Rx for Pundits: More Groucho and Less Mrs. Teasdale, Please!

Al, I'm glad you mentioned seeing Keith laugh during the correspondents dinner. I heard a few days later that he had become somewhat self-rightous about some of Wanda's jokes and I thought "but you were laughing the whole time!"

I'm not quite sure what has gotten into Mr. Olbermann but I have given up on his show as well as Ms. Maddow's. Now, I only watch Linktv and democracy now. I don't always agree with Amy Goodman, but at least I'm not going to see alot of the gasbaggery that I've been seeing on other cable shows.

Keep up the good work Mr. Giordano. I swear if it weren't for you I'd have nothing intelligent to read.

I'm glad you are calling him out on this one.

It's interesting - when I saw KO's diary on this at Daily Kos, I was scratching my head thinking - I don't really get what the fuss is about.  I guess I wasn't the only one...

And dannie, I had also mostly given up on both Olbermann and Maddow, but recently I've started watching Maddow again - she's an exceptionally well-informed and thoughtful interviewer, and has had quite a few interesting and significant guests in recent days.  (Though I usually turn her off after the interview segment.)

Yes, Keith really does get full of himself a lot; but I haven't given up my Keith addiction quite yet.

I definitely agree last night was way over the top; maybe he's still in mourning; but Keith, it's not all about YOU!

I still have my Rachel addiction, too...I love it when she "ups" someone who doesn't know she's a Rhodes Scholar and PhD!

I just wish she'd tell Secretary Clifford Alexander--who does a great job trying to get "Don't Ask/Don't Tell" retracted--that it's sexual "orientation", not sexual "preference"!  There a BIG difference.

waterprise2 AKA Pam

Liberal with a Capital L!

... by grieving over his mother's death.  Grief can get pretty intense.  It may not be much more complicated than that.

I love Keith Olbermann, but he definitely has his moments where HE becomes the story, and his self-importance can get tiresome.  Still, he's worth sticking with most of the time.

But that's why I love Rachel Maddow even more.  She gets the same job done, with less of the bluster and harrumphing.

C'mon Al, cut the grieving big guy some slack.  When your life has been washed over by a tsunami of grief, yes, the departed one is always on your mind.  It doesn't matter that his mother's name was not dragged into it first, everything is seen through that prism of loss.  I remember Keith enjoying the Ben Affleck moments on his show, so there is not a complete lack of self-deprecation on his part.  To me it was heart-rending watching him go through his grief publicly like this and lashing out at "liberal" friends like Wonkette.   It's not like you to kick a guy when he's down like this.  Let's help him get his bearings back instead....then kick him good.

I'm cutting Keith some slack over this contretemps, and Wonkette as well.  Some POS hacksite called Cityfile was the one who couldn't be bothered to wait for a response from Keith and/or MSNBC before running their story.

Deserving of five minutes of cable news airtime?  Hell no.

If he returns to the story tonight, however, I may throw something at my TeeVee.

Olbermann has a pretty big ego and he can certainly go over the top sometimes.  Speaking of which:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4llHNTMZjE

He could have been consoled by the many dozens of Gawker and Wonkette readers who said to Ken Layne and company what some of the commenters here have said: cut the guy some slack, his mom got sick suddenly and died two weeks later.  Nobody handles that well, and the fact that he gets the opportunity to go on TV in front of a camera and say pretty much anything he wants to say he gave Wonkette and company the full blast of his momentary lapse of reason.  It's unfortunate that his contract with MSNBC doesn't give the company doctor the ability to pull him off the air when he isn't thinking straight.  He could have read the many messages of compassion by the usually jocular Gawker Media crowd and know that they still love him and they understand his pain and anguish, but mostly his pain.  I am sure he'll live to regret putting that segment on the air for some time to come, and it behooves us, I think, not to rub it in too hard.

... this was a good essay.  KO is OK, but you will take away my Wonkette only when you can extract my funny bone from my cold, dead body.

I'm not sure what it is you think KO needs a "sense of humor" about. I didn't find anything funny in the Wonkette piece to begin with.  It broadcast "speculation" (i.e., made-up stuff) about KO's absence, and when corrected by MSNBC, kept the story going with another piece, which you quote above.  Still waiting to see The Funny.  Agreed KO takes himself too seriously at times.  But the Wonkette piece hit a raw nerve for him then put a little more salt in just for good measure.  Why?

WHackwhacker - The thing about humor is that one man's chocolate is another man's vanilla. What's unfunny to you may be funny to others. That's why it's always a bad idea to try and put on a badge and play Humor Cop.

