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If a hypothetical tabloid owned by, say, Richard Mellon Scaife had a cover story with scurrilous accusations about Joe Biden, do you think Chris Matthews would be waving it about on camera and Keith Olbermann citing it? Neither do I. But Matthews saw fit—not once but twice—to display the cover of Us magazine, with its story "Babies, Lies and Scandals" about Sarah Palin. Olbermann alluded to it as well. And who is the owner of Us? Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone . . . and a big-time donor to Barack Obama. How big a donor? You can view...

It's a love-in, man! Looks like the grown-ups at NBC/MSNBC have taken the kids aside and told them to kiss and make up. After the embarrassing "tension convention" [to quote Imus] at the DNC amongst Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough, we've already seen the Countdown host plucked out of the GOP convention, under the convenient excuse that he would be anchoring—back in NYC and safely removed from St. Paul—the coverage of Hurricane Gustav. When Olbermann and Matthews appeared on split-screen during the 7 PM EDT hour this evening, they were clearly on their best behavior. The dueling duo...

The MSNBC promo bills the network as "the place for politics." Looks like it's the place for rib-ticklin' comedy, too. Check out Keith Olbermann's side-splitter from the ad: KEITH OLBERMANN: This is one of those turning-point-in-history American elections. We as citizens must at some point ignore partisanship. Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that we may achieve, not that we may lead the world, but that merely, we may function. VOICEOVER: MSNBC: The place for politics. View video here.

The implosion of MSNBC's DNC coverage is ironic since the narrative being sold by the media going into the convention was whether the Democrats could achieve party unity. Since the Clintons resoundingly stifled that storyline, the question now is, will Olbermann, Matthews and Scarborough unite to save MSNBC? Jon Stewart called the infighting, "Lord of the Flies on the NBC roof!" If you've been enjoying the convention on C-SPAN or one of the other networks, this clip from The Daily Show will get you up to speed. Kudos to them, satirizing the surreal is a difficult task.

Talk about a complete LACK of professionalism! But in the case of Keith Olbermann, I'm not surprised. Last night MSDNC's Olbermann launched into an attack on an AP reporter who dared to be mildly critical of Barack Obama's speech at the Barackopolis. Guess what? It followed the same script as that posted by KOmmie KOs himself posted in KOmmieland just minutes earlier as you can see in this THREAD titled, "Fournier outsources AP anti-Obama attack." You can get up to speed on the Olbermann attack and the update about KOmmie KOs feeding him his lines at NEWSBUSTERS. We already...

How does Keith Olbermann view pre-Obama America? Apparently akin to the Soviet Union, and South Africa under apartheid. Here was his statement from the top of tonight's DNC coverage. CHRIS MATTHEWS: It is an iconic night in history: we'll all remember this night as long as we live. This is the night that the first Western government, the first Western political power, or party, has nominated an African-American, someone of African heritage, to lead the country. It's something that took a long time to happen, almost like an old Polaroid film developing. But here it is. It happened officially last...

Very few Republicans have made it onto MSNBC air during the networks' Dem convention coverage, but even that is apparently too much for Keith Olbermann. As Chris Matthews was interviewing GOP consultant Mike Murphy in the interlude between Bill Clinton and Joe Biden tonight, Olbermann could be heard off-camera angrily demanding "let's wrap him up, alright?" It was Murphy's surmise that, in the privacy of the polling booth, Bill and Hilary would pull the lever for McCain that seemed to set Olbermann off prompt him to call for the hook. View video here.

Another chapter in the ongoing Matthews-Olbermann feud, or simply Chris's frustration with a technical glitch? Yesterday, a catfight broke out between the two when Olbermann suggested Matthews had stolen an idea from two female pundits, and later made a hand gesture mocking Matthews gabbing [YouTube here, h/t Undercover Black Man]. Were the warring duo at it again this evening? You be the judge. Click on the image to the right to view the video. Again co-anchoring the MSNBC desk with Olbermann tonight, Matthews was just about to throw it to Luke Russert out on the convention floor. The son of...

It appears that Keith Olbermann might be vying for the title of Most Annoying Anchor On Television. First we had Olbermann dissing Joe Scarborough during a live broadcast on Monday from the Democrat convention. Then a day later, Olbermann managed to enrage Chris Matthews during another broadcast. And now it looks like Olbermann is going for broke in the insult department by pushing to have Tom Brokaw banned from appearing on MSNBC as reported in Page Six of today's New York Post: At a forum on Sunday, when Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell called MSNBC "the official network of the Obama...

In her black-rimmed glasses, black T-shirt, jeans and orange sneakers, green iPod wires dangling from her ears, Rachel Maddow cuts an unassuming figure at odds with her growing celebrity. "I know I don't look like everybody else on television," MSNBC's newest host says at a Mexican restaurant here. "I'm not that pretty. Women on television are over-the-top, beauty-pageant gorgeous. That's not the grounds on which I am competing. There's a basic threshold you have to cross: not looking like you're insulting. You ought to wear makeup, comb your hair." And if she tried for a makeover, she says, "I would...

