Tucker Carlson has plenty to say about MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and The Daily Caller’s purchase of KeithOlbermann.com, which Carlson says evolved over the past six months and calls “amusing as hell.”
After detailing to Mediaite, amid much sinister laughter, how he plans to offer @keitholbermann.com email addresses, Carlson calls Olbermann “a sad guy” and says the host is “despised at MSNBC.”
“A lot of people there really do hate Keith Olbermann because he’s cruel to people who work for him,” he said. “I want to be totally clear, I don’t have any malice toward Olbermann, I feel sorry for him…He’s a tormented soul.”
In response to the comments and Carlson’s excited publicizing of his new buy, Olbermann tells TVNewser, “Tucker’s 15 minutes of borrowing my ‘fame’ ended last night.”
Aside from that and a few tweets, Olbermann has not said much about the remarks or about the Caller’s new ownership of the domain name. Carlson (surprisingly?) wasn’t among last evening’s WPITW. One reason could be that Olbermann is considering future legal action. NYMag’s Daily Intel spoke with attorney Enrico Schaefer who specializes in “cybersquatting and domain-name disputes.”
Schaefer says [Olbermann] has three options of varying intensity. On the lower end of the spectrum, he can send the Daily Caller a cease-and-desist letter, giving it five days to hand over control of the website and possibly pay him damages. The middle ground would be forcing it into binding arbitration, which the Daily Caller would have to comply with under the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy, which applies to anyone in the world who registers a domain name. Or he could sue the Daily Caller in federal court under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. “I think the Daily Caller would likely lose this across the board,” Schaefer predicts.
Carlson claims Olbermann is “attempting to quash political speech, and we’re going to defend ourselves vigorously on first amendment grounds.”
Carlson also addressed the decision by his old-old network CNN (MSNBC being his less-old network) to put an Eliot Spitzer/Kathleen Parker debate program in primetime. “I’m glad to see debate make a comeback,” he said, though he also remarked, “It’s amazing that [CNN U.S. President] Jon Klein still has a job.”
Meanwhile, WebNewser reports Salon.com has announced its own domain-name acquisition: TuckerCarlson.net.