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Frank Chu, a San Francisco-area street protester, holding up one of his characteristic protest signs

Street protesting is a form of individual public demonstration, more prevalent in larger cities.

Characteristically, street protesters work alone, gravitating towards areas of high foot traffic, and employing handmade placards such as sandwich boards or picket signs in order to maximize exposure and interaction with the public. Courthouses and other government offices are favorite locations, used as a dramatic backdrop to highlight the particular issues or injustices (often of a highly personal nature) with which the demonstrator is concerned.

Whether by choice or circumstance, street protesters are often homeless. They are often described as a "fixture" of the landscape or local flavor, due to the visibility afforded by their unusual degree of dedication.

Well-known street protesters[link]

• Frank Chu, San Francisco
• Bob Lansberry, Pittsburgh
• Brian Haw, Parliament Square, London
• Juan, Seattle
• Robin Edgar, Montreal, where he pickets the Unitarian Church, also writes denunciations of Unitarian Universalists on his blog, "The Emerson Avenger."

See also[link]

• Conspiracy theory
• Paranoia

This activism-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Peter Schiff

Austrian School
Born	(1963-03-23) March 23, 1963 (age 49)
Nationality	United States
Field	Financial Economics
Alma mater	U.C. Berkeley (B.B.A.), 1987[1]
Opposed	John Maynard Keynes,[2] Alan Greenspan,[3][4][5] Ben Bernanke,[6][7][8] Paul Krugman,[9] Christopher Dodd,[10] Barack Obama,[11]
Influences	Irwin Schiff, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard

Peter David Schiff (pronounced /ˈʃɪf/; born March 23, 1963) is an American businessman, investment broker, author and financial commentator. Schiff is CEO and chief global strategist^[1] of Euro Pacific Capital Inc., a broker-dealer based in Westport, Connecticut^[12] and CEO of Euro Pacific Precious Metals, LLC, a gold and silver dealer based in New York City.^[13]

Schiff frequently appears as a guest on financial television and is often quoted in major financial publications. He is host of The Peter Schiff Show, a radio show broadcast on terrestrial and internet radio. He is a frequent guest on internet radio^[14][15][16] as well as the host of the former podcast Wall Street Unspun.^[14][17] In 2010 Schiff ran as a candidate in the Republican primary for the United States Senate seat from Connecticut.^[18]

Schiff is known for his bearish views on the dollar and dollar denominated assets, while bullish on investment in tangible assets as well as foreign stocks and currencies.

Early life and education[link]

Peter Schiff was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, Irwin Schiff, is a prominent figure in the U.S. tax protester movement, currently serving a 13-year sentence for tax evasion.^[19] Peter Schiff attended Beverly Hills High School in California,^[20] and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1987 with a Bachelor's degree in finance and accounting.^[1]

Financial career[link]

Schiff began his career as a financial consultant at a Shearson Lehman Brothers brokerage.^[1] In 1996 Schiff and a partner acquired a small brokerage firm that had been founded in 1980, reincorporated it in California and renamed it Euro Pacific Capital.^[21][22] The company today has more than 15,000 clients^{[citation needed]} and six offices nationwide, with its headquarters in Westport, Connecticut.^[12][21][23]

According to a 2005 article in The Advocate of Stamford, Connecticut Schiff relocated the firm to Darien, Connecticut to find brokers "who think like him". The New York Metropolitan Area, Schiff says, has the biggest concentration of brokers in the country, making it easier to recruit employees.^[24] The company has offices in Newport Beach, California as well as in Scottsdale, Arizona, Palm Beach, Florida, Los Angeles and New York City. Euro Pacific Capital also holds the exclusive rights to broker some Perth Mint gold products in the United States.^[25]

Economic forecasts[link]

Peter Schiff voices strong support for the Austrian School of economic thought, first introduced to him by his father.^{[26][27][28][29]}

2002–2008[link]

In his 2007 book Crash Proof, Schiff wrote that United States economic policies were fundamentally unsound, and predicted that the United States dollar would lose much of its value.^[3] Schiff believed that the imbalance between the amount of goods the U.S. consumed and what it produced would eventually lead to problems for the U.S. economy.^[30][31] As a remedy Schiff favored increased personal savings and production which he said would stimulate economic growth.^[32] Schiff cited the U.S.'s low personal savings rate as one of the causes of its transformation from the world's largest creditor nation in the 1970s to the largest debtor nation in the year 2000.^[33] Schiff attributed the low savings rate to higher inflation and the artificially low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve.^[34]