Keith Olbermann has forgotten the figure-skating judge's cardinal rule: be sparing in the marks you award early contestants, to leave room for the favorites who perform at the end. After his gushing appraisals of Michelle Obama's and Hillary's convention speeches, how can Olbermann possibly top it in his praise of Biden's and Obama's to come? Mixing metaphors here, let's compare the baseball-analogy grades that the Morning Joe crew gave Hillary's speech at show-opening today with Olbermann's assessment of last night. As you'll see, they range from solid single to Keith's grand slam. View video here.

Dateline USA.... Media matters. NBC/MSNBC TV news sources say veteran, professional commentators and journalists--most notably, Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell--are appalled by the network's amateurish, biased coverage of the Democratic National Convention. Industry insiders say Matthews is incensed by Keith Olbermann's commentary, which amounts to little more than a nightly adulation of Barack Obama. Only two days into the event, the obnoxious, out-of-control Olbermann, one of the most outrageous and arrogant personalities to ever make it in TV news, has insulted and over-talked his colleagues to an alarming degree. At one point in Tuesday night's coverage, the totally bald, toupee-topped...

MSNBC's team at the Democratic National Convention needs to get more sleep and maybe also one of those massages that Arianna Huffington is giving out. The cable network's anchors are sniping at one another tonight, just like they did last night. About 20 minutes ago, ahead of Hillary Clinton's speech, Chris Matthews was talking about how some women feel disenfranchised within the party. It's a touchy subject for Matthews, who has been accused of sexist commentary against Clinton, and he did not appreciate a producer telling him to wrap up his ramble. He also didn't appreciate his sometime rival Keith...

Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann put their own feud aside to agree on something tonight. Hillary honcho Howard Wolfson is a puppet, nay, a Tokyo Rose traitor, for going to work for Fox News. It was the McCain campaign's use in its ads of Hillary's anti-Obama statements that triggered the outburst. KEITH OLBERMANN: Irony upon irony, instead of the commercials designed to destroy Hillary Clinton, [the Republicans] are using Hillary Clinton in commercials designed to destroy the Democratic nominee. CHRIS MATTHEWS: Those are crocodile tears. And you wonder whether an objective person, either rational or post-rational, would be able to...

Keith Olbermann seems to be suffering from a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease during the Democrat convention coverage. As noted earlier by NewsBusters' Mark Finkelstein, Olbermann, after commenting ecstatically about Michelle Obama's speech declared that he was "beginning to sound borderline sycophantic." Also last night, an open mic caught Olbermann dissing fellow MSNBC team member, Joe Scarborough. You can hear the dissing on the Olbermann Watch YouTube audio from the John Gibson radio show below the fold but here is a partial transcript: JOHN GIBSON: I've got to tell you, we have news here tonight! We have the first open...

Beginning? Borderline? How unbalanced was MSNBC's convention coverage tonight? Keith Olbermann felt himself getting verklempt over Michelle Obama's speech. So who did he throw it to for some fair-'n-balanced commentary? Chris Matthews. At the conclusion of Michelle Obama's appearance, Olbermann seemed ready to call the election off and just hand the presidency to Obama by acclamation. KEITH OLBERMANN: Ye-a-h-h-h. Case closed. Matthews responded with a very guttural "uh-h-h-h." OLBERMANN: That could not have done better for them. That could not have done better for them. Right to the point of the little girls taking the mikes away and suddenly turning...

If there is a chief spokesman for the far left, it has to be MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. It is difficult to think of a talking head that is more fawned over by liberals. On his nightly cable television show, the #1 show on MSNBC, he "analyzes" the news and adds his own angry, leftist flavor. One of his segments is to name a "Worst Person in the World." People such as George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Bill O'Reilly and Robert Novak have made the list. Recently, he named Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia the "Worst Person" for his role in...

On Wednesday's Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann claimed that pro-gun groups like the NRA "are trying to increase deaths by gun," as he used his "Worst Person" segment to attack a gun rights activist who infiltrated gun control groups to spy on them: "Mary Lou Sapone infiltrated the executive boards and learned the plans of organizations trying to decrease deaths by gun in this country, and apparently reported it back to organizations like the NRA, which are trying to increase deaths by gun in this country." A month earlier, on the June 26 show, after the Supreme Court struck...

Keith Olbermann had a temper tantrum at a memorial reception for the late Tim Russert.

The liberal press crowed loudly when cable TV’s Keith Olbermann beat out Bill O’Reilly in a key demographic during a recent week, but Olbermann’s ratings success has been isolated and press reports about it have been much overblown, Newsmax has learned. MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” did average 477,000 viewers in the age 25 to 54 demographic during the first week of June, narrowly edging out Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor,” which averaged 472,000 in that demo, according to Nielsen Media Research. “This marks the first time that MSNBC has beaten Fox News in O’Reilly’s 8 p.m. time slot,” the...