Hypocritical Olbermann Maligns Hume for Using 'Lunatic-Fringe' MRC

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The Media Research Center's annual “DisHonors Awards,” held Thursday night, furnished MSNBC's Keith Olbermann with comments to ridicule, but his rants exposed his own hypocrisy. As Brit Hume accepted our “William F. Buckley Jr. Award for Media Excellence” he thanked the MRC for providing information he could use, leading Olbermann to denounce Hume at the top of Friday's Countdown: “Brit Hume's dumbfounding admission. He was fed a buffet of daily talking points by an ultra-conservative media site and quote 'we certainly made tremendous use of it.'”

As if Olbermann doesn't graze a “buffet of daily talking points” from an “ultra-liberal media site.” The headline over a post earlier in the day on Media Matters' “County Fair” blog: “Accepting Buckley award, Fox's Hume thanked Media Research Center 'for the tremendous amount of material' they 'provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report.'” Unlike Olbermann, however, Hume almost always credited the MRC so viewers were informed of his source.

Before subsequently reading the Hume quote verbatim as transcribed by Media Matters, Olbermann charged “Brit Hume admits that for years he's been reading daily talking points, from a lunatic-fringe right wing Web site, on the news” and that Hume “made an admission at a DC dinner last night as startling as if he had confessed to making up the news out of whole cloth or reading it off a ouija board.”

“Plumber Joe” also aroused Olbermann's interest as he set up a brief soundbite by mis-naming the MRC: “The Media Research Council, which is a lunatic-fringe Web site run by the perpetually angry Brent Bozell, hosted Joe the Plumber last night, Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, and Joe the Plumber likes his snake.” Viewers heard from Wurzelbacher: “You got all this love in this room and everything. I'm horny.”

Of course, Olbermann preferred his homosexual innuendo to any context. Wurzelbacher was on stage to accept, standing in for ABC's Bill Weir, “The Obamagasm Award.” Weir won for ruminating over how “even the seagulls must have been awed by the blanket of humanity” at Obama's inauguration. Before that award, Olbermann's colleague, Chris Matthews, earned the “The Media Messiah Award” for boasting Obama gave him a “thrill going up my leg.” So Wurzelbacher's quip came after six nominee videos (three in each category) of journalists oozing over Obama.

The video above, about 1:30, contains four clips of Olbermann's remarks about the MRC, Wurzelbacher and Hume. (MP3 audio)

Olbermann on Hume on the Friday, March 20 Countdown:

Tease:

Worsts: Brit Hume's dumbfounding admission. He was fed a buffet of daily talking points by an ultra-conservative media site and quote 'we certainly made tremendous use of it.'”

Plug:

Brit Hume admits that for years he's been reading daily talking points, from a lunatic-fringe right wing Web site, on the news.

Worst Person in the World segment:

Our runner-up, Brit Hume from Fixed News. For most of its history host of its purported straight newscast and chief of its Washington bureau made an admission at a DC dinner last night as startling as if he had confessed to making up the news out of whole cloth or reading it off a ouija board. “I want to say a word, however, of thanks, to Brent [Bozell] and to the team at the Media Research Center and all the contributors for the tremendous amount of material that the Media Research Center provided me for so many years when I was anchoring Special Report. I don't know what we would have done without them. It was a daily, sort of a buffet of material to work from, and we -- we -- we certainly made tremendous use of it.'”

Don't know what you would have done without them Brit? Might have done the news!