His critics (and even some of his friends) had always imagined a Howard Beale ending for Keith Olbermann, and in his MSNBC farewell Olbermann more or less obliged. In what may have been a slight case of projection, Olbermann said that it was every broadcaster’s fantasy, upon learning that the jig was up, to emulate Peter Finch’s Mad Prophet from the 1976 satire “Network”: “You go off on an existential, otherworldly, verbal journey of unutterable profundity and vision,” Olbermann intoned. “You damn the impediments and you insist upon the insurrections…”
Well, if you’re Keith Olbermann, you do. There was always a channelling-Howard Beale quality to Olbermann’s signature “Special Comment” segments, tightly scripted verbal assaults performed as stream-of-consciousness erudition, and one suspected that Olbermann perceived the crazed Beale less as a cautionary figure than as a role model.
Olbermann’s sudden departure from his “Countdown” broadcast was not explained, leading to speculations as to its cause, the most common of which was that NBC’s prospective new owner, Comcast, wanted him gone. (Comcast has denied this.) The truth was probably hinted at by Olbermann himself Friday night, when he said that “there were many occasions, particularly in the last two and a half years, when all that surrounded the show, but never the show itself, was just too much for me.” In other words, trouble at the office. As I recounted in a Profile of Olbermann in 2008, the one constant in Olbermann’s broadcasting career has been his ability to exasperate the boss; he is a true original, who brought to the job rare talent and a singular disagreeability, in nearly equal measure. In time, the disagreeability has always tipped the scale. When Olbermann was briefly suspended last fall for violating NBC’s rules barring its journalists from making campaign contributions, network executives let it be known that they were already happily imagining a future without Olbermann. They had his replacement, Larry O’Donnell, already in place, and O’Donnell now has the gig.
As for Olbermann’s future, there was a good deal of speculation about that, too. Some supposed that he would be recruited by CNN, which could certainly use the audience infusion he would bring, and it even has been suggested that he may go to Fox News (an end-of-times signal if ever there was one). It also has been reported that Olbermann would use his $14 million MSNBC payout to start his own media venture. Given his history of driving his bosses crazy, the prospect of Olbermann working for himself is by far the most intriguing possibility.
Illustration: Richard Thompson
