, at separate moments, as the "Worst Person." Nor has Rupert Murdoch -- who Olbermann impersonates by affecting a snarling pirate voice -- escaped his wrath.
Murdoch was recently quoted noting that he fired Olbermann from Fox Sports several years ago, saying, "He's crazy." For her part, Froelich told Gawker that Olbermann is "as infantile as he is narcissistic."
Whichever side you're on, there's surely plenty of narcissism to go around here -- and it raises a few troubling issues for both.
Critics have long muttered about Murdoch -- more than any other mogul -- openly using his corporate assets to buttress each other and lash out at his foes. Even if it's not an orchestrated campaign -- as opposed to like-minded foot soldiers simply knowing what the boss wants -- the collaboration by Fox News and the Post in this particular endeavor has a bilious odor and doesn't provide much comfort to nervous journalists seeking reassurance that Murdoch won't lead his newest toy, the Wall Street Journal, stumbling down a similar credibility-sapping path.
NBC News, meanwhile, risks allowing its talk-driven personalities -- the mother's milk of cable, where loud and inexpensive is the formula -- to eclipse what little solid journalism the news division still generates. And while it was initially amusing watching Olbermann playfully try to nudge O'Reilly off the deep end, there's a significant difference between that and self-indulgently using his forum as a pulpit to bash enemies, which actually makes him more like his Fox counterpart than he would care to admit.
To borrow a phrase from his sports days, there really is such a thing as too "inside baseball."
Tellingly, Gelbart's movie incorporates a fictional blue-collar family who continue vegetating in front of the TV even as their lives become collateral damage in the moguls' war.
One is tempted to say "Grow up" and leave it at that, but the combatants should be cautious against becoming too embroiled in this private skirmish. Because whatever blows they land, both might look up between rounds to find that while the other guy is bloodied, the bored spectators have finally opted to do their vegetating elsewhere.
why’s bor have to take oberpuke out?
he’s going to implode on his own.
O’Reilly recently attacked the Peabody awards...when he used to tout his own Peabody Awards...
Olbermann, whose show I’ve never watched all the way through, his normal pound for pound vitriol is enough to leave any sensible person to click over to the Food Channel ASAP.
These two, Olbermann with his 400,000, and O’Really with his 2 million are two egomainiacs who deserve no contemplation.
Plus Billy Boy attacked Freerepublic, who is left to speak in his defense other then his own bloviating self...
Is Olberman that gay guy that was once on ESPN?
This article reads like Mr. Lowry is Olberdork’s gay lover. Geesh, talk about slanted.
Nevertheless, O’Reilly vs Olberdork is like Chuck Norris vs a punching bag. One has won his time slot 90 months in a row. The other is a blithering imbecile preaching to his minuscule choir of mutoids.
Oh, please! The left just doesn't like having their monopoly on the news biz broken up. Olbermann is the only fool in this whole thing, shooting off his mouth like he is. O'Reilly has a right to defend himself from this nonsense.
I will repeat that again.
what little solid journalism the news division still generates.
VARIETY speaking some truth.
Boob O’Reilly used to have a gazillion supporters here on FR.
That is, until his hit piece on FR and ambush of Kristinn. I learned then that I could not trust O’Really. FR has been a bastion of conservative thought and political action for over a decade, even influencing the 2000 and 2004 elections, as well as the 1998 impeachment of the Sink Emperor, and when O’Reilly slimed us and made us the moral equivalent of the Daily Kos (ptui!) that was the last straw.
It’s all about Bill. Not about the little people. The folks. The children. It’s all about Bill. And Bill is intellectually vapid.
People like Laura Ingraham run mental rings around O’Really.
I can barely watch him any longer. He has become a legend in his own mind.
Olbermann on the other hand, is not worth the electrons to write about on FR. Somewhere there is a strait jacket with his name embroidered on it.
For a big bully, O’reilly is pretty thin-skinned. Doesn’t he know these people do this so he’ll keep mentioning them? Laura Ingraham said it best when O’Reilly was asking her about a Professor nobody had heard of who was in the news for saying something dumb and topping it off by insulting O’Reilly...Laura said, He’s a nobody..he’s an ant, just flick him aside..he’s not worth your time.” I wish he would listen to her.
Olbermann is “as infantile as he is narcissistic.”.....
In addition to being an all around the mulberry bush asshole!...
O’Reilly would be more tolerable if he could rein in his psychoses a little.
What these guys should be doing is not take the feud so personally and use it to drive up ratings for both of them. But they’re both too neurotic to see that.
They are both also rans.
olberman is constantly attacking fox news and oreilly. He spends alot of time talking about other networks, but mostly fox. I also noticed other msnbc shows spend time attacking other shows on other networks instead of spending all of their time developing their own show. Another guy that does it, is that lawyer guy dan abrams. It’s a really strange way they run their programming. olberman is constantly with the angry rants that sounds like he’s been practicing reading it over and over but still needs a teleprompter. He also thinks he’s amusing, but he’s not.
Hey BOR, got a loofa I could borrow?
Not too much bias in this "article," is there?
I think KO is actually that Lesco guy and he might have some free money for us all
Comment:
Agreed, why should any FReeper have sympathy for a guy or in this case guys who tried to bring us down to the cesspool level of the liberal blogs.
In this case I choose to let Bill O;really fight his own battles against an obviously mental midget in Dolberman.
BOR just sucks a little less.
He lost me when he said the Swift Boat Vets had no right to be heard. And that was long before the hit piece and ambush on Kristinn.
He also supported the Bush/Kennedy/McCain amnesty for ILLEGALS bill.
Ehh, Billy Boy put himself against us based on serious utter rubbish.
If Billy Lad wishes to duke it out with Olbermann, well, he’s a grown lad...he can manage it his own self..
Have you noticed that when he has some good looking babe on his show how he fawns over the ladies.
I think he might just be a frustrated old fart thinking hes still got lots of vim and vinegar while all the babes are looking for nothing more in a man, MONEY....
Frankly, they’re both load mouthed clowns.
My, how original and mature. This guy must be a genius. What's next, "big fat liar award"?
The enemy of my enemy is my friend—**** o’pinhead!
Good point about being against the Swiftboat Vets.I had forgotten about that.
A point of view he shared with President Bush, Karl Rove and John McCain. Thanks to the Swifties, President Bush got four more years in the White House, not Karl Rove.
Both of ‘em are jerks, but this pro-Olbermann puff piece is so obviously slanted in his favor that, if you had not watched both of them, you’d think that Olbermann was pretty much in control of his intellect.
I reality O’Reilly has presence in his demeanor while Olbermann more or less reminds me of the kid in high school that was always getting beat up in the locker room and never learned to just shut his obnoxious mouth.
Don’t really care for either of them. Were it not for guests I wouldn’t tune in BO. At least Bill usually has guests representing both sides. Keith however always seems to invite only those who agree with him. I find I’m flipping often to CNN now and CNN headline news. Compared to some of the Fox and MSNBC shows I’m finding as much balance from them.
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