Bristol may yet get a chance to confront Olbermann in person. In the second part of the interview, spurred on by Media Malpractice filmmaker John Ziegler, Bristol displays a willingness, even an eagerness, to appear on Countdown and let Olbermann take his best shots at her.

In case you missed it, Olbermann named Bristol Palin the “Worst Person in the World” on Monday’s Countdown for a weeks-old abstinence and safe sex PSA starring Palin and Jersey Shore’s “The Situation.” Olbermann’s criticism was based on the notion that unplanned single mother Bristol sets a poor example as an abstinence spokesperson, ignoring her obvious value as a cautionary figure. He also made a tone-deaf comparison to George W. Bush and 9/11 in the process.

Palin displayed a light touch in the radio interview, but the hosts employed a heavy-handed comparison of their own, likening Bristol’s situation to that of the late Yul Brynner, who famously appeared in an anti-smoking PSA, urging viewers from beyond the grave not to end up like him. While Bristol Palin’s status as a single mother certainly gives her standing to speak on the issue, she’s miles away from Brynner on the worst-case scenario spectrum.

Later in the interview, filmmaker John Ziegler joins the chorus of Olber-bashing, and when he reiterated his $100,000 challenge to debate Olbermann, Bristol chimed in that it would be “hilarious, sitting at that table with him, having a conversation. I just want to know why he would say that, though. What facts does he have behind that, and what have I done to deserve that (Worst Person) title?”

This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. Such a meeting would undoubtedly draw huge ratings, and would fit in nicely with his recent offer to have Michele Bachmann on the show. Perhaps he could do a theme night, adding Ziegler and Michelle Malkin to the roster.

Elsewhere in the interview, Bristol also quashes rumors that former First Dude Todd Palin might appear on Dancing with the Stars.

Here’s the full interview, from KWHL:

First, Olbermann looked at Ailes calling Stewart “crazy” and saying he “hates conservatives” (while referring to The Daily Beast only as “an Internet gossip site”), saying Ailes’ comments “prov[ed] my point about false equivalence.” And he told Stewart:

“Jon, I told you so. I mean, I might disagree with you, but I’d never think you were crazy or hateful. But Maher is right! One side sticks to the facts, and the other side is close to playing with its poop.”

Then, he took Ailes to task for his “Nazi” comments about NPR, which, frankly, was deserved. Criticize NPR all you want, but Nazi comparisons go beyond criticism, and despite his apology to the Anti-Defamation League, Ailes deserves to be called out on this one. Video of the segment below.

Overall, since the election is over, it looks like it’s back to the business as usual of sitting in the back of the class and hurling small spitballs at people who Olbermann does not like.

Watch the video from MSNBC below:

Maybe the culprit in this classroom actually did yawn, since the intellectually stimulating professor has been “hearing it in this room . . . like . . . regularly.”  Yet since it came right after he laughingly offered this pearl of wisdom: “telegram . . . nobody knows what a telegram is anymore because we don’t use them,” it sounded like that conveniently placed “yawn” was more like a groan in response to a pitiful attempt to be funny.  Either way, you have to admire the camaraderie of the students not to negotiate with a humorless teacher who has a shorter fuse than Mel Gibson, as the students refuse to rat on who actually did the deed.

So yawn or groan, you be the judge, but if your choice offends Professor Talbert get ready because his “bad side is as bad as [his] pleasant side is pleasant!”
Watch video below:

The segment had everything a fan could ask for in an Olbermann Worst Persons. He attacked Fox News, excuse me, Fixed News. He laid into the Rupert Murdoch. He even called for the end of someone’s career (in this case the Washington Post’s Tom Shales for this little goof up). Classic!

Love him or hate him, it’s good to have Keith back on the airwaves. Try as we might, we just can’t get a good enough Olbermann fix from Tweets alone.

Said Olbermann: “Apparently an intervention helped you at some point in the past, maybe it’s time to ask your friends for that help again.”

Now, you don’t have to take Glenn Beck seriously, and you don’t even have to have any compassion for him if you don’t want, but to joke about his recovery is to belittle the struggles of all alcoholics. I’m pretty sure that was not Keith’s intention, but that’s what happens when partisan rancor crowds out the rest of your field of vision.

It didn’t take much thinking to come to the conclusion that Beck’s Malia comments would net him Olbermann’s “Worst Person in the World” title yesterday, but the apology, where Beck admits he “should’ve know better,” raised a question of whether maybe he’d get that redemption he is always preaching about. He didn’t because, according to Olbermann, he brings Malia back into the national spotlight through the apology:

“Wait a minute! He did it again! He did the very thing he was apologizing for in the apology! … In apologizing for breaking his own ‘rule’ about leaving kids out of political debates, he put the president’s kids back into political debates. This guy is so feral that even in his brief moment of semi-sanity, he’s still completely nuts.”

“World’s Worsts” below:

Palin, at an event in Chicago, told a folksy anecdote about a man introducing himself to a woman as an Alaskan, and the woman’s fury upon finding out he was from the North. She described her veins popping out, “kinda like Rachel Maddow” (which she pronounced incorrectly), and then quipped that her mention would probably “help her ratings.” She later noted, when told that Chicago was enemy territory, that “this is Chicago, not MSNBC.”

For this, Olbermann crowned her the “Maestro of the bendy straw” and evoked what is by now the show’s slogan, “That woman is an idiot.” He also attacked her “lack of courage” in not appearing on MSNBC or holding open press conferences, and made fun of her event’s sponsor, a company that specializes in “back-up sub pumps.”

World’s Worst segment below:

“Worst Person in the World” is rarely a newsworthy segment since it’s possible to figure out the winners (losers?) on any given day within three to four guesses (any rotation of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, O’Reilly, and the first response of a Google “I’m Feeling Lucky” search for the word “conservative”). But tonight’s attack on O’Reilly is notable because both parties are half-wrong.

