‘You Selfish and Unfunny Scumbag’: Keith Olbermann Blasts Bill Maher for Scabbing in Broken-Clock Tirade
Last night, Bill Maher announced that he intends to cross the picket line of the WGA strike and return to work at his TV show Real Time “sans writers or writing." Amongst the overwhelmingly negative response to the decision by Maher’s peers, sports and political commentator Keith Olbermann attacked the terminally smug centrist, calling him “selfish” and “unfunny” while striking the first blow in a battle of Pot vs. Kettle.
“It has been five months, and it is time to bring people back to work,” Maher wrote in the tweet announcing his decision to defy the strike and resume Real Time. “The writers have important issues that I sympathize with, and hope they are addressed to their satisfaction, but they are not the only people with issues, problems, and concerns. Despite some assistance from me, much of the staff is struggling mightily.” Maher’s crossing of the picket line was preempted by weeks of criticism of the WGA and SGA, addressing the latter on his “Club Random” podcast, saying, “They kind of believe that you’re owed a living as a writer, and you’re not. This is show business.”
Olbermann, who famously operated in a similar style to Maher as a smarmy center-left shit-stirrer during his 8 years at MSNBC on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, responded to Maher’s announcement tweet, “Without writers, the new weekly SCAB edition of ‘Real Time With @billmaher’ will be 83 seconds long,” which, coincidentally, is exactly how long we can stand to listen to Olbermann’s podcast about the Trump trial.
“As somebody who's known you since 1978: Fuck you, Bill, you selfish and unfunny scumbag,” Olbermann emphatically added, echoing a sentiment that many of us lucky enough not to know Maher personally have felt since he started shilling for anti-vaxxers and casually lobbing N-bombs for no reason.
Maher’s condescending pseudo-intellectual shtick has long been a problem in political discourse for how often he pulls off the internet contrarian trick of proudly declaring, “Both sides are equally stupid and the only smart people are fence-sitters like me,” but, in recent months, his trend towards apologist for institutions like the AMPTP have shown his true colors as a “F- you, got mine” conservative masquerading as a moderate.
Olbermann, on the other hand, has maintained a somewhat consistent ideology while playing the same smug game of “Everyone’s an idiot besides people who think exactly like me” that made Maher a multi-millionaire. Always eager to feud with whomever crossed the line on the internet that day, Olbermann’s attack on Maher was predictable, if not slightly ironic. It’s kind of like if Sammy Sosa called out Barry Bonds for cheating — he’s not wrong, but it’s rich coming from him.
