Keith Olbermann said he was "suspending" his Twitter account on Wednesday, following criticism of the MSNBC host's support of Julian Assange in the wake of sex crime allegations against the WikiLeaks founder.
"I've discovered that I am accused of being a rape apologist in part because I didn't remove the quotes from the word rape in a retweet," Olbermann wrote in a Twitter post on Thursday. "I will thus unblock all blocks, wish you all a Merry Christmas and I'll suspend this account until this frenzy is stopped."
Earlier in the day, Olbermann apologized in a series of tweets:
Rape has touched my family, directly and savagely, and if anybody thinks I have addressed it without full sensitivity, then that assessment is the one that counts, and I apologize. But these accusations that I "revealed" an accuser's identity by retweeting about Bianca Jagger’s link, or that I 'shamed' an accuser by asking a question about the prosecution of a man governments are about trying to bury, or that I do not 'understand' charges that have yet to be presented in their final form, reflect exactly the about the kind of rushing to judgment of which I'm accused, and merit the same kind of apology I have just given.
Michael Moore, Olbermann's guest on Tuesday's "Countdown," came under similar fire for posting $20,000 of Assange's bail.
After Moore's appearance, a website called TigerBeatDown blasted Moore for calling the allegations against Assange "strange" and were not to be believed. According to the Huffington Post, the site then "criticized Olbermann for retweeting a link by Bianca Jagger which dismissed the charges and possibly revealed the identities of Assange's accusers."
