This is the recappers' comment thread for tonight's Hour of Spin. Post your analysis of tonight's Hour of Spin. Be an Olbermann Watch blogger--without all the muss and fuss. Comments are open!

It's the first Hour of Spin of the new year! That means tonight the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann begins his quest for a clean sweep of the 2009 Olby Awards. As always, we need you to document the outrageous lies and vertiginous spin of Krazy Keith Monkeymann. Watch Oralmann if you dare, and do your recapping right here. Comments are open!

A new year means a time to look back and honor those who have achieved greatness in the year preceding. For that reason, we take this opportunity to reveal the winners of the 2008 Olby Awards, as determined by the Olbermann Watch Awards and Recognition Committee. With no further ado, the 2008 Olbies...

The Edward R Murrow Courage Under Fire Award
Presented for conspicuous reportorial bravery under hazardous circumstances. And the Olby goes to...

Keith Olbermann! For his remarkable valour standing up to the corporate suits at MSNBC and refusing to go to Minnesota for the GOP convention, where his life would be endangered by terroristic assaults and assassination attempts.

Olbermann - upset to be anchoring at the Democratic National Convention from an outdoor set near Denver's train station - "announced that his bosses [had] better find a more secure location for him to broadcast from at the Republican National Convention [in St. Paul, Minn.] or he's not going," one insider said. "He thinks someone will assassinate him." MSNBC had no comment. Even before he left New York, the biggest mouth at MSNBC was worried about his safety. When a car was late to take him to the airport, Olbermann threatened via e-mail to stay home, another insider told Page Six. The blowhard whined to producers, "I could have been attacked on the street."

The Golden Shovel Award
Presented in honor of those who just can't keep their mouths shut. And the Olby goes to...

Keith Olbermann! You don't insult your network colleagues while your mic is on, and then maneuver to get them fired.

The Ted Baxter Rip 'n' Read Award
Presented for the most memorably embarrassing bit of nonsense lifted from blue blogs and reported as fact. And the Olby goes to...

Keith Olbermann! When it comes to Olby's nemesis, Bill O'Reilly, Krazy Keith just kan't help himself.

Why does Olbermann do this? Because he lifts his "stories" from far-left blue blogs that lie about O'Reilly, and either doesn't check or doesn't care if what they say is true or not. In this case, as the video shows, it was an obvious lie, but Keith doesn't care.

Biggest Flat-Out Lie About a Competing Channel
Presented to honor those for whom telling the truth is secondary to a good smear. And the Olby goes to...

Keith Olbermann! The video says it all:

The Karma Bites Award
Presented to remind the mighty that what goes around, comes around. And the Olby goes to...

Keith "Czechoslovakia" Olbermann!

Only on OlbyPlanet would self-delusion this egregious go unchecked.

The Hal Turner Minority Outreach Lifetime Achievement Award
Honoring the broadcaster who has done the most to perpetuate racial stereotypes. And the Olby goes to...

Keith Olbermann! His infatuation with Nazi analogies and salutes earned him the scorn of the ADL, then he reveled in demeaning black cuisine. Keith reached another zenith in 2008, this time turning his attention to Hispanics. It wasn't enough that he contemptuously dismissed the Attorney General as a "houseboy". Oralmann had to add insult to injury with Gov Bill Richardson, cooking up a smarmy reference to guacamole that enraged Latino groups:

certainly an unfortunate use of words, and offensive to Hispanics

The Sleazy Partisan Hack Smear Job of the Year
In honor of the most corrupt, dishonest, sustained, irresponsible attack of the year. And the Olby goes to...

Keith Olbermann! It was one Sarah Palin lie after another and another, etc etc ad nauseam:

It's never too early for Another Olbermann Lie, and the opening spiel is a traditional spot for the first one of the night. In fact, as you will see, we get three OlbyLies in just three minutes.

The He-Man Wimmen Haters Award
Presented for the outstanding example of fantasy violence against a woman. And the Olby goes to...

Keith Olbermann! It's not every day when you see a "journalist" calling for a Presidential candidate to get beat up...or worse:

What Keith Olbermann wants done to another human being is evil. It belongs with torture, lynching, and systemic rape. He is saying we should use physical violence against a political enemy to secure the outcome we want. He is saying murder is an acceptable act when done against a reviled outsider by those on the inside who know what is good for the nation.

The Foolish Consistency Award
Presented for the quickest self-contradictory blunder of 2008. And the Olby goes to...

Keith Olbermann! It's bad enough when you can't keep your stories straight from one day to the next. It's even worse when you can't do it from one hour to the next!

The Gepetto Award
Honoring the most blatant servility to and parroting of talking points fed from blue blogs. And the Olby goes to...

