Rick Kaplan Is a Damn Fool

The president of MSNBC wouldn't know compelling television if it stared him in the face - which it did on Monday's Countdown. Olbermann's thoughtful, comprehensive coverage of Peter Jennings (punctuated by a 12-minute video essay) was later given a first-person perspective of sorts by his admission of a recent cancer near-miss of his own related to his pipe and cigar smoking. He spent the 7 minutes of his program being as direct as possible, proselytizing (and I mean that only in the best way) about the dangers and ultimate self-destructiveness of smoking. It was the best use of TV's bully pulpit I've seen in a long while. And Kaplan thinks it scared people from Rita Cosby's debut. Give me a fucking break already. What a zilch.