Olbermann: “I Can’t Hate” O’Reilly

When Keith Olbermann “punches upward” at Fox News, “the clever response, the cynical and brilliant response is to just ignore.” But they don’t. “They attack,” Olbermann says in a conversation with Brian Lamb on C-SPAN’s Q&A this weekend.

“Bill O’Reilly‘s agent calls the head of NBC week after week saying, you have got to get Olbermann to stop this,” Olbermann said.

So does Olbermann hate O’Reilly? No, he explains:

“Somebody asked me the other day if he was – you know, if it seemed to me that he was going to retire soon, or leave this – leave the air, and I replied (ph), “I hope not,” because he provides me with so much material. I can’t hate him. He’s so extraordinarily obvious and the antithesis of what I think broadcasters should do and what journalists should do and what people should do that he’s necessary, in some way. I would be lost without him, in some respects. But, what he does on the air, everything is a simplification. It goes back to what we were talking about earlier, about inspiring fear in people, both in terms of what the world is going to be like, and also what the rest of the media is like. And I don’t hate him. I’m entertained, to some degree, by him. I wouldn’t watch him with a gun pointed to my head because I – people watch and actually think they’re hearing the truth.”

The full interview will air this weekend on C-SPAN…