Keith Olbermann! First Keithy let the posters at his blog, Daily Kos, write his interview questions for him. Then Edward R Olbermann went the extra step, erupting in the middle of convention coverage with a screed against a real journalist, a screed that just happened to be fed to him by Kos Kaptain Markos.

There can be little doubt that when the Great Kos himself slammed Mr Babington's article, Bathtub Boy would be ready and willing to take the Kos talking points and spew them on Peacock air. Which he did just minutes after Markos published the attack.

The Do As I Say Not As I Do Award
Recognizing the most egregious media hypocrisy of the year. And the Olby goes to...

Keith Olbermann! Not for his sneering reportage on Joe the Plumbers one tax lein, while concealing his own five (count 'em) instances of tax deadbeatery. Or Monkeymann's sanctimonious scolding about the use of Nazi analogies, as he merrily piles another one on top of his heaping mound. No, the ultimate in 2008 Olbypocrisy has to be when Keith Olbermann, with his own words, effectively made himself worst person in the world:

The Best Smackdowns of the Infamous, Deplorable One
And the Olbies go to:

Mark Levin, John Gibson, Lionel, Howard Wolfson, the Red Eye gang, Old Grumpy Guy:

Best Parody of a Deranged Sports Guy Playing a Newsman on TV Award
And the Olby goes to:

Who else? Ben Affleck!

Happy New Year from the gang at Olbermann Watch!

With the end of another year of Keith Oralmann's Hour of Spin, we really should recognize the high, and low points, of 2008. That's the purpose of the Olby Awards. What was Keith's biggest lie? The most outrageous example of Olbypocrisy? The meanest, dirtiest smear? The most egregiously biased report? On the flip side, who really came through with the sharpest, most devastating exposes of the infamous, deplorable one? Whose smackdown stung the most? So many possibilities, and so few days until the end of the year.

2008 found Edward R Olbermann using Kos to formulate his commentary, rushing to parrot what Markos told him to say, and even letting the Kossacks write his interview questions. Of course there was the repeated, serial compulsive lying. The embarrassing revelation that Oralmann is a tax deadbeat. His humiliating Czechoslovakia attack on John McCain (which he never repeated once Olbermann Watch exposed it). And so much, much more.

A good place to get caught up on the most embarrassing Monkeymann moments of this past year is our Olbermann Watch youtube page. Here you will find devastating critiques by Mark Levin, John Gibson, and many others. Plus our own videos catching Merkle in bouts of extreme hypocrisy, dishonesty, and downright stupidity. There are hours of viewing fun in just the 2008 videos (remember the racial slurs...and Olby's open-mic embarrassments?), and you can count it as research, so your rchoices for the Olby Awards will be as well-informed as possible.

GIve us your picks for the Olbies. Create your own categories if the standard award designations don't exactly fit. Comments are open!

There's nothing quite like watching the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann attempting to spin his way out of embarrassment, rewrite history, or otherwise mangle the ethics of journalism to protect his inept butt.

To understand what we are talking about, we consulted the OlbyWatch Research Division. They delved into the archives to dig out a story from last year. Yes, Herr Olbermahn "covered" the story in his peculiar fashion. And we have the direct quotes to prove it:

• May 9 2007: The FBI claims it has broken up a plot to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey. The flaw, though, in the breathless reporting of the purported terror cell, the bureau infiltrated the six-person group after its members took video of themselves practicing with assault weapons, brought the tape to a photo store, and had it transferred to a DVD. The details of the supposed plot don't seem to hold together that well either, though that did not stop extensive and entirely credulous coverage on TV, the Internet, in print today... In other words, the FBI has arrested six morons.
• June 4 2007: Officials of this country have revealed so-called terror plots at times that were just coincidentally to their political benefit, no matter how preposterous the actual schemes might have been, including a plot against Fort Dix, where pizza deliverymen were supposed to kill at will at an Army base full of soldiers...the authorities announce arrests in a far-fetched plan to attack soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey. The so-called terrorists planned to gain access to the base by posing as pizza delivery men.
• June 6 2007: The candidates repeatedly referring to both the JFK story and the similarly dubious Fort Dix pizza delivery fantasy as ominous signs of the worldwide terrorist threat... ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: I think if the public says enough is enough, enough of the fear mongering. We've been down this road before. Remember, before the JFK plot we had the Fort Dix Six. And before the Fort Dix six, we had the Liberty City in Florida. And what has happened to all these plots that were endangering our lives?

We'd be happy to enlighten Arianna, and Keith, as to what happened:

Five Muslim immigrants were convicted Monday of plotting to massacre U.S. soldiers at a New Jersey military base in a case the government said demonstrated its post-Sept. 11, 2001, determination to stop terrorist attacks in the planning stages. The defendants were acquitted of attempted murder charges but face life in prison for conspiring to kill military personnel. The federal jury spent about 38 hours deliberating over the past six days.