In a May 2002 interview with Southland Today, Schiff predicted that the economic downturn triggered by the bursting of the dot-com stock market bubble, an event that he had also forecast well in advance, would lead to a bear market likely to last "another 5 to 10 years."^[35][36] Later that year, following a 30% decline in the Dow Jones, Schiff reversed his call, and became bullish on U.S. stocks in nominal terms. However, he remained bearish in gold terms. In November 2002, as Schiff predicted, US stock indexes began a nominal bull market uptrend that held steady for five years,^[37] until reversing course in 2008, when they began a decline to less than half of their peak 2008 values,^[38] followed in 2009 by the Dow climbing 61% from its low point over the following year.^[39] However, priced in gold, U.S. stocks remained in a bear market the entire time. In May of 2002, the date of the Southland Today interview,^[40] the Dow Jones was worth over 34 ounces of gold. By 2011 the Dow fell below 6 ounces of gold, a nine-year decline of over 80%, in line with Schiff’s 2002 forecast.^[41]

In an August 2006 interview he said: "The United States economy is like the Titanic and I am here with the lifeboat trying to get people to leave the ship... I see a real financial crisis coming for the United States."^[42] On December 31, 2006 in debate on Fox News, Schiff forecast that "what's going to happen in 2007" is that "real estate prices are going to come crashing back down to Earth".^[42]

As part of these exchanges on Fox News and his repeated appearances on financial news network CNBC, Schiff had mentioned factors such as speculators and "the absence of lending standards" which are now seen by many^[43][44] to indeed be contributing factors to the housing crisis which began in 2007. On December 13, 2007 in a Bloomberg interview on the show Open Exchange, Schiff further added that he felt that the crisis would extend to the credit card lending industry.^[45] Following this observation, it was soon reported on December 23, 2007 by the Associated Press that "The value of credit card accounts at least 30 days late jumped 26 percent to $17.3 billion in October from a year earlier at 17 large credit card trusts examined by the AP... At the same time, defaults -- when lenders essentially give up hope of ever being repaid and write off the debt -- rose 18 percent to almost $961 million in October, according to filings made by the trusts with the Securities and Exchange Commission."^[46]

Since 2007, Schiff has stated many times that if the government doesn't change course there will be hyperinflation in the US.^[3] Schiff is one of a minority of economists credited with accurately predicting the financial crisis of 2007–2010 while "nearly all [macroeconomists] failed to foresee the recession despite plenty of warning signs".^[47][48] In his book Crash Proof, he described several aspects of the U.S. economy that would lead to a recession.^[3]

A YouTube video entitled "Peter Schiff was right" became popular in late 2008 and 2009.^[49][50] The video consists of a compilation of clips of his many appearances on various financial news programs from networks including CNBC, Fox News, MSNBC and Bloomberg, most of which took place from 2005 to 2007. In the video segments Schiff explains the fundamental problems he saw with the United States economy at that time. Schiff's warnings of a coming economic collapse earned him the moniker "Dr. Doom."^[22][51][52]

2009–present[link]

Despite predictions regarding the housing bubble and automotive industry difficulties coming to fruition, as early as 2009 Schiff was receiving criticism due to the performance of some of his client's accounts in 2008, as well as controversies over the predictions themselves. In January 2009, economic blogger and investment adviser Michael Shedlock reported, "I have talked with many who claim they have invested with Schiff and are down anywhere from 40% to 70% in 2008."^[53] Later that week an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal reporting that Schiff's broker-dealer firm, Euro Pacific Capital Inc., "advised its clients to bet that the dollar would weaken significantly and that foreign stocks would outpace their U.S. peers" and that instead, the dollar advanced against most currencies, "magnifying the losses from foreign stocks Mr. Schiff steered his investors into."^[54]

The Director of Communications at Schiff's investment firm responded to the original Shedlock piece by saying, "While it is true, that our accounts have suffered badly in 2008, a fact that we have never disputed or ran from, [Shedlock's] estimates for the size of our typical client losses are exaggerated and unfair."^[55][56] Schiff personally responded to Shedlock's criticism by saying, "to examine the effectiveness of my investment strategy immediately following a major correction by looking only at those accounts who adopted the strategy at the previous peak is unfair and distortive" and called Shedlock's blog entry "nothing more than an overt advertisement (and a highly deceptive one at that) to use my popularity to advance his career," adding that losses were felt mostly by recent clients and not by others.^[57]

Schiff responded similarly to criticisms made by Wade Slome of Sidoxia Capital Management, LLC. in a September 2009 blog entry entitled, "The Emperor Schiff Has No Clothes."^[36] Schiff stated not only were the losses suffered by his clients in 2008 highly exaggerated, but also that most of those losses have already been recouped, stating that many who were down then are now up, and most long-term clients were never down at all, but merely temporarily lost some of the profits they had earned over the years.^[36]

