A fellow MSNBC exile is applauding Alec Baldwin for his 5,000-word tell-all.
Baldwin bid adieu to public life in a long-winded cover essay for this week’s New York magazine, and, in a series of tweets on Monday, Keith Olbermann indicated that he agreed with pretty much all of it.
The former MSNBC anchor and current sportscaster didn’t get Baldwin’s Twitter handle quite right (Baldwin tweets under @ABFalecbaldwin), but Olbermann expressed sympathy to the hot-headed actor.
One word he uses I can’t endorse. The rest is perfect:
@NYMag This week’s cover story: A candid first-perso… http://t.co/hEsK1kqtbE
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 24, 2014
In NYMag, what @ABFoundation points at is this fact: film/entertainment stars are the last group media can abuse, even stalk, with impunity
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 24, 2014
In short, if @ABFoundation (and others) “behaved” themselves the way the gossip-alists demanded, all the gossip-alists would be unemployed.
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 24, 2014
I was often guilty of this too in my news shows, before my consciousness was raised long before the @ABfoundation stuff began.
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 24, 2014
As to working in news media, @ABFoundation got it exactly right. Perfectly. Today, you shill for your news organization or you get out.
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 24, 2014
He – @ABFoundation + I both got out (albeit in different fashions). We all compromise to work; those who didn’t get out compromised utterly
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 24, 2014
Lastly: as @ABFoundation wants just to go back and act so did I want just to go back and broadcast. Thank goodness ESPN was there to let me
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 24, 2014
Much of the essay focused on Baldwin’s use of a homophobic slur toward a photographer last year, a confrontation that led to the actor’s exit from MSNBC.
He took some shots at the cable news channel, calling Rachel Maddow a “phony” and lamenting that MSNBC is “as full of shit, as redundant and as superfluous, as Fox.”
That part of the piece probably resonated with Olbermann, who had his own ignominious exit from MSNBC in 2011 and levied a public zinger at the channel a couple months ago.