Olbermann’s mocking of O’Reilly’s “crack team” of investigators for not finding one instance of someone on Fox News claiming that Obamacare would criminalize not being insured is completely justified– many of the instances of this were either by close colleagues or on The O’Reilly Factor itself. Our managing editor Colby Hall pulled up a clip of Glenn Beck (not the same one as Olbermann’s) warning his audience that not having insurance could put them in jail.

And he noted what Olbermann chose to omit. All the quotes that Olbermann’s “crack team” found were from October or November, during which health care reform was still fragmented into various bills and the possibility of jail penalties for not following up properly to acquire insurance was still possible. Sure, O’Reilly was technically wrong– very wrong– to claim that no one on Fox News had ever claimed jail time was a possibility, but omitting the context in which it is possible O’Reilly was operating is just as disingenuous on Olbermann’s part.

Watch the video below:

Sometimes, Worst Person status isn’t enough. In last night’s Countdown, Keith Olbermann not only named Chicago Tea Patriots organizer Catherina Wojtowicz his Worst Person, but condemned her and her followers to hell for mocking a pro-health reform husband and wife who had lost their daughter-in-law and unborn grandchild to untreated double pneumonia.

When Dan and Midge Hough spoke in favor of health reform at a town hall meeting in Illinois earlier this month using their deep personal loss as a reference point, they were jeered by Chicago Tea Patriots in attendance. Wojtowicz later accused the couple of being Obama “operatives.”

A reporter for the Southtown Star verified that the Houghs’ story was true, and called the incident “a low mark in a very dark week:”

Catherina Wojtowicz, of Chicago’s Mount Greenwood community, an organizer for a Tea Party splinter group, Chicago Tea Party Patriots, falsely claimed that the Houghs fabricated their story. In an e-mail, she called them operatives of President Barack Obama who “go from event to event and (cry) the same story.”

When the Houghs spoke at the Lipinski event, some Tea Partiers ridiculed them. They moaned and rolled their eyes and interrupted. Midge Hough began to cry.

The audience, Wojtowicz later explained, was exasperated by stories of isolated tragedies that cloud debate over the health care bill itself.

“What we are talking about is the bill,” she said. “We’ve all had family members pass away, but would this health care bill really have prevented (Jenny’s) death? We do question it.”

It certainly was a low mark in a very dark week. What could be more illustrative of our state’s political marshland than openly mocking a grieving family?

Olbermann didn’t go for the same level of nuance: on his MSNBC.com page, referred to the Chicago Tea Patriots in question as “heartless teabaggers.” Still, he had an eloquent moment at the end of the segment:

After a local newspaper reporter verified the Houghs’ account, Ms. Wojtowicz defended herself by saying the protesters were frustrated by all these ‘isolated tragedies’ that get in the way of the discussion of the bill.

Ma’am, that’s what healthcare is: it’s a series of isolated tragedies. Isolated until they happen to you…

Moment of introspection accomplished, it was back to hyperbolic body blows: Olbermann went (non-denominationally) Biblical on Wojtowicz and the other Chicago Tea Partiers. “If any of the world’s major religions are right, ma’am, you, and for what you and the other people did to the Houghs, you’re going to hell.”

Here’s the video of the original town hall meeting (h/t Raw Story):

—Keith Olbermann shockingly declares Glenn Beck (a.k.a. ‘Lonesome Rhodes‘) his “Worst Person in the World.” He ridicules Beck’s claim that someone should call a “department of health and children’s services” over the media treatment of a 13-year-old Palin supporter’s shirt. (the girl was actually 17.)

Beck was referring to Norah O’Donnell’s interview with a 13 17-year-old Sarah Palin supporter, which some on the right have criticized as unfair, but which Olbermann said was a simple, honest fact-check. Never one to let hyperbole go unmatched, Olbermann pushed back by calling recent conservative moves, like the criticism of children for appearing in health reform ads and Representative John Shadegg‘s weird use of a baby in a health care debate, “child abuse.”

This all begins at the 1:10 mark in the video below.

First, a recap: as we wrote yesterday, Murdoch devoted a chunk of News Corporation’s recent earnings call to explaining Fox News’s beefs (beeves?) with the White House and MSNBC. He had this to say on the MSNBC side:

“We did not start this abuse, which we thought went way beyond … It was personal and went way beyond — not on me but on others. Finally, we had to allow people to retaliate. The moment they stop, we’ll stop. We don’t believe in it, and we don’t think it’s good business.”

A straightforward enough statement, Olbermann said, until you pick it apart and see that it implies that Murdoch not only overrides the “alleged news people of Fox, like Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly” in determining what goes on the air, but that Fox decides what stories to run not based on personal vendettas rather than actual news value:

Thus, simply, Rupert Murdoch has revealed his company’s news coverage and the people who deliver it are there simply to pursue their own petty vendettas. Rupert Murdoch: not only doing this carnival fun-house version of actual journalism, but stupid enough to admit it in public. Today’s worst person in the world.

Mediaite has called out Olbermann for the holes in his own news coverage, but in this case, he nailed Fox fairly well. It’s no great newsflash that Fox has an agenda in what it covers: see its blanket coverage of the White House’s feud with innocent cable network Fox News. But Murdoch’s talk of “allow[ing] people to retaliate” comes across as petty, especially so given the context.

Olbermann got some flak yesterday for playing hooky to watch baseball with his friend Sean Hannity — Mediaite commenter Puter Boi said that it proved that cable news feuds were as phony as pro wrestling. Maybe so, but this time, Olbermann didn’t hold back when he stepped into the ring.