Was KO KO'd or did he KO himself?

Keith Olbermann is a prickly personality at the best of times. He is bombastic and outspoken. He has a huge ego. He's never been able to hold onto a job in television for more than a few years, probably because of those attributes. He stuck with MSNBC and MSNBC stuck with him for about as long as he's ever stayed anywhere.

His nightly news and commentary show Countdown has been hugely popular among liberals. When he announced on camera during his show yesterday that that would be the last Countdown, it was a massive shock to his rabid fans and they reacted...rabidly. They blamed MSNBC. They blamed Comcast which is about to take over NBC. They blamed everybody except Keith. I certainly don't have any more information about how the split came about than what I've read in the newspapers and online today, but I suspect the whole thing is a bit more complicated than his most passionate fans may be willing to admit.

Let me state up front that I'm not one of his passionate fans. He lost me as a fan in 2008 during the Democratic presidential primaries when he was rude and dismissive concerning the candidacy of Hillary Clinton whom I supported. Every time her campaign was mentioned, Keith would give one of his exaggerated sighs and wonder aloud when she would be getting out of the race. On the other hand, he absolutely glowed every time he mentioned the name of Barack Obama. (Of course, since Obama was elected, he hasn't done anything right according to Keith!) I stopped watching Countdown back then because I was so offended by his behavior and I only started up again after the election. But since that time, I've had a bit of a jaundiced view of Olbermann and I take his hyperbole with a grain of salt.

It's been obvious for some time that he had lost his enthusiasm for the show. Maybe it had something to do with his father's long illness and finally his death. During that period, Olbermann was absent from his show for much of the time, often for months at a time, but NBC allowed those absences and apparently supported him through a difficult period. But since he came back full time, it has seemed to me that he just never got his groove back and he was often absent, with guest hosts filling in for him. And now, finally, the end has come and he will be able to move on to other things.

Those other things won't include being on TV for a while because, apparently, part of the settlement with NBC precludes television appearances for a unknown period of time. But it won't stop him from doing other types of media such as radio or the Internet or any type of print media. One story that I read speculated that he might be interested in starting his own media enterprise - something similar to Huffington Post. Whatever he decides to do, I'm sure his loyal fans will follow. And I probably will, too.

So what's the verdict? Did MSNBC KO their biggest star? Did Olbermann deliberately KO himself because he wanted out? Or is it that he simply couldn't help himself? Guess we'll just have to wait for the book, but when it comes, I think we would be wise to take it, too, with a grain of salt.

I cannot like Julian Assange

The liberal blogosphere and various liberal commentators (see Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann) hail Julian Assange, the Wikileaks guy, as a hero who is just doing what a good journalist would do - if there were any good journalists left. They excoriate the judicial system of Sweden for insisting that Assange must face the charges of rape that have been lodged against him by two women. The charges are all political, they cry. I doubt it.

I don't think women are generally thinking in a political way when they charge a man with rape and I see no reason to believe that Assange's accusers were. So what were the Swedish authorities to do? Ignore the complaints? Sweep it all under the rug? It's what happens in all too many countries of the world today with crimes against women and I'm very much afraid that it happens all too often in this country. But not, apparently, in Sweden.

So Keith Olbermann has been in high dudgeon all week railing and fulminating, as he is wont to do on his Countdown program, about the injustice of Assange being locked up. He's had his good buddy Michael Moore on a few times so that they can fulminate and sigh loudly together. My personal instinct, although I can't prove it, is that there is more than a little misogyny in their rantings. This, I admit, is fueled by my memory of how Olbermann treated the candidacy of Hillary Clinton in such a contemptuous and condescending manner back in 2008 when he was madly in love with Barack Obama and Obama could do no wrong. (Of course, now, to hear him tell it, Obama can do no right!)

Olbermann tweeted incessantly about the Assange case until he started getting pushback from advocates for rape victims. Then all of a sudden we hear that he is suspending his Twitter account until "the frenzy" dies down! Yep, he can dish it out but he can't take it.

Meanwhile, his partner in fulmination, Michael Moore, continues to produce heated pieces for sites like Huffington Post insisting that the rape charges are all a conspiracy run by the U.S. government to silence Wikileaks. Does he have proof of this? Not so that I can see. It's just one of those things that "everyone (i.e., all liberals) knows." Well, I'm a liberal and I don't know that at all.

Frankly, I cannot like Julian Assange. He seems a bit of a narcissistic jerk to me. (In fact, I could say the same thing of Olbermann and Moore.) As for the Wikileaks leaks, perhaps I am just dense, but I can't see that much good has been accomplished by them and perhaps relations between some countries have been damaged by them, for no good reason. There are times when leaks are an appropriate response to government actions (See the Pentagon Papers) but these Wikileakers seem to leak simply because they can. I cannot see any moral purpose being served by their actions.

The leaks, of course, are a separate issue from the rape charges, however much Assange and his rabid (mostly male) supporters seek to conflate and confuse them. Even if one supports his actions in leaking government documents and believes him to be a hero for that, one should insist that he face the charges of rape that have been lodged against him and, if they are found to be true, that justice be served on him.