News-Show Hosts Who've Been Fired By MSNBC:

Keith Olbermann, Phil Donahue, Cenk Uygur, Pat Buchanan, Don Imus, Michael Savage (if we're generous with the definition of "news show"), and now Alec Baldwin. With the caveat that the hirings of Buchanan, Imus and especially Savage could very reasonably have been called somewhere between odd and insane to begin with, that seems like a lot of host-firing to me. Donahue was fired for criticizing the Iraq war -- in 2003, so with the perspective of history, his failing was being, not edgy, but ahead of his time. Alec Baldwin was fired for losing his temper and shouting something homophobic -- at a paparazzo. Baldwin is unambiguously and prominently an advocate for gay marriage, GLBT rights, HIV/Aids research and every liberal cause, and has been for a long, long time, and everyone knows it. And no-one in the US should be punished for attacking paparazzi. Ever. Period. End of discussion. (Not that I should be understood as letting paparazzi in other countries off the hook, it's just that I'm only familiar with the paparazzi situation in the US. For all I know it's actually worse somewhere else.)

We may never know why Olbermann was fired. I really literally cannot imagine a good reason for having done that. Olbermann was the soul, the backbone, the guts and the Vincent Black Shadow of MSNBC. I don't know who's got their hand on the switch over there, but they're a nut. A nut wearing a propeller beanie and slurping on a great big rainbow-swirl lollypop. They never should have been given more responsibility than the assistant janitor of a small school, no more than W ever should been.

And to be completely accurate, I don't know whether Uygur was actually fired or whether he followed Olbermann to Current of his own free will. I do know that it's a $%#$&^*&(*&^ waste having Olbermann on ESPN now, with his contract stipulation that he completely refrain from all political comments while on air. WHAT?! Wonder how long that'll last, if, that is, Olbermann hasn't violated that clause of his contract already. He certainly should. Having Keith do a sports show under the condition that he make no remarks concerning politics is a lot like having Picasso renovate your kitchen under the condition that he will under no circumstances paint or sculpt anything -- it's flat-out stupid, it's a huge waste. The years of not having Olbermann tell people what's what about politics on TV nightly have been a sad, sad waste. People who are both that smart and that angry don't grow on trees. It may actually be that there have been no more than one or two of them alive in the US at any given time. Melville, Twain, Bierce, Hunter S Thompson and Keith -- yeah, one or two, no more. #$%$ you, you *@#!ing idiots running things and running them into the ground!