Keith Olbermann: His "Angry Everyman" Comes As "Cultural Earthquake

While I agree with much in this San Francisco Chronicle piece about MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and the hotness of the Special Comment section he has done fairly regularly since the 6th anniversary of 9-11, an undercurrent in it does bother me.

This "bother" comes down to comparing him as the flip side (so to speak) of the phenomenon of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly.

I believe very strongly - with some evidence to back it up - that Limbaugh and O'Reilly have created their "on air" personalities and adopted a schtick just to appeal to their audience. O'Reilly is hardly the poor boy from the lower middle class Long Island suburbs he likes to depict; he came from an affluent home and attended lofty private schools.

By comparison, I don't think Olbermann does anything more than express his own concerns. He certainly isn't consulting some "talking points" list from Dems or the left or progressives. In other words, with Olbermann we get Keith; with Limbaugh and O'Reilly and even a Howard Stern, we get schtick specifically to pander to the audience.