The January 2009 Wall Street Journal article discussed the value of Schiff's predictions, and stated how deficiencies "made mincemeat of investors who took his advice in 2008."^[54] In an interview the following week Schiff likened himself to billionaire investor Warren Buffett, saying they were both "buy and hold" long-term investors. Contrasting his negative press he compared claims about accounts managed under Schiff's firm to the stock market value of Buffett's company, saying: "His approach is you buy stocks and you never sell them—you hope to never sell them—and Berkshire Hathaway is down 40% in the last thirteen months; I don't see the Wall Street Journal saying 'Warren Buffett made mincemeat out of his clients.'"^[58] The Wall Street Journal also published a letter written by Schiff in response to his critics saying: "My central investing premise, a weakening dollar and safety in gold, commodities and foreign stocks, didn't materialize in 2008. But all the ingredients were (and remain) present for those movements to occur. Over the past year, market reactions that I didn't foresee—massive global deleveraging, a knee-jerk 'flight to quality' into U.S. Treasuries and a sharp counter trend rally in the U.S. dollar—have kept the scenario from playing out."^[59]

In a November 2009 videoblog, Schiff said that five stocks he picked for Fortune Magazine in January 2009 had gained a total of 360%.^[60][61]

In a March 2009 speech Schiff said that it would be impossible for the U.S. debt to China to be repaid unless the U.S. dollar's value is substantially diluted through inflation. In September 2009 Schiff said that "I would not be surprised to see [gold] at $5,000 over the next several years" and that the 2009 stock market rally was a "bear market rally".^[62]

According to economist Paul Krugman, Schiff's Austrian approach to economics led him to incorrectly predict hyperinflation in the United States.^[63]

Political career[link]

Schiff was an economic adviser to Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign. In support of Paul's economic revitalization plan, he said: "We need a plan that stimulates savings and production, not more of the reckless borrowing and consumption that got us into this mess in the first place. Ron Paul's plan is the only one that amounts to a step in the right direction. If you want meaningful change—for the better that is—Ron Paul is the only candidate capable of delivering it."^[64]

In 2008, Schiff also endorsed Murray Sabrin for the U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey.^[65]

In an interview in February 2009, Schiff's position was summarized as a nonpartisan critique of American policymakers, comparing former presidents George W. Bush to Herbert Hoover and President Barack Obama to former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, with neither of the more recent incumbents comparing favorably to the earlier ones.^[66]

Schiff supports the reduction of government economic regulation, and is concerned that President Obama's administration may increase such regulation.^[67] Schiff says that the economic crisis of the late-2000s provides an opportunity to transition from borrowing and spending, to saving and producing. He is critical of the U.S. government's efforts to "ease the pain" with economic stimulus packages and bailouts. According to Schiff, the U.S. government's approach of replacing "legitimate savings with a printing press" could result in hyperinflation.^[68]

2010 U.S. Senate campaign[link]

In December 2008, Connecticut citizens created a website encouraging Schiff to campaign against the incumbent Senator Christopher Dodd.^[69][70] Approximately 5,000 people made campaign contributions using the web site.^[69] On February 21, 2009, a moneybomb raised over $20,000 for Schiff's campaign.^[71] In a May 2009 video blog, Schiff said that he was seriously considering a run for the senate and when questioned by a Washington Post reporter, he said the chance of him entering politics was "better than 50-50".^[72] In June 2009 Schiff commissioned a poll of likely voters which indicated that he trailed Dodd in popularity by four percentage points.^[73] On July 9, 2009, Schiff launched an exploratory committee and an official campaign website.^[69] He began accepting donations in an attempt to see if "people who really believe in freedom, liberty, sound money and the constitution are prepared to support that with an actual political contribution or to volunteer their services and work on this campaign." He received over 10,000 donations and many e-mails from around the world.^[69]

After giving some hints on The Daily Show^[74] Schiff officially announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination on September 17, 2009, during the MSNBC Morning Joe show.^[18][75][76] By October 2009 Schiff had received more than 10,000 telephone calls and letters^[69] and raised over $1,960,000 (USD) in campaign contributions.

At the May 2010 Republican convention, Linda McMahon received the most delegate votes but not enough to prevent an August primary election. U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons received more than the required 15 percent of the total votes necessary to force the primary. Schiff then collected the signatures necessary to earn a position on the August 2010 GOP primary ballot, submitting at least 400 signatures over the state requirement.

In July 2010, Schiff's campaign received endorsements from Steve Forbes and Ron Paul.^[77][78]

In the Republican primary, held on August 10, 2010, Schiff lost the nomination to Linda McMahon.^[79] McMahon collected 49% of the vote, with Simmons on 28% and Schiff 23%.^[80]

Ultimately, the election was won by the Democratic Party primary winner, Richard Blumenthal.^[81]

Broadcasting[link]

From 2005 to 2010 Schiff hosted a weekly podcast named Wall Street Unspun. In October 2010 Schiff began hosting a new radio show named The Peter Schiff Show. The show is broadcast weekdays from 10am-noon ET on internet and terrestrial radio. The show has featured guests such as Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Niall Ferguson, Dennis Kucinich, Rick Santelli, and others.^[82]

Books[link]

Peter Schiff is the author of six books published by John Wiley & Sons. His book, Crash Proof 2.0, appeared on both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.

• Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse, February 2007, ISBN 978-0-470-04360-8 1
• The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down, 2008, ISBN 978-0-470-38378-0 2
• Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit From the Economic Collapse, 2nd Edition, September 2009, ISBN 978-0-470-47453-2 3
• The Little Book of Bull Moves, Updated and Expanded: How to Keep Your Portfolio Up When the Market Is Up, Down, Or Sideways, 2010, ISBN 0-470-64399-4 4
• How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes, 2010, ISBN 978-0-470-52670-5 5
• The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy---How to Save Yourself and Your Country, 2012, ISBN 978-1-250-00447-5

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Peter Schiff

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Peter Schiff

• Euro Pacific Capital US Brokerage Firm Website
• Euro Pacific Precious Metals Coin Company Website
• Schiff for Senate Official Campaign Website
• Peter Schiff Online, Official book site for Peter Schiff
• Peter Schiff radio, Schiff's daily radio show
• Peter Schiff's Official YouTube channel

Keith Olbermann
Olbermann in 2008
Born	Keith Theodore Olbermann[1] (1959-01-27) January 27, 1959 (age 53) New York City, United States
Education	B.S. Communications Arts
Alma mater	Cornell University
Occupation	sports announcer, broadcast journalist, political commentator
Years active	1980s–present
Height	1.92 m (6 ft 3 1⁄2 in)[2]
Television	Countdown with Keith Olbermann (2003–2012) SportsCenter (1992–1997) Football Night in America (2007–2010)
Awards	three Edward R. Murrow Awards[3]

Keith Theodore Olbermann ( /ˈoʊlbərmən/; born January 27, 1959) is an American political commentator and writer. Most recently, he was the chief news officer of the Current TV network and the host of the Current TV weeknight political commentary program, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, until March 30, 2012, a program he hosted with the same title and a similar format on MSNBC from March 2003 to January 2011.^[4][5]

During his time at MSNBC, Olbermann established a niche in cable news commentary, gaining note for his pointed criticism of mainly right-leaning politicians and public figures^{[6][7][8][9][10]} such as Fox News Channel commentator Bill O'Reilly,^[11][12] President George W. Bush and 2008 Republican presidential nominee, John McCain.^[13] Though he has been described as a "liberal", he has resisted being labelled politically, stating "I'm not a liberal. I'm an American".^[14]

Olbermann spent the first twenty years of his career in sports journalism. He was a sports correspondent for CNN and for local TV and radio stations in the 1980s, winning the Best Sportscaster award from the California Associated Press three times. He co-hosted ESPN's SportsCenter from 1992 to 1997. From 1998 to 2001, he was a producer and anchor for Fox Sports Net and a host of Major League Baseball on Fox.

Early life[link]

Olbermann was born January 27, 1959, in New York City to Marie Katherine (née Charbonier),^[15] a preschool teacher, and Theodore Olbermann, a commercial architect,^[9] and is of German descent.^[16] He has one younger sister, Jenna, who was born in 1968.^[17] Olbermann grew up in a Unitarian household^[18] in the town of Hastings-on-Hudson^[19] in Westchester County, and attended Hackley School^[9][10] in nearby Tarrytown.

Olbermann became a devoted fan of baseball at a young age, a love he inherited from his mother who was a lifelong New York Yankees fan.^[15] As a teenager, he often wrote about baseball card-collecting and appeared in many sports card-collecting periodicals of the mid-1970s. He is also referenced in Sports Collectors Bible, a 1979 book by Bert Sugar, which is considered one of the important early books for trading card collectors.^[20]

While at Hackley, Olbermann began his broadcasting career as a play-by-play announcer for WHTR. After graduating from Hackley in 1975, Olbermann enrolled at Cornell University at the age of 16.^[21] At college, Olbermann served as sports director for WVBR, a student-run commercial radio station in Ithaca.^[21] Olbermann graduated from Cornell in 1979 with a B.S. in communications arts.^[22]

Sports broadcasting[link]

Olbermann began his professional career at UPI and the RKO Radio Network before joining then nascent CNN in 1981. Among the early stories he covered was the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid including the "Miracle on Ice."^[21] In the early-to-mid '80s he was a sportscaster on the old WNEW 1130-AM radio station in New York City. Also in the mid-1980s, he did the voice-over on the USA Cable Network's "Cartoon Express", with cheering kids heard in the background. In 1984, he briefly worked as a sports anchor at WCVB-TV in Boston, before heading to Los Angeles to work at KTLA and KCBS. His work there earned him 11 Golden Mike Awards, and he was named best sportscaster by the California Associated Press three times.^[23]

ESPN[link]

