After reading Lloyd Grove's item on Keith Olbermann's emails about his colleagues including Rita Cosby--specifically, that she's dumber than a suitcase of rocks--I'm convinced that Olbermann does only one thing well: targeted, premeditated trash-talk. He starts going off on others in the biz for the resulting PR, and it works. His ratings suck, people hate him, he comes across as a complete weirdo--but when he starts talking smack on someone else, then suddenly he appropriates some of that person's mojo. And Olbermann is mojo-challenged like nobody's business, shall we say. Olbermann owes most of his fame/notoriety to Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly for exactly this reason. O'Reilly has talent, ratings and mojo through the roof. Olby thinks that if he gets "O'Reilly" and "Olbermann" in the same sentence enough times, eventually some of O'Reilly's success will rub off on him by proxy.
Therapists call people like this "energy vampires." In Olbermann's case, he's a professional energy vampire. I'm also convinced that this months-old email that was mysteriously, suddenly turned over to Grove this week by the recipient was written exactly for this reason--to start little media-friendly gang warfare between Olbermann and Cosby--and unlike O'Reilly, Cosby can't hit back that hard. So now, in addition to being a jerk, he's a jerk who picks on women in his office. And no matter how you feel about Rita Cosby's talent or lack thereof, that's not cool. I hope she steps on his foot by accident next time they're in an elevator together.
