This is a good read. Not very flattering of Olbermann in places, but still good. The following passage hit home for me personally:
At MSNBC, Phil Griffin was worried, and with good reason. The average “Countdown” viewer is fifty-nine years old, and forty-five per cent of the viewers are women, presumably Democratic—a fair description of a Hillary Clinton supporter. Griffin believed that Olbermann was beginning to alienate his core audience, and asked him to ease up a bit on Clinton, and possibly even make some conciliatory gesture to the Clinton camp. Olbermann was offended by the suggestion. “I can’t do that!” he says, recalling that conversation. “Me doing a commentary against my own opinion is pandering. Black and white. And I’m not going to do it. Would I pull back a little bit, or think long and hard about whether or not I want to knowingly alienate part of the audience? Yeah. And I did. I mean, I held fire on Senator Clinton for quite a while after she began to really scare me, with some of these tactics.”
On a couple of occasions, I was asked to back off of the Clintons for fear of offending half of whoever reads my stuff (I hasten to note that no-one at Huffington ever asked me to ease off). My reaction was similar. This past Democratic primary season, regardless of what some of my peers might think, was not a decision between two equals.
This primary season was entirely about A New Way Forward vs. More Of The Same. Did we want a nominee who panders to the Republicans, mimicks their tactics, voted to invade Iraq, and carries along the same old players who have lost elections year after year? Or did we want a fresh, inspirational voice who refuses to play by the old rules? I chose the latter and I will always stand by that decision.