With his return to television Monday, Keith Olbermann has joined the long list of people who do more harm to their cause than good.
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cting like a liberal cartoon drawn by Ann Coulter – president of the not-helping-their-cause-club – Olbermann ranged from dry and dull to overblown and pompous.
Also read: Al Gore: What Olbermann Will Bring to Current
Debuting his new "Countdown" on Al Gore's Current TV, Olbermann and his guests talked enough to go beyond the show's one-hour running time and cut into one of Current's many, many documentaries about drugs. Olbermann warned viewers – no surprise here – that he would go over the time limit a lot.
He saved the night's only news – or rather, petty allegation – for the end of the show, when Daily Kos founder and "Countdown" contributor Markos Moulitsas claimed that he had been banned from Olbermann's old network, MSNBC, because he made Joe Scarborough cry in a Twitter fight and refused to apologize.
Uh-huh. That must be the kind of infringement on his editorial freedom that Olbermann hoped to escape at Current.
In his new gig, he promised to stand up for the working class and against aristocrats, and compared the current political climate in the U.S. to the one during the Civil War. (But without the slavery and battles – a distinction he forgot to make.)
He made it clear from the start he wouldn't be a Democratic water boy. To prove his political independence, he began with a lengthy examination of whether the Obama Administration was in violation of the War Powers Act in Libya. (Here's hoping he won't try to deflect every conservative criticism for the next year or so by pointing out that his very first segment critiqued Obama.)
His first guest was Michael Moore, another contributor to the show, who toned down his tendency toward hyperbole to join Olbermann in an eminently reasonable -- but kind of dull -- discussion about why Obama hasn’t sought Congressional approval to keep U.S. troops engaged in Libya.
"'Cause it’s the easy way to do it," Moore explained.
The exchange summarized the problem with Olbermann's new show, at least in its first episode.
Without the news apparatus of mean, Moulitsas-blocking NBC behind him, he has little news to break. That leaves him to either hold pleasant-enough but not very groundbreaking discussions with Moore and other guests, or engage in self-righteous puffery like the Scarborough baiting and ridiculous Civil War analogy.
Since his new deal with Current also makes him the network's head news honcho, Olbermann may want to get some of his troops – sorry about the war analogy – out into the field to bring back some fresh information for his show. And not just about the drug underground that Current covers so well.
Until he can break up the routine with some reporting, he'll be forced to find a middle ground between boring and pompous commentary.