In 1992, Olbermann joined ESPN's SportsCenter, a position he held until 1997 with the exception of a period from 1993–1994 when he was at ESPN2 on SportsNight. He joined ESPN2 as their "marquee" personality to help launch the network.^[24][25] He often co-hosted SportsCenter 11 PM show with Dan Patrick, the two becoming a popular anchor team. In 1995, Olbermann won a Cable ACE award for Best Sportscaster.^[22] Olbermann later co-authored a book with Patrick called The Big Show about their experiences working at SportsCenter; he also said that the short-lived ABC dramedy Sports Night was based on his time on SportsCenter with Patrick.^[26] In his last year with KCBS before moving east to work for ESPN, Olbermann's salary was $475,000 but started "just over $150,000" with ESPN.^[27] He made $350,000 at the end of his tenure at ESPN.^[28]

Early in 1997, Olbermann was suspended for two weeks after he made an unauthorized appearance on The Daily Show on Comedy Central with then-host and former ESPN colleague Craig Kilborn. At one point in the show, he referred to Bristol, Connecticut (ESPN's headquarters), as a "'Godforsaken place."^[28] Later that year, Olbermann abruptly left ESPN under a cloud of controversy, apparently burning his bridges with the network's management;^[29] this began a long and drawn-out feud between Olbermann and ESPN. Between 1997 and 2007, incidents between the two sides included Olbermann's publishing an essay on Salon.com in November 2002, titled "Mea Culpa", in which he stated: "I couldn't handle the pressure of working in daily long-form television, and what was worse, I didn't know I couldn't handle it."^[30] The essay told of an instance when his former bosses remarked he had "too much backbone," a claim that is literally true, as Olbermann has six lumbar vertebrae instead of the normal five.^[30]

In 2004, Olbermann was not included in ESPN's guest lineup for its 25th anniversary SportsCenter "Reunion Week," which saw Craig Kilborn and Charley Steiner return to the SportsCenter set. In 2007, ten years after Olbermann's departure, in an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, he said: "If you burn a bridge, you can possibly build a new bridge, but if there's no river any more, that's a lot of trouble." During the same interview, Olbermann stated that he had recently learned that as a result of ESPN's agreeing to let him return to the airwaves, he was banned from ESPN's main (Bristol, Connecticut) campus.^[31]

[edit] Post-SportsCenter

In 1998, Olbermann joined Fox Sports Net as anchor and executive producer for The Keith Olbermann Evening News, a sportscast similar to SportsCenter, airing weekly on Sunday evenings. While at Fox, he again hosted the 2000 World Series as well as Fox Broadcasting's baseball Game of the Week. In May and July 1999, Olbermann also guest starred ten times on the Hollywood Squares.^[32]

According to Olbermann, he was demoted by Fox when he asked for a slight reduction in duties for health reasons, and then was fired from Fox in 2001 after reporting on rumors that Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corporation owns Fox, was planning on selling the Los Angeles Dodgers.^[33] Olbermann characterized the demotion as "blackmail".^[34] When asked about Olbermann, Murdoch said: "I fired him...He's crazy."^[35][36] News Corp. went on to sell the Dodgers to Frank McCourt in 2004. That year, Olbermann remarked, "Fox Sports was an infant trying to stand [in comparison to ESPN], but on the broadcast side there was no comparison—ESPN was the bush leagues."^[21]

After Olbermann left Fox Sports in 2001, he provided twice-daily sports commentary on the ABC Radio Network, reviving the "Speaking of Sports" and "Speaking of Everything" segments begun by Howard Cosell.^[37]

In 2005, Olbermann made a return to ESPN on the radio when he began co-hosting an hour of the syndicated Dan Patrick Show on ESPN radio, a tenure that lasted until Patrick left ESPN on August 17, 2007.^[38] Olbermann and Patrick referred to this segment as "The Big Show," just as their book was known. Patrick often introduced Olbermann with the tagline "saving the democracy," a nod to his work on Countdown.

On April 16, 2007, Olbermann was named co-host of Football Night in America, NBC's NFL pre-game show that precedes their Sunday Night NFL game, a position which reunited him in 2008 with his former SportsCenter co-anchor Dan Patrick. Olbermann left the show prior to the start of the 2010 season.^[39]

News journalism[link]

In 1997, Olbermann left ESPN to host a primetime show on MSNBC, The Big Show with Keith Olbermann (ESPN objected to the use of the title).^[28] The news-driven program, with substantial discussion, relied on Olbermann to carry the 8 to 9 PM hour.^[28] The show typically covered three or four topics in a one-hour broadcast. Olbermann also hosted two Sunday editions of NBC Nightly News and once co-anchored a Saturday edition of the Today show.^[40][41] During that period, Olbermann along with Hannah Storm, also co-hosted NBC Sports' pre-game coverage of the MLB 1997 World Series.

When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke in 1998, The Big Show with Keith Olbermann morphed into White House in Crisis. Olbermann became frustrated as his show was consumed by the Lewinsky story. In 1998, he stated that his work at MSNBC would "make me ashamed, make me depressed, make me cry."^[29] Olbermann left MSNBC for Fox Sports Net shortly thereafter.

