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.)

I’m sure you all remember the Playboy interview back in September. Shortly after the release of the magazine (and after a couple of discussions of it here on ERT) I was contacted by Playboy editor Chip Rowe via the site’s contact form.

He said that they were getting overwhelmingly negative response on the interview* - mostly for the Fox Noise remarks, though some were just general anti-KO sentiment - and that he’d like to balance that with something positive from someone with my “expertise.” (No, really, that’s the word he used. I quickly denied being an expert on a man I’d never met.) After exchanging several emails, I wrote up a couple of hundred words for him to use on the “Letters to Playboy” page. The letter appears in the January issue, along with this blog’s address.

A page scan of my inconveniently separated letter and the text thereof after the jump!

*I’ve made a game of counting the factual and logical errors in the other letters!

(more…)

A tumblelog (or tlog) is a variation of a blog that favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, tumblelogs are frequently used to share the author’s creations, discoveries, or experiences while providing little or no commentary.

Thanks to Google Reader and Yahoo Pipes, I have a pretty elaborate system feeding me all the KO news pulsing through the tubes, all the time, hundreds of items per day. Diligence and technology - that’s how I find most of what I write up for the front page. It’s a dirty job sifting through all of those endlessly parroted Newsbusters posts, but somebody’s gotta do it.

Most of what shows up are casual mentions of no real importance, certainly not enough to deserve an entire blog post. But sometimes those little bits are funny or insightful or just flat-out weird. And so while I was toying with Tumbler the other day I started pulling some of those mentions into a tumblelog…

Here’s Tumblelogging Olbermann, v. 1.0. Like it? Don’t like it? Want it to do X? Keep it? Tell me what you think.

We have a new recruit to the ERT staff! Everyone say hi to Ashley (”Hi Ashley!”) She’s our new Thursday recapper and will be starting tonight.

Apparently Comcast non-digital cable subscribers in some states have lost their access to MSNBC. Aaron Barnhart looked into a similar problem with the Hallmark channel and spoke to someone at Comcast:

NBC executives typically negotiate cable carriage on behalf of affiliates, and they’re supposed to make sure the cable company carries all their channels with the most favorable placements possible. MSNBC has been relegated to the level of Sleuth and Chiller, two NBCU digital offerings that mostly act as rerun machines.

Odd, isn’t it, that NBC Universal can figure out how to embed a light-bulb contract into its negotiations for TV rights with the NFL, but it can’t figure out how to keep its 24-hour news channel from going dark in hundreds of thousands of homes served by one of the free world’s largest cable companies?

I’d put this one at GE’s doorstep, not Comcast’s.

Talk about dropping the ball!

Meanwhile Josh Levin at Slate is talking about Sports Illustrated and brings up DP and KO:

Let’s begin with SI’s hiring, two weeks ago, of Dan Patrick. The former ESPN host is no man of letters. Take it from his ex-colleague Keith Olbermann, who once called Patrick’s softball-filled jock-talk column “a bi-weekly toe dip in the shallow end of the journalistic pool.” But Sports Illustrated didn’t hire Dan Patrick the writer. It hired Dan Patrick the sports-themed corporation.

Keith was quoted as saying that in 2001, in another Slate piece about Olbermann the Sports Writer:

Unfortunately, if Olbermann ever got a full-time job in sportswriting, he might have a hard time keeping it. (For insight on what Olbermann thinks of his colleagues, take a look at this recent Contentville article, in which he calls Dan Patrick’s ESPN: The Magazine pieces “a bi-weekly toe dip in the shallow end of the journalistic pool.”) But readers would be happy if Olbermann just got his feet wet.

The best part of that particular column is the rebuttal by KO below it. It’s classic Olbermann - make sure to read it.

I’m stepping on the blogging toes of Palaver here, but while Dan’s column may indeed have been fluff of the fluffiest order, I don’t think it’s a fair to judge his ability to write a column for SI by a back-of-the-mag Q&A feature. It is, to borrow a phrase, comparing apples and dragons.

I’m trying out a midday open thread for a while. It seems silly to post an OT every morning on top of a recap that you probably haven’t had a chance to read yet.

As for today’s content, how about Dan Patrick joining Sports Illustrated?

Talk amongst yourselves.

The lovely Stef informs me that yesterday was ERT’s second anniversary!

It was two years ago that I emailed Susan and said, “I think Keith needs a blogger. I think I can do that. But I think I may need help (and a screen cap) now and then.” Well now I have lots of great help in the form of Erin, Hawaii, Gilbert, Chica, and Stef, without whom I couldn’t keep this blog going. And without you, our readers, we wouldn’t have a reason to keep it going. And to think I thought this would be a six month lark.

Thank you friends, lurkers, commenters and linkers for making these two years fun and interesting!

Due to some technical difficulties at Casa del Gilbert, there will be no Football Night recap for you. Which is really too bad because KO was excellent last night. Each of his previous appearances was a little off somehow I thought, but this was Sports Keith on top of his game. All he needed was Dan at the other end of the desk.

Speaking of, today’s the day Dan Patrick unveils his new radio program! Hawaii, our Doyenne of Dan, spells it out for you just below this post. Be there, aloha.

Talk amongst yourselves.

With KO out of commission, we’re taking this opportunity for a bit of a breather. Comments will not be approved during this time.

See you in a few days!

There have been a few strange glitches in the commenting system hereabouts that I haven’t yet figured out how to fix. Also, the availability of my bench coach co-moderator Stef may be sketchy for the next several days.

In other words, please be patient!