Battered Wives

by digby

The New Yorker is featuring an interesting profile of Keith Olbermann, which isn’t particularly revelatory. He’s a complicated guy. But there’s a quote from his producer MSNBC Senior VP Phil Griffin, that is truly unbelievable:

Just as Obama must work to win Clinton supporters for the fall campaign, Phil Griffin has to repair a fractured audience base, a portion of which saw sexism in his network’s Clinton coverage and vowed to boycott MSNBC. Griffin knows that some of that anger is aimed at his star anchor. “It was, like, you meet a guy and you fall in love with him, and he’s funny and he’s clever and he’s witty, and he’s all these great things,” Griffin said of the relationship between Olbermann and the Clinton supporters among his viewers. “And then you commit yourself to him, and he turns out to be a jerk and difficult and brutal. And that is how the Hillary viewers see him. It’s true. But I do think they’re going to come back. There’s nowhere else to go.”

Yikes. Stop digging.

As Joan Walsh pithily observed:

I have some advice for Phil Griffin, not that he asked me. Don’t tell your customers they have nowhere else to go. Also: Try to avoid comparing irritated female viewers with wives and girlfriends who have to stay with a “jerk” who is “difficult and brutal.” It’s insulting to Olbermann and his female critics alike.

It’s not as bad as that creepy McCain fundraiser who said “rape is like the weather. As long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.” But it’s not good.

.