After leaving Fox Sports in 2001, Olbermann returned once more to news journalism. In 2003, his network won an Edward R. Murrow Award for writing on the "Keith Olbermann Speaking of Everything" show.^[42] In addition, Olbermann wrote a weekly column for Salon.com from July 2002 until early 2003,^[43] worked for CNN as a freelance reporter,^[21] and was a fill-in for newscaster Paul Harvey.^[44][45]

Olbermann revived his association with MSNBC in 2003 briefly as a substitute host on Nachman and as an anchor for the network's coverage of the war in Iraq.

[edit] Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Olbermann's own show, Countdown, debuted on March 31, 2003, in the 8 p.m. ET time slot previously held by programs hosted by Phil Donahue and, briefly, Lester Holt. On October 13, 2004, Olbermann launched Bloggermann, his Countdown blog, hosted on MSNBC.com.^[46] Olbermann used the open format of the blog to expand on facts or ideas alluded to in the broadcast, to offer personal musings and reactions. However, in February 2007, Olbermann launched a new blog, The News Hole.

Countdown's format, per its name, involves Olbermann ranking the five biggest news stories of the day or sometimes "stories my producers force me to cover," as Olbermann puts it. This is done in numerically reverse order, counting down with the first story shown being ranked fifth but apparently the most important. The segments ranked numbers two and one typically are of a lighter fare than segments ranked five through three. The first few stories shown are typically oriented toward government, politics, and world events. His stories usually involve celebrities, sports, and, regularly and somewhere in the middle, the bizarre, in a segment he calls "Oddball." Opinions on each are offered by Olbermann and interviewed guests. Olbermann has been criticized for only having guests that agree with his perspective. Former Los Angeles Times television critic Howard Rosenberg stated that "Countdown is more or less an echo chamber in which Olbermann and like-minded bobbleheads nod at each other."^[47]

In a technique similar to that of former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite in connection to the Iran Hostage Crisis,^[48] Olbermann for many years closed^[49] the program by counting the days since May 1, 2003, the day that President George W. Bush declared the end of "major combat operations" in Iraq under a banner that read "Mission Accomplished", and then crumpling up his notes, throwing them at the camera and saying "Good night and good luck" in the mode of another former CBS newsman, Edward Murrow. Olbermann discounts this gesture to his hero as "presumptuous" and a "feeble tribute." ^[50]

On February 16, 2007, MSNBC reported that Olbermann had signed a four-year extension on his contract with MSNBC for Countdown which also provided for his hosting of two Countdown specials a year to be aired on NBC as well as for his occasional contribution of essays on NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams.^[51]

Olbermann co-anchored, with Chris Matthews, MSNBC's coverage of the death of fellow NBC News employee Tim Russert on June 13, 2008.^[52] He presented a tribute, along with several fellow journalists, in honor of Russert.^[53]

During the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Olbermann co-anchored MSNBC's coverage with Chris Matthews until September 7, 2008, when they were replaced by David Gregory after complaints from both outside and inside of NBC that they were making partisan statements.^[13] This apparent conflict of interest had been an issue as early as May 2007, when Giuliani campaign officials complained about his serving in dual roles, as both a host and a commentator.^[54] Despite this, Countdown was broadcast both before and after each of the presidential and vice-presidential debates, and Olbermann and Matthews joined Gregory on MSNBC's Election Day coverage.^[55] Olbermann and Matthews also led MSNBC's coverage of the inauguration of President Barack Obama.^[56][57]

In November 2008, it was announced that Olbermann had signed a four-year contract extension worth an estimated $30 million.^[58]

Feud with Bill O'Reilly[link]

Since beginning Countdown's "Worst Person in the World" segment in July 2005, Olbermann has repeatedly awarded Bill O'Reilly, host of The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel, the dubious honor.^[6] The feud between the anchors originated with Olbermann's extensive coverage of a 2004 sexual harassment suit brought against O'Reilly by former Fox News Channel producer Andrea Mackris during which Olbermann asked Countdown viewers to fund the purchase of lurid audio tapes allegedly held by Mackris.^[59][60] In 2008 O'Reilly decided to avoid mentioning Olbermann's name on the air, and once cut off a caller who mentioned Olbermann.^[61] O'Reilly has also led campaigns against MSNBC's political coverage without ever specifically mentioning Olbermann.^[6][62][63] The rivalry continued when in 2006 at Television Critics' Association in California, Olbermann donned a mask of O'Reilly and made a Nazi salute, leading to a letter of protest from the Anti-Defamation League.^[64][65][66]

In an article on "perhaps the fiercest media feud of the decade", the New York Times's Brian Stelter noted that as of early June 2009 the "combat" between the two hosts seems to have abruptly ended due to instructions filtered down to Olbermann and O'Reilly from the chief executives of their respective networks.^[67] On the August 3, 2009 edition of Countdown, Olbermann asserted that he had made statements to Stelter before the article was published denying that he was a party to such a deal, or that there was such a deal between NBC and Fox News, or that any NBC executive had asked him to change Countdown's content. Olbermann maintained that he had stopped joking about O'Reilly because of O'Reilly's attacks of George Tiller, and soon resumed his criticism of O'Reilly.^[68]

