Let's Play The Feud: Keith Olbermann Vs. Bill Simmons

For a man who by his won accord wants to be with his ill father, Keith Olbermann sure has been busy with other things this past week. First he made an appearance on The Daily Show as part of Jon Stewart's piece on the new social media sensation (and disturbed the crap out of me by suggesting that he or Jon Stewart needed to pull their pants down), Chatroulette, and now he has engaged in an online feud with Bill Simmons.

I will post the back and forth in an unedited stream for the sake of easiness and flow. Keith Olbermann's jabs come from his MLBlog, The Baseball Nerd while Bill Simmons' responses come from his Twitter account, sportsguy33

Olbermann started the fight in a post mainly about Johnny Orsino's Hall of Fame Candidacy

KO:

"I promised no politics here and I stick to it. But I never said anything about never mentioning other sports, although I think I'll start that rule about a paragraph from now. If you'd like to read the most poorly-informed conclusion I've come across in sports media this year, you have your link. Proceed with caution. In short, it is the contention that the comeback of Tiger Woods will be more difficult than the one Muhammad Ali faced in the 1960's. If the writer can let me know when Woods is punitively drafted by the military even though he is about eight years older than almost all the other draftees, I'll begin to take him seriously. In the interim I am again left to marvel how somebody can rise to a fairly prominent media position with no discernible insight or talent, save for an apparent ability to mix up a vast bowl of word salad very quickly."

BS: "I'm furious that my Tiger column distracted America from a detailed and only mildly creepy case for Johnny Orsino's Hall of Fame candidacy."

BS: "KO, please know the feeling is mutual. You're my worst case scenario for my career in 12 yrs: a pious, unlikable blowhard who lives alone."

BS: "I feel bad about saying Olbermann lives alone. I forgot about his cats."

KO:

"I'd also like to welcome new reader Bill Simmons, who has been kind enough to tweet about my note here last week already ceding him the dumbest sportswriting award of 2010 for his laugh-out-loud funny argument that the comeback of Tiger Woods (caught having repeated trouble with his putts) will be more difficult than that of Muhammad Ali (persecuted by the federal government for the color of his skin, his stance against the war, and his religious conversion, and effectively banned from his sport for two years).

(KO quotes 1st Simmons tweet)

This is pretty standard stuff for Mr. Simmons. Make a fool of yourself comparing Tiger Woods (loss of advertisers) to Muhammad Ali (loss of income, threatened loss of freedom), so change the topic - to an admittedly trivial column about a trivial moment from a marginal catcher named John Orsino.

Mr. Simmons resumes:

(KO quotes 2nd Simmons tweet)

This assumes that Mr. Simmons' career now is where mine was twelve years ago (anchoring SportsCenter, then my own MSNBC political show, anchoring NBC Weekend Nightly News, writing a best-selling sports book, etc). In fact, this assumes that this is Mr. Simmons' career, which is remarkable. Also, anybody who could write as many words without saying anything of consequence really should throw around the word "blowhard" as frequently as he would a street sewer cover.

Also, I don't think "pious" necessarily means what he thinks it does.

Having made his point 50% of his words ago, Mr. Simmons still continues. As usual:

(KO quotes Simmons 3rd tweet)


Mr. Simmons apparently uses, for factual research, old parody sketches from "Saturday Night Live." I'm not surprised. That was Ben Affleck. Thanks for playing.

I am surprised, however, to be able to shed some light on something that has been a prominent topic of late around the internet: the prospect that Mr. Simmons is leaving ESPN. Admittedly I am something of an authority on this process. Nonetheless, I was stunned to receive several emails from some of Mr. Simmons' bosses there, thanking me for pointing out the absurdity of, and the embarrassment to ESPN provided by, the Woods/Ali comparison.

About five years ago, I guess, somebody said Tony Kornheiser was the most uncontrollable, unmanageable talent in the history of ESPN. I was, of course, crushed (although I believe I got honorable mention). When ESPN bosses are writing me for helping them about somebody they claim has now lapped Tony and myself, I am left to conclude only that if Mr. Simmons does leave ESPN, it may not be entirely of his own choosing.

And we now encourage Mr. Simmons to again falme [sic] the comments section under various identities, to his heart's content. This is a managed site, and they can take 'em down. But enjoy yourself.

BS: "I've said enough. This was not why I got into writing. RT @rgspiegel: Anxiously awaiting ur response to Olbermann...this should be good."

Thus ends another online feud involving Keith Olbermann!

My thoughts on this:

1). Bill Simmons working with ESPN has absolutely nothing to do with any of this at all, right? RIGHT? Yeah, that's about as true as saying the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to win the Stanley Cup this year.

2). Simmons' article is no doubt controversial, and if Olbermann wants to take the time to criticize it, that's fine by me. I mean, the timing is a little suspect seeing as he is supposed to be with his father and not humiliating himself in a feud with one of the most popular sports writers in this country, but he has a right to his opinions to Simmons' piece.

3). Olbermann clearly does not understand or comprehend the amount of people that hate his guts and the amount of people that love Simmons. He is accusing all of the nasty comments he got in the comments section of the first blog post to be Simmons using different aliases. Sadly for him, he is mistaken. For starters, I read a post from someone at OlbermannWatch who said they went there and left a comment (they then copy and pasted the comment they left at The Baseball Nerd into the OlbermannWatch comments section), and that guy is not Bill Simmons, and secondly, does he really feel as if Simmons has no fans that will defend him to the death, regardless of what Simmons writes? Sheesh. Talk about delusional.

4). Lastly, am I the only one that sees Simmons being hypocritical here? First of all, his responses were not the great and read like he was the exact same thing he was accusing Olbermann of being, a pious blowhard? And secondly, if Simmons claims he is better than getting into an online fight, then why did he respond to Olbermann in the first place? Surely he was not dumb enough to think that Olbermann would not respond to his insults, right? Fitting how only after Olbermann responds with some accusations of him (albeit, seemingly crazy ones) does he then decide to be above all of this and declare himself better than getting into such a petty argument. Sheesh. Talk about a thin-skinned hypocrite.