Ratings rise with Olbermann's anger

Broadcaster's commentaries, full of disgust and outrage, bring more viewers to MSNBC

SECAUCUS, N.J. // The Democrats may have wrested back control of power in Congress, but that hasn't quieted the ire of Keith Olbermann. Recently, he delivered one of his trademark blistering critiques of the country's leadership - this time charging that President Bush failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam by perpetuating the "monumental lie that is our presence in Iraq." And don't think the victors of the midterm election are going to escape his sharp tongue.

"If the Democrats don't undo a lot of the things that have been done, like the Military Commissions Act and many of the other infringements on freedom, as I see it, there will be a special comment with their name on it," Olbermann vowed on a recent afternoon, wearing a crisp, striped shirt and suspenders, his large frame hunched over his desk at MSNBC's Secaucus headquarters.

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The longtime sportscaster, who doesn't vote and eschews any political identity - "I may be a Whig, possibly a Free-Soiler," he quipped - has nevertheless become an unexpected folk hero for the frustrated left. One woman approached him in a New York restaurant recently and burst into tears as she thanked him.

"People just think, 'He speaks for me,'" said Jane Hamsher, a Mill Valley, Calif., author who runs a liberal blog at firedoglake.com. "There was no resonance within the media for their perspective, and suddenly Keith came on the scene and gave voice to these long-simmering feelings of disgust with the war."

Olbermann said he never set out to court disaffected liberals. "But there's a time when what you're covering ceases to look like news and begins to look like history," he said. "And you say, 'Well, it doesn't matter how people might brand me or respond to this - I feel as if something very important is not being said.'"