A harsh new spotlight is falling on the vulgar social media history of ESPN star Keith Olbermann after the networks parent, Disney, fired Roseanne Barr for a racist tweet.
On Tuesday, ABC pulled the plug on the wildly popular reboot of "Roseanne" after its namesake posted a racist and offensive tweet about former President Obamas aide and close friend Valerie Jarrett. Last week, ABCs cable sister, ESPN, announced that anti-Trump pundit Olbermann would return to the network despite a foul-mouthed Twitter account that includes countless offensive remarks directed at the president and his surrogates.
ESPN personality-turned-political commentator Britt McHenry told Fox News that Olbermann has proven time and time again how irrationally angry, prejudiced, and outright bigoted he truly is, but none of that apparently matters to Disney executives.
The message is clear: If youre a liberal, any free speech is allowed. Same rules dont apply, McHenry said.
This is Olbermanns sixth stint at ESPN and the time in between has been largely spent as a far-left political pundit on MSNBC and an assortment of other networks. Most recently, he anchored an anti-Trump online program for GQ, The Resistance, and authored a book titled, Trump is *****ing Crazy: (This is Not a Joke).
In addition to repeated, over-the-top profanity directed at Trump, Olbermann also once claimed that Trump and his family have done more damage to the U.S. than Usama bin Laden. He was also widely criticized when his anti-Trump book featured a cover image of himself draped in the American flag, which is visibly touching the ground a violation of U.S. flag code.
ESPN was criticized for bringing the polarizing Olbermann back and that was before Barrs firing resulted in talk of a double standard within Disney regarding who can get away with offensive rhetoric. ESPN has been under fire recently for what many media watchdogs consider a liberal bias and even stood by Jemele Hill last year when she called Trump a white supremacist.
The Wall Street Journals Shalini Ramachandran published a piece last week about how a weakened ESPN became consumed by politics, which details several polarizing decisions the network has made in recent memory. The report notes that conservative ESPN staffers have been frustrated by the networks politics, which include everything from standing by Hill and selecting Caitlyn Jenner for its prestigious ESPY award for courage to constant on-air debates over the NFLs national anthem controversy.
ESPN just continues to pile problems on itself by continuing its tired trope of liberal programming and moralizing. And when it comes to liberal moralizing, who better than the seemingly-forgotten Keith Olbermann? ESPNs decision to hire the conservative-bashing blowhard only reinforces what its ever-fleeting viewers already know the network cares more about advancing leftists causes than it does about sports, or, frankly, its own ratings, National Center for Public Policy Research general counsel Justin Danhof told Fox News.
