Keith Olbermann sure can dish it out--but it doesn't seem that he can take it. Here's a Cable Game prediction: He will blow up soon.
Why will he blow up? Because the pressures are getting to him. And what pressures are those? The pressures from "Trucegate," the pressure of being a lefty inside a corporation, G.E., that is merely liberal, and most of all, the pressures in his own head, which must be considerable--just to look at him. Ben Affleck, we will agree, nailed Olby on last fall.
A leading indicator of the Coming Olbermann Blow Up is a recent blog post from Jonathan Berr, writing for a new website, Daily Finance, from the much-revitalized AOL. Last week, Berr wrote--as just about everyone in the media biz did--about Olbermann's kowtowing to G.E.'s Jeff Immelt. But something in what Berr wrote bothered Olbermann greatly, and so he fired off an e-mail to TVNewser:
"If Jonathan Berr, whoever he is, does not like my prioritizing caring for my mother and dealing with her death, and then doing as many shows as I could, ahead of vetting the comments of our analysts and my management team, frankly, I feel sorry for him."
Now one might think that Olbermann might have better things to do than get into personality-edged fights with bloggers, but as Richard Nixon would say, "that would be wrong." In fact, Olbermann has nothing better to do than get into pissing matches with anyone and everyone. That's been his MO all his career, and, frankly, to a certain sliver of the population, that's his appeal. He is always thisclose to blowing up, to melting down--all that car-wreck stuff. If NASCAR isn't on, why not watch "Countdown"?
But in the meantime, there's a storm brewing in Olbermann's head. You can see it on the air. And so KO increasingly reminds me of Nixon, a tortured figure who wanted to be loved, even as he hated everybody. The picture above--suitably modified to present the future, as well as the past--is of Nixon at his famous "last press conference," on November 7, 1962, after he had been defeated for election as governor of California. The event is immortalized on YouTube, but here's the gist, from Wikipedia:
A tired-looking Nixon spoke with a quavering voice, delivering what was described as a "15-minute monologue." He spent most of the talk criticizing the press, his remarks interrupted only by brief interjections from reporters, though he acknowledged well into his remarks that the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 did not allow his campaign to get his message across during the final two weeks in his election bid. Nixon began his remarks stating that "now that all the members of the press are so delighted that I have lost, I'd like to make a statement of my own."] Nixon insisted that the press had attacked him since 1948 following the Alger Hiss case. He accused the press of printing articles supporting their favored candidates, stating that they should "give... the shaft" to future candidates, but should have "one lonely reporter on the campaign who will report what the candidate says now and then."
And Nixon closed with the words "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more." It's easy for me to see Keith delivering a similar monologue some day soon. Like Nixon before him, Olbermann will be simultaneously smart, bitter, caustic, and self-pitying. Olbermann likes to invoke his late mother, so did Nixon.
As with Nixon before him, Olbermann will stalk off the stage, only to plot his return. Which is what Nixon did: Just six years after that Last Press Conference, Nixon was elected president, where he gave many more memorable press conferences, where Nixon's inner demons were once again visible, until his presidency collapsed into scandal. Whereupon, of course, Nixon went off to San Clemente to plot his next comeback.
So if Olby stalks off the set of MSNBC, like Tricky Dick before him, he will make a comeback somewhere, bringing short-term success, and long-term misery, to that place, too.
