MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, seen here one finger off his usual attitude toward the world, tells the San Bernardino County Sun that while he wrings his hands over attacking Bill O'Reilly unceasingly, it's still "just a big pile of candy" in front of his door day after day that he can't resist, and that MSNBC management is desperate for Olbermann's attacks to continue. And according to Olbermann, there's nothing fair and balanced to showing both sides of the story, and in fact it makes him sick:
Olbermann says he realizes he must approach the [O'Reilly] feud carefully: "These things produce a ratings spike ... and management will say, 'Keep doing it.' But you want to leave it alone for a while. ... If nothing happened this week, there's nothing to hang it on. Where's the news in it? Viewers will go, 'What the hell is this?'"
Besides, the anchor eschews the sort of grandstanding, partisan bickering that most TV news embraces. "Countdown" offers perspective on the serious stories it covers, yet pointedly avoids featuring two ideologically opposed talking heads screaming at one another.
"I was traumatized in my last show (for MSNBC, in the late '90s, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal) from too much of that," he admits. "Part of my deal with the network is that I don't have to have debates. The idea that 'balance' is always fair is absolutely false. If I say there's an 800-pound elephant or 800-pound donkey, depending on your politics ñ in the room, and someone else says, 'No, there isn't,' one person can be right and one can be objectively wrong. Having both sides politically debating a point adds nothing to the political discourse; plus, it makes me queasy."
