MSNBC host Keith Olbermann announced Monday night that he is stopping his “Worst Person in the World” segment.
“As of right now, I am unilaterally suspending that segment with an eye towards discontinuing it,” he said. “We don’t know how that works long-term. We might bring it back. We might bring back something similar to it. We might kill it outright.”
The change comes after comedian Jon Stewart criticized cable news personalities like Olbermann at this weekend’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.” Olbermann referenced Stewart’s comments Monday night, saying he agrees that “the tone needs to change.”
“Today given the serious stuff we have to start covering tomorrow, we think it’s the right time to do it short-term and then we’ll see what happens,” he said.
His apparent agreement with Stewart differs from his attitude Saturday, when he Tweeted his disapproval of the comedian’s remarks about the media at the rally.
Olbermann also defended running the segment over the years: “The anger in this news hour was not an original part of it, nor was it an artifice that we added to it. It was a response to a threat to this democracy posed by [former President George W.] Bush.”
The segment appears to have changed over the years. As he mentioned Monday on the show, it actually originated with Olbermann defending The Daily Caller’s Tucker Carlson — then of MSNBC — against an attack from a New York Times TV critic.