Yesterday, MSNBC hater-in-chief Keith Olbermann caused a minor kerflulffle in the online world with this threat posted on his blog at the Daily Kos:

Find everything you can about Glenn Beck, Stu Burguiere, and Roger Ailes. . . . Tuesday we will expand this to the television audience and have a dedicated email address to accept leads, tips, contacts, on Beck, his radio producer Burguiere, and the chief of his tv enablers, Ailes . . .

While this would be quite an escalation in the current ideological media battles—I personally find it hard enough to wade through the darkness and bile of Keith’s public ravings, much less trying to explore the dark corners of his personal life—there was good reason for people to believe Olbermann would “go there.”

It’s no huge stretch of rhetorical flourish to point out that Keith Olbermann is aural pornography to the activist Left. On a nightly basis he spews hate, kicks the crap out of straw men, and engages in mutual… stimulation with like minds—and only like minds—and I use that last word advisedly.

So, it’s no big leap for people to assume he would have no qualms about following in the footsteps of sleaze merchant Larry Flynt publisher of the hard core porn magazine, Hustler.

During the Clinton/Lewinski scandal Flynt took to the ariwaves, offering to pay for dirt on Republicans who voted for impeachment. It was blackmail in advance, to intimidate congressmen with guilty consciences. Flynt renews his dirt trolling every so often when he wants publicity—and Larry King is always ready to oblige:

Basically, the only difference between Larry Flynt’s appeal and Keith Olbermann’s is the lack of pretentious literary references in Flynt’s. Here’s how Keith explained his actions last night.

OLBERMANN: Next up, Beck has tweeted to his zombies, quote, “Watch Dogs: Find everything you can on Cass Sunstein, Mark Lloyd and Carol Browner. Do not link before burning to disc.” Sunstein is the Harvard law school professor whose nomination to run the office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is in limbo in the senate because of Republican obstructionism.

Lloyd is the FCC‘s chief diversity officer and Ms. Browner is Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change.

A quick note, Browner is a long time well-known radical with undoubtedly a good number of public utterances out there that would be far out, but probably not that surprising. Sunstein once propsed that animals should have standing to sue humans (good thing for me that my Golden Retriever is so good natured!) and Lloyd is the FCC “diversity” officer who expressed admiration for Hugo Chavez’s media strategy! Need Glenn say more?

OLBERMANN: This in turn to led me to diary at DailyKos.com to find everything you can on Glenn Beck, Stu Burguiere, his radio producer and Roger Ailes and to promise that we, on this program tonight would announce a dedicated e-mail address to send tips on them.

But last night, Keith pulled out from this new adventure and left the insanity fetishists in his audience unsatisfied. He cited a cautionary message from David Carr, the media blogger of the New York Times. One could almost see Keith swell with pride as he read the post—I got mentioned in the NEW YORK FREAKIN’ TIMES!!

OLBERMANN: Now about calling on the Baker Street irregulars to gather interesting info on Beck and his enablers. David Carr blogged something thought provoking in “The New York Times” today.

“While Mr. Beck,” he wrote, “may be serving as a proxy for the party of the opposition, his targets are members of the administration; a rugged game to be sure but not one that attempts to investigate journalists and commentators for having contrary opinions. What might Mr. Olbermann do if someone digs up dirt on his intended targets, who, like him in work in the infotainment industry and have been elected by no one? Once the game of oppo-research on the press begins, it‘s hard to tell where it might stop, no?”

It‘s a kind of admirable naivete about the idea that the opposition research is just dawning out there on the horizon in the news business….

Keith then rambled on about every slight he’d endured since being fired from Fox Sports before ending with this rant:

OBERMANN: But Mr. Carr‘s point begs a great question. Do I really want to be like Glenn Beck? Do I really want to be like Fox News and “The New York Post”? [Do I want to draw an audience, would I like to matter?]

I don‘t mean I would stop calling them out for their inanities or for the next time Beck sounds that desperate sick dog whistle hope that somebody might blow up Rockefeller Center because it‘s full of fascist, socialist, Zimbalist art, even though he works in Rockefeller Center too.
Now, this is about having or not having a blind lead box on these people and then vetting information that arrives there. I don‘t know. I will reserve the right to summon the Baker Street irregulars, but I don‘t think so. I have some things Mr. Beck does not: a conscience, respect of my colleagues and self-respect.

Besides which, in just the last ten weeks, Beck has fantasized about poisoning the Speaker of the House of Representatives. He has agreed with a guest who advocated a bin Laden terror attack on this country and he‘s already personally called the President of the United States a racist.

What could we possibly find out that would be more humiliating to Glenn Beck, more embarrassing to Glenn Beck, more destructive about Glenn Beck than this one fact—HE’S GLENN BECK!!

Wow, is anyone else surprised this didn’t end with “Na na na nah boo boo!”?

Most times when I write a post fisking Keith Olbermann, a responder in the comments section mentions Junior High school. This is elementary, my Dear Watson, purely elementary. (“Baker Street Irregulars,” get it? Never mind)

So, to sum up, Keith Olbermann– after watching Glenn Beck actually generate a national story, taking down Van Jones, and expose a radical reality counter to the president’s carefully coiffed reasonable image– made a threat at the Daily Kos, then got mentioned in the New York Times (!), and undoubtedly attracted some of Glenn Beck’s (far) larger audience so that he could call them zombies—which probably led Keith to this reaction:

Now, I can’t read minds or hearts, so I’ll leave it to you to decide why Keith backed down last night. Here are the possibilities in descending, numerical order of what I think the likely probabilities are:

• 1. It was always just a stunt, a desperate cry for attention (ratings)
• 2. He was talked out of it by David Carr’s post
• 13. His better sense took over.

You be the judge.

Side note: Earlier, in his monologue before interviewing Chris Hayes of the Marxist Nation magazine about whether a Neo-communist should be forced to resign from the government, Olbermann told a blatant lie:

OLBERMANN: The White House green jobs adviser Van Jones resigned in the middle of a storm in a tea pot over the holiday weekend. Most of the storm was about Jones‘ founding in 2005 of the group “Color of Change,” which has thus far stripped 57 advertisers from the “Glenn Beck Show.”

Beck retaliated, never once mentioning to his audiences that his enmity to Jones was not on behalf of the nation but merely on behalf of his own heiny. He began calling Jones a radical and unearthing video of him calling Republican‘s holes. And they denied this. Wow? How?

Beck has mentioned this on the show at least once that I have seen that Jones had connections to the group calling for the boycott. Of course, Keith can claim his above statement is true, that Beck didn’t admit the motive impugned to him by Olbermann. I guess that depends on what the maning of “is” is.

Part 4: Slimedog Millionaire