Pajiba

On a more serious note, I think perhaps you mean that he connected well with the liberal side. His style held no attraction for me whatsoever, and I have yet to find a conservative, or really non-completely-liberal, person who would disagree. As much as his comments give a liberal a soothing feeling that they are communing with a very intelligent person who shares their common sense view of the world which sees how crazy the other side is, they're not really designed to broaden the minds of people who disagree with him and bring them into the fold; they're designed to make them look stupid. In that sense he really is no different from Limbaugh or O'Reilly, except in the sense that he delivered his views with a furrowed brow and a thesaurus instead of a smirk or whatever O'Reilly does. Whatever the validity of his viewpoints, and whether this was conscious or not, his delivery was not made to broaden the dialogue.

I'd really welcome an opportunity to discuss this rationally and look at the pros and cons of a top ratings person departing and what he might do next and if this really is self-engineered or a force-out because he had gone too far, but since the trolls have already chimed in to drag the thread down (not you Eep, baisez), I'm not going to bother.

In my opinion, Olbermann's Prop 8 statement was his opus magnum.

The "liberal media" is not going anywhere. It seems the interests attached to journalism - i.e., the reasons that people would be motivated to study it in the first place - are naturally tied to the liberal bent more than fifty percent of the time. Perhaps that trend has been shifting as of late, though.

What liberal media?

I'm sorry, but the ABC, CBS and NBC nightly news are not nearly as skewed-liberal as the reportedly "fair and balanced" Fox News is skewed-conservative.

That said, the former are not 24-hour news stations, whereas Fox News is, and the straightforward hard-news segments on Fox News (i.e. NOT Reilly or Hannity or Sir Cries A Lot) are not nearly as psycho conservative as the ostensibly op-ed but delivered as though they were hard-fact-news shows (i.e. Reilly or Hannity or Sir Cries A Lot) are.

Who?

On a slightly irrelevant note, for those who saw Olbermann's last episode, the Social Security commercial he featured? That was my mom! How freaking cool is that?!

Anyway. Please resume political nards-kicking; I apologize for the interruption.

@Eep

What would be the point? Conservatives by definition don't want change. I think the the part you're missing is that unlike Limbaugh, Hannity, etc, the liberals I listen to are willing to back up their opinion with fact. They do not hide behind "I'm an entertainer, not a journalist". They cite the sources they use, and allow those willing to do the research to verify, or disprove, what they've said.

Isn't this more about Olbermann being a royal a-hole to deal with, not his politics? Everywhere he has worked people hated being around him.

I managed to live 52 years without even knowing who this man was until last year... same with Glenn Beck. I find it odd that "editorials" seems to have taken over the nightly news (which I also don't watch) when they were, at the most, a five minute segment on the local news when I was growing up. How did this come to pass? Has the average American stopped thinking and we depend on these people to spoon feed us opinions?

"I think the point of this article is more "who will be the next figure head for "liberal" media?", not "oh noes we need more liberal media?!111"

The fact that Olbermann might have been considered the figure head of any media speaks volumes.

benjiep got it right. The man thought he was better than everyone else, including the people who worked hard every single day to put together his show. He was not forced out from MSNBC, that's for sure - his show was a ratings draw. He was, however, a diva and felt like MSNBC was not a hundred percent behind him and so this is his version of a hissy fit. Please, he'll be fine, both money- and job-wise.

Though I'm probably as liberal as Olbermann, he's always rubbed me the wrong way because of his pompousness and self-righteous-ness. Just because he and I have common political interests does not mean he wasn't a total dickhead, on screen and off.

Christian Toto, I liked it better when your name was Bernie Goldberg, you crazy old geezer.

Though I agree with DarthCorleone that people attracted to journalism tend to be liberal because the very fundamentals of journalism seem to point people to the left, at the end of the day, for these news networks (especially the 24-hour ones) it's about the story that sells. At an individual level, the reporter or the team working on the story want to find the truth (whether if it points to the left or the right). But on a network level, they want the truth to be dirty and gory. If it bleeds, it leads.

I also think it's a big problem that when I talk about this, I'm using words like liberal or conservative to describe a story. It shouldn't be like that. A story doesn't have to be labeled with political sides to be interesting, and it's sickening to me that TV news feels the need for stringent dichotomy for ratings. Fucking TV news. We think print is dying? At least it's doing it with a lot more dignity than TV news, which is just whoring itself out at this point.

OLBO
HuffPo
Coco

...

Fuck you.

First thing, Generous Conservative, that is freakin' awesome, if I'm reading you correctly. If you're serious, then I'm truly scared.

Second, like Some Girl, I can't stand KO. He comes across as a smug, pretentious, pompous douchebag, even though I probably agree with him 75% of the time. The stories of him being a total asshole to everyone with whom he has worked are far too numerous and varied to be mere coincidence or sour grapes. I'm sure there are other infotainers I enjoy who are assholes as well, but I suppose they do a better job masking it while on the air. Ignorance is bliss, right? Good riddance, I say. Harrumph!

@jayco- they all use facts to spice up their opinions, posturing, etc. If you listen to a broadcast from any talking head they will throw tons of facts at you. The trick they all use is to only use facts that support their position, often beyond the point of simply not telling the whole story and veering well into deliberately misleading. That's the danger of the passion that makes them visible and attractive to the people that agree with them on principle.

As for conservatives being against change, that was true at the point where we started calling people those things according to their political camp. It has little to do with the current situation. In fact until the neocons took over, the Republican party would have been much more like the "classical liberal." It's all semantics though. Suffice it to say that neither group is particularly happy with the way things are and would like lots of things to change.

@admin- it's probably because my people come from Minnesota and I like hockey. Seriously though, while I don't think that agreement is necessary or necessarily healthy, I do think that when intelligent people think about things dispassionately and honestly, they end up having more in common than they expect. I can't believe how many socialist friends I have who love Ayn Rand. I'm still not sure I understand their explanations, but there it is.

they all use facts to spice up their opinions, posturing, etc.

"Phfft! Facts. You can use them to prove anything."
-- Homer Simpson

Depending on yourself to make the decisions can really be upsetting and frustrating. Many of us develop this ability over the course of our life. It doesn't really just happen if you know what I mean.

Maintain 'em coming... you all do such a great job at such Concepts... can not tell you how much I, for one particular appreciate all you do!