Keith Olbermann

Conor Friedersdorf laments for television news.

I thought the on-air personality who resigns on the air and never comes back to the show was something we only see on fictional TV. But tonight it happened on (technically) real TV. Keith Olbermann, MSNBC’s star personality, announced a few minutes ago that this would be his last episode, and NBC confirmed it.

Conor Friedersdorf, writing about the rhetoric of Palin & Co., gets at what I think I was trying to get at the other day.

The network just gave an “indefinite” suspension to its star pundit, Keith Olbermann, for giving money to three Democratic candidates. The president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, explained that this doesn’t meet “NBC News policy and standards.” People will instantly be checking to see if Fox News has a similar policy; a quick search at Opensecrets.org reveals that Sean Hannity has personally donated money to a Republican running in his district, as well as to Michelle Bachmann’s PAC. It might be different because Olbermann donated to specific people who lived nowhere near him. But whatever the official policies are, it’s a reminder that while MSNBC has shifted left in recent years (though they still have Chris Matthews, who had as big a crush on Bush as he currently has on Obama, plus Joe Scarborough), it has no desire to be what Fox is — an outlet that works round the clock to boost the fortunes of a particular political party.