“A week-long anchoring stint on MSNBC by Donny Deutsch ended abruptly on Wednesday,” writes the New York Times’ Brian Stelter,” after “Mr. Olbermann was shown briefly in a series of clips of media bloviators during a segment that pondered what role the media plays in fomenting the public’s anger.”
While no one at MSNBC would go on the record for fear of getting fired by Mr. Olbermann, Stelter reports that “the four people briefed on MSNBC’s decision said Mr. Olbermann’s anger about the segment prompted the cancellation of the weeklong ‘America the Angry’ series.”
I, for one trust his sourcing. Mr. Olbermann has a very fascinating history of acting like a petulant child. There was the time last April when he freaked out over Ben Affleck:
According to a source at the network, Olbermann was livid when he learned that Rachel Maddow had booked Ben Affleck as a guest on her show. Olbermann, it turns out, had been interested in having Affleck on his show, too, and when he heard that Maddow’s producers had secured the actor instead, he demanded that the interview be switched from Maddow’s nine o’clock broadcast to his own an hour earlier. Maddow and her staff have been known to politely give in to Olbermann’s whims in the past—it was Olbermann, after all, who helped bring Maddow to the network. This time, however, they didn’t budge. (With ratings for Maddow’s show a bit lackluster as of late, parting with an A-list celebrity guest isn’t a decision to be made lightly.) Olbermann took the matter to senior management at MSNBC and NBC Universal and asked that they step in and “correct” the situation. That didn’t happen, though, and Affleck went on Maddow’s show as scheduled on Thursday, April 16. And Olbermann’s three-day protest commenced the next day.
Oh, and the time he refused to go on air if he didn’t get the perfect office door:
But one MSNBC employee wasn’t happy with his office. According to two sources who worked for the network at the time, Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC’s Countdown, didn’t like his door. It had a window. He wanted a solid one.
He called the building manager. “They told him, ‘Look, it’s an old building, we’re not changing the doors,’” the longtime employee says. “So Keith calls [MSNBC president] Phil Griffin and says, ‘I want a new door or I’m not going on the air tonight.’ And so Phil went and got him a new door.”
Keith Olbermann is the Tony Kornheiser of news people. Just to spite him, I am going to buy Deutsch a drink if ever we’re in the same bar. Cheers, Donny!