MSNBC "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann (seen here hugging it out with porn star Mary Carey) compares himself to the Howard Beale character in "Network" in an Ed Bark piece in the Dallas Morning News:
Anyone who's seen the 1976 film "Network" must also have fantasized about an optimal, end-of-the-road moment when all words fail save for these: "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"
...Olbermann says he first was described as a "Howard Beale kind of person" in 1989. "I have his speech on my iPod. Without perhaps the clinical depression, delusions, hallucinations and all that, I think there's something to that character.."
But Bark puts it all in perspective:
Olbermann...has demonstrated a bridge-burning Beale zeal since first making a national name for himself in 1992 as coanchor of ESPN's "Sports-Center." Several jobs and public falling-outs later, he seems to have found his niche on MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," which he's anchored since April 2003.
Wow, three years and counting at the same job. Olbermann, 47, professes himself content, but no more than that. After all, who knows when you'll have the rug pulled out from under you? Or in Olbermann's case, maybe he'll just pull it out from under himself.
