The American Spectator

As John Tabin reports, Keith Olbermann has been canned. This after being temporarily suspended in November for making political campaign contributions to Democratic congressional candidates.

Olbermann’s suspension in November was bogus. Say what you will about the man, he never hid his politics. He never feigned fairness or balance like so many other Big Media blowhards do.

To the contrary: Olbermann wore his rabid left-wing views on his sleeve. That, after all, is why MSNBC hired him.

It’s not clear what now has precipitated Olbermann’s sudden and surprise resignation. The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz notes that Olbermann’s “combative style put him increasingly at odds with his network bosses.”

Conservatives are bound to have mixed feelings about Olbermann’s departure.

On the one hand, many will be glad to see this pompous, angry windbag leave the airwaves. As National Review’s Rich Lowry tweeted this evening: “Who now will be there to lecture us angrily and hatefully about the need for civility?”

In fact, Olbermann was a left-wing hypocrite. He angrily denounced conservatives for their alleged sins while he himself committed flagrant crimes against fairness and the truth.

But that is precisely why conservatives are going to miss him: Olbermann was a useful and effective foil.

Indeed, he was sort of the media version of Tip O’Neil to our Ronald Reagan-like journalistic face. He was our national scold, our angry leftist father who bitterly denounced our right-wing sins. Who can replace him?

Well, apparently, MSNBC is going to have another angry leftist, Lawrence O’Donnell, take over Olbermann’s 8:00 time slot.

O’Donnell’s show currently airs on MSNBC at 10:00. However, an equally left wing apparatchik, Ed Schultz, reportedly will move his show from 5:00 to 10:00 to fill that void.

So not much has changed really — just a shuffling of the chairs on the decks of the MSNBC Titanic, which gets beaten consistently and badly in the ratings wars by its arch-rival, Fox News.