MSNBC's increasingly paranoid Keith Olbermann is threatening to quit unless his bosses beef up his security, sources say.With the possible exception of his MSNBC colleagues, I can't think of anyone who would want to waste the ammunition.
Olbermann - upset to be anchoring at the Democratic National Convention from an outdoor set near Denver's train station - "announced that his bosses [had] better find a more secure location for him to broadcast from at the Republican National Convention [in St. Paul, Minn.] or he's not going," one insider said. "He thinks someone will assassinate him." MSNBC had no comment.
Why? Surely he hasn't managed to offend any Muslims, has he?
Even before he left New York, the biggest mouth at MSNBC was worried about his safety. When a car was late to take him to the airport, Olbermann threatened via e-mail to stay home, another insider told Page Six. The blowhard whined to producers, "I could have been attacked on the street."
I might hit him in the face with a pie if I happened to be holding one.
Olbermann is also allegedly throwing his weight around to muzzle Republican analyst Mike Murphy. On Wednesday, after two days of being bumped, the Time columnist was finally put on the air, but Olbermann was caught on an open microphone demanding, "Let's wrap him up, all right?"
The only thing Obie is wrapping up is his career.
Olbermann and Chris Matthews - big Barack Obama supporters - stopped bickering between themselves long enough Tuesday to attack former Hillary Clinton aide Howard Wolfson, who is now a commentator on arch rival Fox News. Matthews called him a "little toy soldier waiting on the shelf." Olbermann piled on: "Tokyo Rose was the thought that came to my mind."
He probably approves of an activist media pioneer like Tokyo Rose so this line is a bit confusing, kind of like a terror-loving moonbat like Ward Churchill calling people "little Eichmanns."
Wolfson responded: "I'm not gonna take any lectures on how to be a good Democrat from two people who spent the last two years relentlessly attacking Bill and Hillary Clinton . . . It's unfortunate that a news organization with a great tradition like NBC has been taken over by those kinds of antics."
As I said yesterday, the media death spiral is accelerating. People like Olbermann aren't the disease, they are the symptoms.
Connie Chung, a former news star of both MSNBC and CBS, told The Wall Street Journal yesterday, "They have to just grow up."
MSNBC is looking more like Lord of the Flies every day.