The Cable Gamer has believed for some time now that Keith Olbermann is unstable, and that he will prove to be more of a menace to MSNBC than to any rival news channel. Or to any conservative politician. Or for that matter, any moderate politician.
It's noteworthy that Talking Points Memo, a distinctly liberal and Democratic website, chose to highlight this absolute annihilation of Olbermann by Jon Stewart.
As Stewart says to Olbermann, "You're just kinda calling people names." Which is to say, KO is no Edward R. Murrow. He is more like Joe McCarthy, especially as KO goes after Scott Brown, the new Senator from Massachusetts, who seems like a great guy. Brown is a patriot and a family man, and yet KO rips into him, as if Brown is some sort of Nazi nut. How well are such over-the-top attacksgoing to play, anywhere outside of Berkeley? Or the Democratic National Committee headquarters?
That's a Herblock cartoon of McCarthy, above, in McCarthy's horrible prime, back in the early 50s. Fortunately, McCarthy didn't last long. And that will be true, too, for Olbermann. Comcast, a publicly traded corporation, extremely conscious of politics and political context, is not going to keep a madman on the air.
