Any number of news outlets have reported the news that Keith Olbermann has been suspended indefinitely from his job as anchor of MSNBC's Countdown for donating to political campaigns in violation of NBC News rules. No need to rehash the details here, except to note that at least one report (not the Times', to which I linked) said first-choice substitute Chris Hayes didn't host because the network found he, too, had contributed to candidates against network rules; Hayes explicitly rebutted that assumption.
Olbermann's defenders say the network has been looking for any excuse to muzzle him; his critics claim he arrogantly presumed he was above network rules and journalistic best practices. They're probably both right.
Thus far, Olbermann hasn't commented. I expect he's wondering how to spin this, because it seems incontrovertible that he knowingly violated network rules. He also blatantly ignored what should be common sense for anybody in journalism: you can't pretend to be an objective interviewer -- that is, a proxy for the audience -- if you're on record supporting (or opposing) your subject. At the very least, you have to disclose your support so your audience can judge for itself whether you have an irreconcilable conflict of interest.
If Comcast is looking to ditch him as part of its takeover of NBC, I doubt it will find a better excuse.
For my part, and a little to my own surprise, I don't think I'll be too unhappy if he doesn't come back.
I was a fan of Countdown and Olbermann during the George W. Bush administration. In fact, it wouldn't be saying too much to admit that Countdown was a lifeline in that dark era, regularly reminding me that sane people existed. His segments had a distinctly anti-Bush tone, but it was a natural reaction to the extraordinary deference shown by virtually all of the rest of the mainstream media. Yes, Olbermann said, it was crazy to invade Iraq, because the damned attackers of 11 September 2001 came from freaking Saudi Arabia, financed by al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and had nothing whatsoever to do with Iraq. No, you weren't deluded for thinking that tax cuts during a major military operation (couldn't legally call it a war) were themselves bonkers and totally contrary to common sense. Yes, staffing the government with lackeys who didn't believe that government should work did doom its efforts to failure: see the Iraq occupation, see FEMA in Katrina's wake, see the Interior Department's abdication of oversight responsibilities that led to the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010; etc., etc., etc.
Olbermann also took his shots, mostly deserved, at Republican lawmakers in Congress, both for their enabling of Bush's misguided policies and their hypocrisy: they prated about fiscal responsibility but oversaw, indeed facilitated, an unprecedented increase in the national debt; they bloviated incessantly about limiting government oversight of corporations but enacted the most intrusive monitoring of private communications in the nation's history; they claimed Christian family values but routinely engaged in activities that horribly offended their socially conservative supporters, like gay sex or extramarital affairs.
After Obama's election, Olbermann would have occasion to take the new administration to task as well, mostly for not fulfilling its promises swiftly enough or for lacking the courage to take principled stands against unreasonable Republican intransigence. However, he also continued his attacks against Republicans generally -- and it was in these attacks that he started to lose me.
Not that Republican intransigence wasn't and isn't infuriating: it was and is. But Olbermann's rhetoric became less well-grounded over time; he more frequently descended to ad hominem attacks than he had during the Bush administration. Even then, such attacks were unworthy of him, but they didn't outweigh the factual information he presented. During 2009, though, his attacks on Republican lawmakers started to lose their moral force because he started to take cheap shots. Instead of being a vigorous gadfly against stupidity, dishonesty and corruption in government -- as his newscast during Bush's administration suggested he might be -- he was often as shrilly and sometimes embarrassingly partisan as his critics said he always had been.
I have loyally continued to download the Countdown podcast, but I haven't watched it since February 2010. To an extent this reflects my diminished interest in the news generally, but a bigger reason is that I just don't find his ranting quite so informative these days.
That I say "ranting" rather than "orating" or simply "reporting" points to what I think went wrong. He started to love the sound of his own voice too much, especially the notes it reached during his "Special Comments."
The Special Comments at first were truly special. Infrequent, prompted by exceptionally egregious governmental misconduct, they let Olbermann unleash his formidable gift for invective on such deserving targets as Donald Rumsfeld. Olbermann would pile on fact after damning fact, rhetorically asking the miscreant, "When is enough, enough?" Jeremiads, yes, but richly deserved because the targets were otherwise unchallenged by the media.
As the Special Comments gained Olbermann greater notoriety, they started to appear more often. That, I aver, was a mistake. Whether he decided there was more to rail against, or just wanted to lash out more often because it felt good, the comments became less special. More troublingly, they also started to be less justified. It was hard not to think he was yelling for the sake of yelling rather than bringing a righteous fury to bear on a well-chosen victim.
As for the non-commentary segments, I can only say it became obvious Olbermann was not illuminating the topics nearly as well as he had when he was, for lack of a better term, an opposition figure. He was no longer countering official (and highly misleading) propaganda by bringing to light contradicting facts. Instead, he spent his time asking his correspondents straw-man questions intended to embarrass Republicans. That Republicans have been obstructionist and deceptive during the Obama administration is clear; however, it isn't the whole story. The Obama administration has its own inadequacies to explain, and even its most fervent supporters would benefit from hearing well-reasoned critiques of its goals and the means by which it has sought them. Countdown, though it excoriated the administration for retreating from more progressive stances during the health-care debate last year, otherwise has not routinely traded in enlightening criticism of the administration's actions.
I wanted Olbermann to be as effective, if not as angry, an observer and critic of Obama as he was of Bush. I wanted Olbermann to channel his formidable intellect into constructive and illuminating avenues. Perhaps that was never in the cards. Maybe, having let his inner attack dog run loose for several years, he doesn't know how to rein it in again. Whatever is going on in his head, he stopped being a trustworthy voice months ago. It's too bad.
UPDATE: Per the AP via HitFix, Olbermann will be back on the air Tuesday.
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