Keith Olbermann, who imperiously announces frequently that his is the number one news show in its time slot—despite drawing about 1/7 of the audience of The O'Reilly Factor—because he claims he is the "only real news program" in the schedule, sank to a new low (or revisited an old one) with his supposed "Number 1 Story of the Day" last night.
Olbermann devoted a full segment to a giggling, sleazy riff on the term "tea bagger," with his smarmiest near-daily guest, the never-labeled corporate lobbyist Richard Wolffe. The excuse? That "tea bagger" was runner up for Word of the Year in the Oxford Dictionary. (If you don't know the obscene definition of the word, congratulations. The Urban Dictionary has the definition if you think you need to know.)
I'll save some of the scummy back and forth for the second page for those who want to "read more." But after some pretty bad locker-room banter, as Olbermann claimed simultaneously that the protesters coined the term for themselves and that Countdown should be given credit by Oxford University Press, Olbermann and Wolffe got "serious." Seriously. I guess…
OLBERMANN: On a more serious note, as the news of the day becomes history, what will tea baggers become most known for? For fracturing the Republican Party or offering a welcome home to a new and ugly strain of racism? What is this word going to mean 100 years from now?
WOLFFE: Here is a point of similarity with Sarah Palin. There is this uncontrollable factor, undisciplined factor about the whole movement, which I think is a kind of weapon of mass destruction about the Republican Party.
Yes, as Independents go 2 to 1 against Democrats, it's the Republicans who have been hurt by the Tea Party movement. Keep telling yourself that, guys, and your smirky elitism is going to do wonders for your side, too. read more…