MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann unleashed a 12-minute Special Comment aimed at President George W. Bush last night on Countdown, being called his, “angriest, most blistering,” yet. It closes with the line, “Mr. Bush, shut the hell up.”
But before Olbermann took to the airwaves, he took to the web — posting parts of the Special Comment on his blog at Daily Kos at 6:13pmET (more than two hours before it went out on MSNBC).
The post, in which Olbermann describes Bush as, “this knuckle-dragging president,” was met with the flurry of expected adulating comments. An example — “You are the greatest asset to American Democracy. This country cannot survive without you.”
But Olbermann himself has jumped into the discussion — posting eight comments so far in the thread.
> Update: Olbermann’s preview on Daily Kos may have contributed to the strong ratings last night for Countdown. The program tied The O’Reilly Factor for first place at 8pmET in the A25-54 demo. SVP of NBC News Phil Griffin tells TVNewser, “The trend is up. Olbermann’s ratings are getting bigger and bigger and getting closer and closer to O’Reilly.”
Olbermann’s comments, on a variety of topics, after the jump…
On Phil Donahue: “I am in something of a quandary because it is NBC’s candy store and they have been utterly supportive of me from the start here, especially when the going got tough (and every day since) – I cannot go into great detail or depth. But as comparatively high as the ratings were, they were losing money on that show long before the politics became so important.”
On the NYT military analyst story: “I think it’s pretty evident that the unexplored part of the story is that whatever the Pentagon thought it paid for, it didn’t receive very much in return. Obviously the Fox guys carried their water.”
On an ‘on background’ meeting with Paul Wolfowitz: “I was reminded as I read it of a day in 2003 when Paul Wolfowitz came to NBC to address us all ‘on background’ and I compared notes with a few colleagues afterwards. As we came down from the contact-high of exposure to a True Believer, we began to look for individual pieces of information he’d mentioned that had made his presentation so seemingly compelling. And none of us could find a damn thing.”
On the Daily Kos: “The zeal of this community in finding, and pointing flashing neon signs at, important stories is as impressive (and as valuable) as any purely-news organization.”