Keith Olbermann announced on his “Countdown” show Monday that he is putting the “Worst Persons in the World” segment on hold, perhaps permanently, after Jon Stewart’s criticism of the cable news industry during Saturday's “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” apparently struck a nerve with the MSNBC host.
Here’s Olbermann’s explanation for pulling the plus, at least temporarily, via Mediaite:
The overall message [of Stewart's rally] that the tone needs to change was not lost on any of us. The anger in this news hour was not an original part of it, nor was it an artifice we added to it. It was a response to a threat to this democracy posed by Mr. Bush and now by his lineal descendants. The anger happened, it will still happen, it is not for ratings and it is not ‘get angry first and find a reason later.’
But there is an institutionalization of it that may no longer be valid. That is the ‘Worse Persons in the World’ Segment. Which started, of all things, as a way of defending Tucker Carlson. Its satire and whimsy have gradually gotten lost in some anger, so in the spirit of the thing, as of right now, I am unilaterally suspending that segment with an eye towards discontinuing it. We don’t know how that works long term. We might bring it back. We might bring back something similar to it, might kill it outright, and next week we will solicit your input.
It's just that today, given the serious stuff we have to start covering tomorrow, we think it's the right thing to do short term and then we will see what happens. And we’ll also see if anyone else, on TV, or radio, will do something similar.
You can watch the video of Olbermann's rationale over at Mediaite, too.
