The Baltimore Sun's gutsy David Zurawik, writing about Keith Olbermann of MSNBC:
What a reckless TV figure Keith Olbermann is -- and how irresponsible MSNBC and NBC News management are for giving him a national platform and the network's credibility to spread his innuendo, invective and smears. Olbermann tries to talk like he's Edward R. Murrow, but he operates in the dirty tradition of Joe McCarthy.
Zurawik laces into Glenn Beck, as well, but nobody thinks that Beck runs Fox. As Donny Deutsch has been only the latest to discover, Olbermann runs MSNBC.
And that's a scary thought. Because Joe McCarthy, who died in 1957, might be unfamiliar to many Americans, but he was one of the most vile figures in post-war American history. And as Zurawik declares, Olbermann is completely within the McCarthyite tradition of hysterical fear-mongering. That McCarthy was also wildly self-destructive--dead at 48--is only small comfort, in light of the damage he did during his brief life.