Suspension[link]

On October 28, 2010, days before the 2010 U.S. elections, Olbermann donated $2,400 each to three Democratic candidates for Congress: Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway, and Arizona Democratic Representatives Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords.^[69] Grijalva had appeared on Olbermann's show immediately before Olbermann mailed the donations. In response, on November 5, MSNBC President Phil Griffin suspended him indefinitely without pay for violating a network policy which required employees to obtain approval from management before making political contributions.^[70][71] An online petition calling for his reinstatement received over 250,000 signatures;^[72] two days after the suspension began, Griffin announced that Olbermann would return to the air on November 9.^[72]

Departure[link]

On January 21, 2011, Olbermann announced his departure from MSNBC and the episode would be the final episode of Countdown.^[73][74] MSNBC issued a statement that it had ended its contract with Olbermann, with no further explanation. Additional reporting in the days immediately following suggested that the negotiations for the end of Olbermann's tenure at MSNBC had begun soon after the end of his suspension.^[75]

Current TV and FOKNewsChannel.com[link]

On February 8, 2011, it was announced that Olbermann had taken the position of chief news officer for the Al Gore/Joel Hyatt–owned public affairs channel Current TV and would begin hosting a one-hour prime time program on the network.^[76] The new show was scheduled to air at 8 PM Eastern — the same time slot that Countdown was in.^[77] On April 26, 2011 it was announced that Olbermann's new show would debut on June 20 and would be named Countdown with Keith Olbermann.^[78] Olbermann was also heavily involved in the development of the rest of the network's news programming.^[79] The deal also included an equity stake in Current TV.^[80]

During the interim between shows, Olbermann launched an "official not-for-profit" blog called FOKNewsChannel.com, "FOK" being an abbreviation for "Friends Of Keith". The blog featured political commentaries by Olbermann—including viral video versions of Countdown's "Special Comment" and "Worst Person" segments, as well as photographs of his outings at professional baseball games.^[81] On May 29, 2011, the FOKNewsChannel.com domain redirected to the Current website promoting the June 20 launch.^[82]

Olbermann was fired on March 30, 2012. In a statement from Current TV, they stated that "Current was [...] founded on the values of respect, openness, collegiality, and loyalty to our viewers. Unfortunately these values are no longer reflected in our relationship with Keith Olbermann and we have ended it." Olbermann released his own statement, apologizing for "the failure of Current TV" and "that the claims against me implied in Current's statement are untrue and will be proved so in the legal actions I will be filing against them presently." His show was replaced by a show hosted by Eliot Spitzer.^[83][84]

Olberman was on This Week as a roundtable participant on Sunday April 22, 2012.

Political positions[link]

Viewpoints[link]

Although it began as a traditional newscast, Countdown with Keith Olbermann eventually adopted an opinion-oriented format. In a Countdown interview with Al Franken on October 25, 2005, Olbermann noted that in 2003, after having Janeane Garofalo and Franken on his show, a vice president of MSNBC had questioned him on inviting "liberals" on consecutive nights, contrasting that occurrence to the apparent ideological latitude he enjoyed at the time of the second Franken interview.^[85] In January 2007 The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz wrote that Olbermann was "position[ing] his program as an increasingly liberal alternative to The O'Reilly Factor."^[86] Much of the program has featured harsh criticism of prominent Republicans and right-leaning figures, including those who worked for or supported the George W. Bush Administration, 2008 Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain and running mate Governor Sarah Palin,^[13][87] and rival news commentator Bill O'Reilly, whom Olbermann has routinely dubbed the "Worst Person In The World".^[7]

During the 2008 Democratic Party primaries, Olbermann frequently chastised presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton for her campaign tactics against her principal opponent, Senator Barack Obama, and made her the subject of two of his "special comments".^[88][89] Olbermann has also posted on the liberal blog Daily Kos.^[90]

In November 2007, British newspaper The Daily Telegraph placed Olbermann at #67 on their Top 100 list of most influential US liberals. It said that he uses his MSNBC show to promote "an increasingly strident liberal agenda." It added that he would be "a force on the Left for some time to come."^[91] Avoiding ideological self-labeling, Olbermann described his reporting in 2006 to Salon.com, "I don’t think in these issues that I’m a liberal; I think that I’m an American. I think I’m acting almost as a historian on these particular things".^[7]

Before the 2010 Massachusetts special election, Olbermann called Republican candidate Scott Brown "an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, Tea Bagging supporter of violence against women, and against politicians with whom he disagrees".^[92] This was criticized by his colleague Joe Scarborough, who called the comments "reckless" and "sad".^[93] Yael T. Abouhalkah of the Kansas City Star said that Olbermann "crossed the line in a major way with his comments".^[94] Jon Stewart criticized him about this attack in his show by noting that it was "the harshest description of anyone I've ever heard uttered on MSNBC", following which Olbermann apologized by noting, "I have been a little over the top lately. Point taken. Sorry."^[95]

