Legal Commentary

Olbermann Suspended For Dem Donations

By Big Tent Democrat

Daily Kos has a lot on this.

I'm not an MSNBC or Olbermann viewer or fan so the part that interests me is why Olbermann did it? He must have known it violated his contract. Is he trying to get out? Is he at war with Phil Griffin, the MSNBC President? And what is MSNBC's thinking on this? Obviously this is not going to help their ratings.

And of course MSNBC has double standards as it has allowed Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan to give to candidates. The whole opinion vs. reporters line is pretty weak, given that Olbermann has not been a reporter for a pretty long time now.

No, this is an office politics dispute for sure. Maybe MSNBC wants to go back to being the Beltway network they were before Olbermann lifted them out from irrelevancy. As I said, I'm no Olbermann fan, but he clearly had the better business strategy for MSNBC than Griffin. Will Griffin go after Maddow next? Will it be a network of Tweetys and Lawrence O'Donnells? That would certainly be a business mistake. Maybe Griffin wants to be the new Jeff Zucker (the guy who destroyed NBC the broadcast network.) Clearly there is more here going on than meets the eye.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on November 05, 2010 (boomark / email).