Let's say you host an abysmally-rated show on cable news. Let's also say that your boss hates you, and while we're talking about intense dislike, the public doesn't seem to like you or your cable network that much either. And for the sake of argument, let's also say you have a contract that prevents you from doing a live national "Adios" and walking off the set. What to do, what do to?
Aha! MSNBC "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann's got the answer: you give an interview to another network and call your boss a fat, crazy, ineffectual girly-man! Oh, and dis the brass bigtime, too. If that doesn't get you fired, nothing will! The NYDN's Lloyd Grove reports:
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann deeply distrusts the top brass at NBC and its parent company, General Electric, judging by his interview with C-SPAN's grand inquisitor, Brian Lamb. "There are people I know in the hierarchy of NBC, the company, and GE, the company, who do not like to see the current presidential administration criticized at all," he claimed, without naming names. "Moral force and money often do not mix in the slightest." When Lamb asked about MSNBC President Rick Kaplan dressing him down last August for a commentary about Peter Jennings that featured a graphic account of Olbermann spitting up blood, the "Countdown" host explained that Kaplan "is a very emotional, very high-strung, gigantic man, also a very squeamish man. … He just was squeamish about blood."
