O’Reilly has been beaten up worse than that, though, by Olbermann. Olbermann once brought up O’Reilly’s private settlement with a woman Fox producer who charged O’Reilly wanted her to carry on telephone conversations of a lurid nature with him. O’Reilly reportedly settled that suit rather than face his accuser in court. In any event, Olbermann ignored O’Reilly’s stated wish to lay the matter to rest. What would be cause for firing an executive in any respectable law-and-order workplace prompted no such action at Fox, which wasn’t about to dump O’Reilly even if his crude conduct distressed a co-worker.
In short, by consistently attacking O’Reilly, Olbermann has gained attention and audience at O’Reilly’s expense. But any tactic can be overdone and the almost nightly assaults on O’Reilly tend to reduce their novelty.
Sparking Olbermann’s ratings gains likely is the same public loathing for Bush that drove millions of new voters to the polls in the last national election. Where else on TV can an angry Americans go to hear Bush excoriated? At the end of one recent “Special Comments,” Olbermann fairly yelled at President Bush to “shut the hell up,” a phrase he said he used, according to The New Yorker, only because he couldn’t use a vulgar version of the word “hell” on TV.
As NBC News President Steve Capus told Boyer of Olbermann’s popularity, “I think we’re onto something. That’s what we keep hearing from the audience, more and more, is that they appreciate that we have people who are actually speaking truth to power, or being transparent in their own personal viewpoints.”
Attacking the Bush regime and its favorite cable news outlet in sensational ways may define Keith Olbermann as crazy, but it apparently is growing his audience. Does this mean Olbermann is crazy like a Fox?
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Correction: in a recent column on Vincent Bugliosi’s book, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder,” this writer quoted the former Los Angeles prosecutor to the effect that any of 140+ Federal or State attorneys could press murder charges against the President. Unreported by yours truly is Bugliosi’s conviction that any (county) District Attorney can also bring murder charges against Bush. This could pump up the figure of eligible prosecutors considerably, maybe into the thousands. I regret my understatement --- but not as much as I regret the fact that not one prosecutor anywhere has taken legal action.
(Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based writer that covers politics and military topics. Reach him at [email protected]).
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