Review: Keith Olbermann On Current

The Mouth That Roared Begins a New ‘Countdown’



 From Allesandra Stanley, The TV Watch blog at NYtimes.com:

Keith Olbermann returned to cable television on Monday mad as hell and pointedly madder than other self-described liberal anchors on his former channel, MSNBC....

Mr. Olbermann’s new show looks the same as the old one, even down to the features, music and title, “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” but the pulpit is markedly different from his old perch at MSNBC. Current TV, a small, earnest network co-founded by Al Gore in 2005, favors civic-minded programs and averages about 50,000 viewers during prime time. Mr. Olbermann was wedged between two documentaries, “The OxyContin Express” and “Gateway to Heroin.”

Mr. Olbermann, who quit MSNBC abruptly in January, is hoping that his new platform — politically progressive and free of corporate overlords, will attract left-of-liberal viewers seeking a more rabble-rousing champion. Mr. Olbermann assured his viewers that he and they would be the “last line of defense” against the “malfeasance of one political party and the timidity of the other.” He quoted Harriet Beecher Stowe on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. (“It is the war for the rights of the working classes of mankind, as against the usurpation of privileged aristocracies.”) He also noted, more bizarrely, that he is not the only person to start a new career on June 20 — Queen Victoria began her reign on the same day.

And his guests stoked his ego. Mr. Moore praised Mr. Olbermann for “keeping the good fight going.” Markos Moulitsas, founder and publisher of the liberal Web site Daily Kos, who is also a contributor to the show, called Mr. Olbermann a “national treasure.”

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