Lloyd Grove reports that absentee "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann gets a public whuppin' from Rick Kaplan:
"MSNBC staffers in the Secaucus newsroom-studio watched in horror Monday night as the volatile Kaplan publicly laced into the eccentric Olbermann after the latter eulogized lung-cancer victim Peter Jennings with a graphic rant about his own cancer scare.
"Olbermann - a former pipe and cigar smoker - is said to have looked stunned as Kaplan raced onto the set and shouted at him after he signed off.
"Olbermann had urged viewers to quit smoking and repeatedly mentioned 'spitting blood' and 'spitting globs of myself into a garbage can' while discussing his bout with a benign tumor in in his mouth.
"I'm told that Kaplan erupted angrily and at length, calling Olbermann 'out of control' and 'not to be trusted.'
"'I don't care if you don't come to work tomorrow,' Kaplan told Olbermann, according to my spies."
Jim Romanesko chooses an interesting title for a top-billed Poynter Forum post about last night's anti-tobacco, benign-tumor confession: "What about reckless driving and alcoholism?"
"A hypothetical question: Given the billions car makers and beer companies spend on TV advertising, would any TV personality use equally strong language to denounce reckless driving or alcoholism?"