He has accused the Tea Party movement of being racist due to what he views as a lack of racial diversity at the events, using photos that show overwhelmingly Caucasian crowds attending the rallies. In response, the Dallas Tea Party invited Olbermann to attend one of their events and also criticized his network for a lack of racial diversity, pointing out that an online banner of MSNBC personalities that appears on the website shows only white personalities. Olbermann declined the invitation, citing his father's prolonged ill health and hospitalization and noted that the network has minority anchors, contributors and guests.^[96]

Criticism of the Bush administration[link]

In Olbermann's "Special Comment" segment on July 3, 2007, he called President George W. Bush's commutation of Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence the "last straw" and called for the resignation of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.^[97]

On his February 14, 2008 "Special Comments" segment, Olbermann castigated Bush for threatening to veto an extension of the Protect America Act unless it provided full immunity from lawsuits to telecom companies.^[98] During the same commentary, Olbermann called Bush a fascist.^[98]

In a special comment on May 14, 2008, Olbermann criticized Bush for announcing that he had stopped playing golf in honor of American soldiers who died in the Iraq war. He stated that Bush never should have started the war in the first place, and he accused Bush of dishonesty and war crimes.^[9]

Baseball fan[link]

Olbermann is a dedicated baseball fan and historian of the sport, with membership in the Society for American Baseball Research.^[99] In 1973, when he was only 14 years old, Card Memorabilia Associates published his book The Major League Coaches: 1921–1973. The September issue of Beckett Sports Collectibles Vintage included a T206 card that depicted Olbermann in a 1905-era New York Giants uniform.^[100] He argues that New York Giants baseball player Fred Merkle has been unduly criticized for his infamous baserunning mistake.^[101] He contributed the foreword to More Than Merkle (ISBN 0-8032-1056-6), a book requesting amnesty for "Merkle's Boner". Olbermann was also one of the founders of the first experts' fantasy baseball league, the USA Today Baseball Weekly League of Alternative Baseball Reality, and he gave the league its nickname "LABR".^[102] Olbermann wrote the foreword to the 2009 Baseball Prospectus Annual.^[103]

In March 2009, Olbermann began a baseball-related blog entitled Baseball Nerd. He has also written a series of articles on baseball cards for the Sports Collectors Digest.^[104]

Personal life[link]

In June 2006, Olbermann began dating Katy Tur, now a reporter with WNBC-TV.^[10][105] According to Mediaite, the couple broke up in 2009 after three years of cohabitation.^[106]

Olbermann suffers from a mild case of coeliac disease,^[107] as well as restless legs syndrome.^[9] In August 1980, he also suffered a head injury while "leaping" onto a New York City Subway train.^[108] This head injury permanently upset his equilibrium, resulting in his avoidance of driving.^[9] Along with Bob Costas, he supports the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation as an honorary board member.^[109]

During a period in the mid-1990s, Olbermann appeared in a series of Boston Market advertisements, in which he would instruct a group of underweight models to "Eat something!"^[28]

Olbermann's father, Theodore, died on March 13, 2010 of complications from colon surgery the previous September. His mother had died several months before.^[110] Olbermann had cited the need to spend time with his father for taking a leave of absence shortly before his father's death, occasionally recording segments to air at the beginning of the shows which Lawrence O'Donnell guest hosted in his absence, giving his views on the state of the American health care system and updating viewers on his father's condition.^[111]

Career timeline[link]

• SportsCenter, co-anchor (1992–1997)^[112]
• The Big Show, anchor (1997–1998)^[112]
• White House in Crisis, anchor (1997–1998)^[112]
• Major League Baseball on Fox, studio host (1999–2000)^[112]
• The Keith Olbermann Evening News, anchor (1998–2001)^[112]
• Football Night in America, co-host (2007–2010)
• Countdown with Keith Olbermann, anchor (MSNBC: 2003–2011; Current TV: 2011–2012)^[112]

Bibliography[link]

• The Major League Coaches: 1921–1973 (Card Memorabilia Associates, 1973).
• The Big Show: Inside ESPN's Sportscenter (Atria, 1997) (coauthor: Dan Patrick). ISBN 0-671-00918-4.
• The Worst Person In the World and 202 Strong Contenders (Wiley, September 2006). ISBN 0-470-04495-0.
• Truth and Consequences: Special Comments on the Bush Administration's War on American Values (Random House, December 2007). ISBN 978-1-4000-6676-6.
• Pitchforks and Torches: The Worst of the Worst, from Beck, Bill, and Bush to Palin and Other Posturing Republicans (Wiley, October 25, 2010). ISBN 0-470-61447-1.

References[link]