Deep Read: 'New Yorker' on Olbermann

You can't ask for much more impeccable timing than The New Yorker displayed with its profile of Keith Olbermann, who has recently ascended to new heights of both ratings success and backlash, thanks to his unapologetic opinionizing and his attacks on Bill O'Reilly. "I really do owe him a percentage of my salary," Olbermann says of his rival.

Peter J. Boyer sheds some light on the internal politics of Olbermann's rise within NBC News, where the former sportscaster is looked upon as a valuable but dangerous madman, a force to be harnessed but never truly controlled. Some choice tidbits:

-Olbermann was a semi-serious candidate to replace Dan Rather at CBS Evening News, meeting first with then-news division chief Andrew Heyward, and then with Heyward's replacement, Sean McManus. Sandy Socolow, a former executive producer for Walter Cronkite, is glad he didn't get the job: "I like him, I agree with his perspective, and I think he's very, very good on television. But he's not a newsman. Ten years ago, if he had done at CBS what he does every day on the air at MSNBC, he would have been fired by the end of the day."

-There is concern at MSNBC that Olbermann's criticism of Hillary Clinton may have cost him support among female viewers and reinforced an overall impression of the network as sexist. Phil Griffin, MSNBC's senior vice president, hopes to repair the damage, but employs an unfortunate metaphor to sum up the situation, casting Hillary sympathizers as abused girlfriends who don't know when to walk away:

"It was, like, you meet a guy and you fall in love with him, and he's funny and he's clever and he's witty, and he's all these great things. And then you commit yourself to him, and he turns out to be a jerk and difficult and brutal. And that is how the Hillary viewers see him. It's true. But I do think they're going to come back. There's nowhere else to go."

-Olbermann clearly thinks he has discovered a truth about television news that eludes some of his more objective-minded colleagues:

"There are people who, with absolute conviction, believe that Brian Williams is a Communist. There are people who, with absolute conviction, believe that Katie Couric is in the pay of the Pentagon. There are people who are absolutely certain that Charlie Gibson sleeps with Hillary Clinton, based on the last debate....Brian sometimes looks like his collar button is going to burst from the restraint that he has. I know the pain that he goes through; he measures each word like an apothecary -- and they beat him up, too. The point is, why not? Why not add something to the discourse?"

-Tom Brokaw would probably have an answer for that. The former anchor has been "cast in the role of hall monitor" at NBC News, a position that frequently puts him at odds with Olbermann and Chris Matthews, whose remarks about Hillary Clinton Brokaw calls "completely out of line."

-Speaking of Matthews, Olbermann still can't bring himself to be nice about his colleague, even when a tape recorder's running. To Boyer, Olbermann compared Matthews to "an out-of-control sprinkler system." This is in keeping with the various disparaging remarks about Matthews he made to The New York Times Magazine. Most condescendingly, Olbermann said that when Matthews behaves himself on air, "I reward him with a grape."