That is fair but it's also fair to speculate that maintaining such a pretense may also have been presented to Olbermann as a further condition of employment.

I could accept this as an explanation for an easily replaceable middle-class worker where losing their job would jeopardize their livelihood.

I have a much harder time accepting it from someone who earns $7 million/year, has earned a lot of money for many years, and calls himself a journalist.

I agree he was put in a hard spot. I'm not saying it's easy. It's a lot easier to call on other people to defy their bosses and risk their paycheck than it is to do it oneself. So I'm not dismissing that pressure. That's why my criticism here didn't focus on Olbermann - I actually see him as more of a victim.

Still, I wouldn't accept his going on air and giving a knowingly false explanation for why he stopped talking about O'Reilly. I'm not saying that he did that -- maybe he convinced himself that the "quarantine" thing really was a motive -- but it would have been far better just to stop talking about him and not give any reason if he wasn't willing to go public about what his bosses did.

Remember: This is someone who models himself, ostensibly, after Edward R. Morrow. He's not indispensable to NBC, but he certainly has some security. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect some courage. If a $7 million/year high-rated television personality isn't going to stand up to these things, who will?

I doubt that anybody silenced Keith Olbermann.

You're wrong, and I know that with 100% certainty.

I also know with 100% certainty that Keith Olbermann isn't going to be denying that he was silenced.

What fake impression? How do you know? Why don't you ask KO instead instead of assuming?

You're the one doing the "assuming" -- specifically, assuming that I haven't talked to him.

But why is Glenn's outrage meter constantly turned to 11, on everything? It really does get old.

You should write to your representatives in Congress and urge them to repeal the law requiring you to read what I write.

How much of this enormous outrage has to do with Glenn's hard-on for anyone overly pro-Obama, as he deems it, applying to both KO, who I guess he feels is insufficiently pure,

The post is actually a defense of Olbermann and his right to criticize who he wants without interference from corporate executives -- it's a defense of his journalistic freedom. You should try a different tactic for impugning my motives than one which relies on characterizing what I did exactly the opposite of reality.

Olbermann claimed that this murder erased any bit of humor from the antics of O'Reilly, and that therefore, he (Olbermann) would cease treating O'Reilly like the clown he is.

I explicitly referenced and linked to the transcript of that show. Olbermann didn't only say he'd stop making fun of O'Reilly. He said he'd stop mentioning him at all -- at exactly the same time that, according to the NYT, his bosses told him he had to stop mentioning O'Reilly.

It would be a pretty extreme coincidence if -- after all this time -- Olbermann decided voluntarily to stop mentioning O'Reilly at exactly the same time his GE/NBC bosses told him he had to.

You don't need to leave every third comment - a little restraint would be appreciated.

Immelt is a traitor who does business with our foreign enemies. Olbermann is a cheap propagandist provocateur who isn't taken seriously by anyone. O'Reilly never wasted timew with the pimp Olbermann, he went after the one who is behind all the un-American propaganda on PMSNBC - Immelt and GE.

All you have to know is, boycott GE, boycott NBC, boycott PMSNBC. They're all lib-nazi anti-American garbage.

There are links to this post from a couple large right-wing sites, so expect more of it.

I agree with you that there's a marginal benefit to MSNBC's ceasing its criticism of Fox (though it's not non-existent). I think it's more about the corporate CEO culture. Murdoch wants his outlets to attack liberals and promote business interests and neoconservatism. He's not really interested in attacking big corporations like GE - why would he be? I don't know if News Corp and GE do business - I wouldn't be surprised -- but I can easily see Murdoch being convinced at a comfortable little sitdown with Jeffrey Immelt that attacking a nice, big corporation like GE isn't what he wants Fox News to be doing.

Olbermann's claim not to be party to a deal seems suspicious, someone should press him on that.

Suspicious indeed. At exactly the time that the NYT says he was ordered by corporate executives to stop attacking O'Reilly, he goes on the air and announces a "quarantine" from mentioning O'Reilly or Fox -- as though it's voluntary and motivated by his desire to starve them of attention.

I understand he's in spot that's not easy. He makes a ton of money and is being ordered by his bosses to stop attacking O'Reilly. But don't go on the air and pretend that it's voluntary and give fake reasons for why you're stopping. If you're going to obey those orders in order to keep your paycheck coming, then just do it: don't mislead people about what really happened.

Chafee was the only GOP senator to vote no on this unfortunate piece of legislation

You're right - thanks.

Looks like Russia belongs on this list...

Check the % of Russians who say some torture is OK versus the % of Americans who do.