Olbermann goes Peckinpah

(Updated below.)

Yesterday morning at a little before 10am, Pacific time, Keith Olbermann left a post at Daily Kos. The title really says it all: Send Me Everything You Can Find About Glenn Beck.

As of a quarter after nine this morning--twenty-three hours later--it had 1499 comments. (Actually, in the time it took to write that sentence, it jumped to 1501 comments.)

It's an amusing image, and it'll make entertaining television for MSNBC, but I have to say I don't really see the practical point.

First, what could Olbermann's oppo-research irregulars possibly dig up about Beck that is more fringy and incendiary than what he's already proudly on record saying and doing? You can't leverage someone with exposure when he's already cheerfully outed himself for worse.

Second, suppose that--against all odds--some land mine buried among those 1500-and-counting comments actually manages to be worse than what the weeping madman's already done for all to see anyway. So what? Glenn Beck reports to Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch, not Barack Obama. He knows he'd never be hung out to dry. His job would be no more at risk than Bill O'Reilly's was after the murder of Dr. George Tiller.

Update: David Neiwert at C&L provides a thorough itemization of Beck's extremist resume. Toxic as it was before he moved to Fox News last winter, it's become many times worse since then. That's not because Beck has misread the expectations on him at his new job--just the opposite. Neiwwert asks, "When will he finally face the music?" If the point of the rhetorical question is When will he have his "Van Jones moment?", the answer is, he won't.