a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

The Two Faces of Keith Olbermann

“The leading terrorist group in this world right now is al-Qaeda,” says MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, “but the leading terrorist group in this country right now is the Republican Party.”

Olbermann is on a roll, delivering a series of “Special Comments” that have hoisted ratings for his cable news show “Countdown” by nearly 70 percent since late August. The cable news host has certainly raised the stakes with these commentaries, which break sharply from the quick-change routines of typical cable news. No tickers or blinking graphics distract viewers from Olbermann’s impassioned and hard-hitting anti-Bush regime diatribes, delivered head-on into the camera.

Viewers are hooked: tens of thousands have watched the commentaries on YouTube. An October 8 LA Times article notes that “Olbermann has become a hero to Bush opponents.” And yet a number of female commentators aren’t as enamored of the self-aggrandizing host. Take his reporting on a recent celebrity dust-up; the tagline for the segment: “A Slut and Battery.”

“Keith Olbermann stays classy by reporting that Paris Hilton has ‘had worse things happen to her face’ than being punched,” blogs Jessica Valenti of Feministing. com on October 11. “And you know exactly what he means.”

Rebecca Traister, a columnist for Salon.com’s “Broadsheet,” put it this way via e-mail: “I don’t like Paris Hilton any more than the next sentient human, but Olbermann’s segment on her was depressing, mostly because it demonstrated that trashing women for being sexual is still OK no matter what your professional or journalistic sensibilities are supposed to be. It was low, it was offensive, and it was pathetic.”

This latest gaffe piles on to a mountain of other insulting references the host has made to women. He seems to have it in for blondes in particular, calling colleague Rita Cosby “dumber than a suitcase of rocks,” and smashing an Ann Coulter doll to pieces on air.

Now, we are not making the argument that Ann Coulter is a decent human being. But Olbermann, given the high standards you’re setting for others, we expect more from you.