Olbermann Goes off on Hillary

San Francisco Chronicle - CA, USA - Ever since he started doing his "Special Comment" feature two years ago, Keith Olbermann's occasional personal commentaries at the end of his nightly "Countdown" show on MSNBC have been aimed largely at conservatives, namely G.W. Bush. We all remember when KO told the Prez, "You, sir, are a bold-faced liar." And on another night, he called Bush a "fascist."

KO's run of GOP love ended Wednesday night when Olbermann let loose with a blistering, nearly 10-minute takedown of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton that was unlike anything you'd hear on the nightly network news.

But in the wake of Geraldine Ferraro's remarks about Sen. Barack Obama recently, KO couldn't take it anymore. Olbermann ripped into Clinton Wednesday and her advisers for their "tepid response to this Ferraro disaster." "Senator, their words and your own are now slowly killing the chances for any Democrat to become president," he said.

"In fact, senator, you are now campaigning as if Barack Obama were the Democrat and you were the Republican." Yeow.

KO's point is that the Clinton campaign -- through a series of racially-tinged comments -- is sounding like it has "a desire to hear the kind of casual prejudice which still haunts the society voiced." Or, as KO put it, Clinton`s campaign is going "back into the vocabulary of David Duke." Duke -- grateful that anyone still mentions the ex-KKKer's name on basic cable -- had a response Thursday to KO's shout-out.