In Wonkette's coverage of the dust-up, it said:

Now, go look at yourself in the bathroom mirror and repeat after Wonkette: “If I didn’t watch cable news, I wouldn’t know who the fuck these people even were …. If I didn’t watch cable news, I wouldn’t know who the fuck these people even were ….. If I didn’t watch cable news, I wouldn’t know who the fuck these people even were.”

You might not think that funny. I laughed out loud. Cable hosts - right and left - are often pompous and self-important. That makes it fun to make fun of them. They invite it. A smart one would admit it self-referentially and make some fun of himself, too, about it. They try to be oh-so-serious that they've inadvertently provoked a new art form: that of Stephen Colbert. Of course, there are people who don't think Colbert's funny either, poor things.

Al - I'm not trying to humor police the Internet tubes.  I just think this is one instance where Wonkette wasn't amusing in its initial offering or subsequent pieces.  IMHO. I agree to disagree with you on that.  However, I'm in agreement with commenters Louise, SoCalMama, acujimmy et al, that a little awareness of the context of Olbermann's mother's recent passing should've maybe caused these sites to pull in their barbs for once.  Thanks for letting me comment.  I enjoy your work (subjectively speaking!).

Sheesh, talk about touchy and thin-skinned. Always with a bee in his bonnet.  I mean, what's the big deal? What did the internetz do to him this time - run over his dog? Stole his lawnmower? Crap all over his grief over his dead mother?

...wait, what?

Wow. That's... wow.

You guys are all dicks.

Olbermann can be a sanctimonious little prick sometimes, but he's in the right here.  Bad enough having a false story promoted uncritically, but making a witless and cruel remark about his response to his mother's death is rather callous.

What sucked was Keith insinuating that anyone was gossiping about his mother's death at Wonkette. They didn't write anything about Keith's mother at Wonkette. They linked to a squib about Keith's ego. Then they printed his denial of the substance of their link and, as is their wont, poked his absurdly huge ego for calling an internet link "beneath contempt" (psst, Keith, they probably don't have the staff to check out every link they post to some silly gossip, it being, you know, gossip). Keith is the only person who brought up his mom. Which may be because she's understandably dominating his thoughts, but still shouldn't be confused with any actual attack on her by Wonkette.

When a nightly commentator begins to miss shows, it's news.  Where were the NBC flacks?  They dropped the ball on this, and Olbermann graciously tried to cover their glutes by dumping on Wonkette, which he probably knows is perfectly able to defend itself.  People who feed at the public trough have to know that their lives have become transparent, and court decisions have consistently ruled in favor of the public's right to know about their personal lives.  The NBC p.r. machine is to blame for this dustup, not Wonkette or Keith, who no doubt is a bit short in the levity after losing his mom.

The next funny joke that appears on Wonkette will be its first. Talk about humorless and self-important. Plus, since when should we celebrate someone posting "uninformed speculation"? Sure, they have every right to print whatever drivel they want, but that doesn't mean we have to praise them for it.

For those who have suggested that any humor or parody of a cable TV host is off limits after his mom passes away: For how long does that moratorium last? Two weeks? One Month? Six weeks? Two months? Forever?

Sorry, but Emily Post never offered guidance on that one.

My view: If someone is in public life, he's in public life. He's entered the vortex. It's not as if having a parent die is such a unique experience. It happens to almost everyone. It is part of life. And the great thing about being a national TV host is that, unlike most folks, one can afford to take as much time off as one needs at those moments. Most workplaces don't give any days off for a death in the family. That's the reality for most Americans. Most have to buck-up and get on with life fairly quickly.

"For those who have suggested that any humor or parody of a cable TV host is off limits after his mom passes away"

Al, no one suggested that.  That's a parody of the comments above about KO and grief.  Don't be disingenuous.

The decent thing is not to poke people with sharp sticks after something like that happens to them (especially with little warning).  Just because KO is well-off and famous doesn't negate that basic principle.  I bet Obama would agree on this point, too, so nyaaah!  ;-)

wonkette is a humorous gossip site; what gossip site <em>doesn't</em> traffic in "uninformed speculation?"

wonkette never made this about his deceased mother; they don't tend to concern themselves with what's happening in the personal lives of the people they crack jokes about, they'd never write anything if they did. keith is no different than any of the other public figures they mock, and his reaction to them is exactly the kind of self important silliness they rag on; they're not mocking his grief, just the ego he once again exhibited.

Cityfile didn't make this about Keith's mother either.  He did. Read the article again. No mention of his mother there at all.