The men lived in and around Philadelphia for years. The government said after their 2007 arrest that an attack had been imminent and that the case underscored the dangers of terrorist plots hatched on U.S. soil.... Convicted were: Jordanian-born cab driver Mohamad Shnewer; Turkish-born convenience store clerk Serdar Tatar; and brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, who had a roofing business. A sixth man arrested and charged only with gun offenses pleaded guilty earlier.

If Olbermoronn reports this news, it reveals his previous inane banter for the buffoonery that it is. Does he spike the story and pretend the convictions never happened? Or twist it around and claim the innocent "morons" are political prisoners and should be released? Or does he take the courageous step of not even showing up for work today? Perhaps he will admit he was wrong and...strike that, ain't gonna happen. It's our Monday night thread, open early so that we can all enjoy the anticipation of tonight's inevitable Great Moment in Olbypocrisy.

It's the Friday open thread! Be an Olbermann Watch blogger--without all the muss and fuss. Comments are open!

This is the recappers' comment thread for tonight's Hour of Spin. It falls on you--the clear-thinking readers of Olbermann Watch--to document Keith Oralmann's diseased rantings for posterity. Comments are open!

This is the recappers' comment thread for tonight's Hour of Spin. It falls on you--the clear-thinking readers of Olbermann Watch--to document Oralmann's diseased rantings for posterity. Be an Olbermann Watch blogger--without all the muss and fuss! Comments are open!

This is the recappers' comment thread for tonight's Hour of Spin. Post your analysis of tonight's Hour of Spin. Be an Olbermann Watch blogger--without all the muss and fuss. Comments are open!

This is tonight's open thread for tonight's Hour of Spin. We need you to document the outrageous lies and vertiginous spin of the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann. Watch Oralmann if you dare, and do your recapping right here. Comments are open!

This is tonight's open thread for your comments and recapping of Countdown. Enjoy tonight's Hour of Spin, if you dare. Comments are open!

When the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann attacked Red Eye the other night, we knew the blowback would be coming. Host Greg Gutfeld delivered the smackdown, and ombudsman Andy Levy followed up with a few parting shots:

Found by a cleaning lady at MSNBC studios . . . a piece of executive-sized stationery with the initials K.O.

__ Browbeat the interns.

__ Call the Dale Carnegie people. Demand refund.

__ Check Daily Kos threads to find out what the kids want to hear tonight.

__ Repeatedly stab photo of Bill O'Reilly muttering oaths and curses.

__ Taunt CM, RM about my salary increase.

__ Renew "Verbal Advantage" subscription.

__ Send vocabulary out to be waxed.

__ Hit GoDaddy. Register InsufferableTwit.com and PompousGeek.tv

__ Hit Netflix. Put "Reds" at the top of the queue. Again.

[As crossposted at ChrisMatthewsLeg.com]

This is the recappers' comment thread for tonight's Hour of Spin. It falls on you--the clear-thinking readers of Olbermann Watch--to document Keith Oralmann's diseased rantings for posterity. Comments are open!

Yes this is your Wednesday thread to recap The Hour of Spin. But tonight we have a special bonus: dramatic readings from the blue blog outrage over the Blago scandal! Since we know the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann uses blue blogs as news sources, consider this a window into the sort of diseased dementia that informs Monkeymann's 'newscast' night after night...

This is the recappers' comment thread for tonight's Hour of Spin. Post your analysis of tonight's Hour of Spin. Be an Olbermann Watch blogger--without all the muss and fuss. Comments are open!

This is tonight's open thread for tonight's Hour of Spin. We need you to document the outrageous lies and vertiginous spin of the infamous, deplorable Keith Olbermann. Watch Oralmann if you dare, and do your recapping right here. Comments are open!

We've got our own nomination for Worst Person in the World: Cindy Babcock Deutsch is the President of the New Rochelle School Board.

Ms. Babcock Deutsch runs a school district that thinks its a good idea not just to ban books but to literally tear pages out of books deemed "inappropriate" by school officials.

Admittedly, Girl, Interrupted is not my favorite movie but you just don't rip pages out of books - ever.

We've never lobbied Keith Olbermann for a WPITW before but in this case a special effort is warranted. Plus, Keith, you get to run video clips of Winona Ryder AND Angela Jolie.

UPDATE: Good news!

Apparently, the board members read blogs - and did not like what they were reading about themselves. Good work, everyone!

Facing Firestorm of Criticism, New Rochelle Schools Relent on "Girl, Interrupted" Censorship