Your faithful crew of ERT bloggers are taking some time off. There may or may not be anything new on Tumbleblogging Olbermann, and I can’t guarantee I’ll remember to moderate comments. Comment at your own risk!

We’ll be back on Wednesday, July 9. Enjoy your holiday everyone!

Beginning with Howard Kurtz’s feud report last week and ramping up after Friday’s over the top Special Comment, there’s been a bit of media backlash against Our Mr. Olbermann. I haven’t been able to write it all up for the front page as I have in the past, but you can find links and/or excerpts in the comments here at the mothership and at our auxiliary site Tumblelogging Olbermann.

And now a word from Rupert Murdoch, as seen on Silicon Alley Insider:

And for good measure, he defended the lack of a liberal counterpart to Bill O’Reilly on Fox News: He’d hire one if he could find a good one, he argued. What about MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, who’s now spending much of his time attacking O’Reilly and Fox? “No. I fired him 5 years ago,” when he was on FoxSports: “He was crazy.”

Update: Keith responds. “…he had to pay me $800,000 for the rest of 2001, and lord knows how many tens of millions I’ve helped MSNBC take out of his pocket ever since — so: who’s crazy?”

Our fantasy baseball league is accepting teams for one more week!

The Tertiary Syphilis League has the requisite 12 teams signed up, but there’s still room if you want to get in on the fun. The draft is scheduled for next Saturday, March 15 (time TBD) and I’ll accept new teams through midnight Eastern on Friday.

Contact me if you’d like to play or want more info.

I would like to take this opportunity to gently remind everyone that this is not a political discussion site. MSNBC might be “the place for politics,” but ERT is not.

I realize that there is a very fine line between discussing the current, contentious political situation and the coverage of that situation on Countdown these days. When you comment, keep in mind that not everyone here has the same political views - now more than ever. So far, everyone has behaved admirably and the comments haven’t broken down into the chaos of, “Oh yeah? Well your candidate blows goats!” Let’s keep it that way.

Also, I have received in the past week some comments from people who felt the need to blow off some steam to Mr. Olbermann personally, mistaking this site for a direct pipeline to his office. You’ll notice the new disclaimer at the top of the sidebar.

Countdown is preempted tonight by the repeat of Tuesday night’s debate. (Thanks Houstonian!)

For those of you who weren’t watching last night, Crooks and Liars has video of Keith chiding Chris Matthews for his browbeating of Obama surrogate Kirk Watson last night (video of which seems to be everywhere). Everyone in the studio seems to be quite amused!

Sign-ups are still open for our fantasy baseball league! We have nine teams now, and need an even dozen to make a full league. If you’ve expressed interest I’ve sent you the sign-in codes. If you want to join the fun, or didn’t receive your code, drop me a line.

It looks like this Tumblr thing is working out, so you’ll now find a link to Tumbleblogging Olbermann in the side bar. If you haven’t seen our tumble feed yet take a look, won’t you?

Pitchers and catchers begin reporting today, so what better time to announce a league of our own?

Sign ups are now open to readers of Either Relevant or True and Palaver for the Tertiary Syphilis League at Yahoo. (Yes. Tertiary syphilis.) This isn’t a cutthroat game for the Sabermetrics crowd, so don’t be scared off if you’ve never played before. What better way to dip your toes into fantasy baseball than with people you’re familiar with?

Our draft will be on March 15, so get your team in before then. If you have any questions or better yet, are ready to sign up, comment below or drop me a note!

ETA: Yes, this is a private league and you’ll need the code number and password to join. That’s why you need to contact me if you want to play.

Chip Rowe on the Playboy Blog:

Two quick points: (1) I didn’t tell her to make her letter “gushing.” In fact, she wrote a smart response and we were glad to have it. I try to include a variety of views in the letters pages because I know from experience that people who agree with something are less likely to write–and this is born out by the fact we have since gotten letters from K.O. lovers who can’t believe all the K.O. haters who wrote. (2) Anyone who actually reads Playboy–rather than just posting snide comments about it (that “for the articles” joke is so clever! More, please)–can’t be too surprised. We have invited experts who might not otherwise see the magazine to comment, in whatever way they see fit, in our letters pages since the 1960s. It makes for a more spirited debate.

There you have it.

Boy, these past two days have made me weary. I mentioned to Stef that it might fall under “Be careful what you wish for,” but she thought “OH GOD WTF NO SRSLY EVERYONE, WTF” suited the situation better. I think she’s right.

Well that was fun, wasn’t it? I’m not exactly sure what the point of it all was except, of course, to once again paint Our Mr. Olbermann with the brush of negativity. As I mentioned earlier, it also accomplished some nice things for our little blog here including some attention from big media blogs and a fourfold increase in site traffic for the day. And it was certainly more pleasant all the way around than the last time his name was linked to a blogger!

If you’re scoring at home, here’s where we appeared: Jossip, TVNewser (who put up my reaction), Gawker, Inside Cable News, The Huffington Post (who merely reproduced the blog post, but under a lurid headline), Chickaboomer (who think I’m Miss Katy), and the pièce de résistance, this morning’s Page Six!

(Oh, and we were Stumble Uponed, too!)

Thank you all who stopped, commented, and said kind things about my letter. I hope some of you will stick around.

Now let’s get back to the business of blogging, shall we? Our new recapper, Arrow, does her first of hopefully many Tuesday night gigs tonight. For you late-nighters and West Coasters, Gilbert is on for the post-debate, Michigan primary political coverage. And with any luck, I’ll have the time and energy to actually do some tumblelogging today!

ETA: And Huffington Post readers and Stumblers! This has been an interesting afternoon!

ETA2: And readers of Gawker and Inside Cable News…

Welcome to our humble fan blog. For those of you too lazy to read the comments on the Playboy post: When I inquired about disclosing my dealings with Mr. Rowe he replied, “You are welcome to mention that you were asked to respond, sure. I enjoyed reading the blog and was interested in your take on the Interview.” I doubt if this was a lynching offense he’d be so cavalier about it.

As for where the aforementioned blogs picked up on this relatively obscure little fan site, I assure you their editors aren’t regular readers of Either Relevant or True. If you compare their pieces to what’s published on OlbermannWatch (no link, look it up yourself) you’ll find amazing similarities. So much for TVN’s emailer being “anonymous.”

My own anonymity is a non-issue. This is not my job, this is my hobby. I don’t need a small handful of anti-Olbermann jihadists making my life hell. (And sorry, no, I am not Katy Tur. I’ve been doing this blog since she was still in diapers college.)