Citing angry tone, Olbermann suspends ‘Worst Person in the World’ feature

Some Minnesotans — Rep. Michele Bachmann and GOP Senate District 56 webmaster Randy Brown, among them — are unlikely to mourn its passing: Liberal MSNBC host Keith Olbermann is halting his “Worst Person in the World” feature. The news comes just days after Comedy Central star Jon Stewart lambasted the increasingly negative tone of cable political shows at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington.

Olbermann apparently didn’t like Stewart’s Saturday critique, especially the part where he felt lumped in with all political shows on cable. But he did acknowledge last night that he understands “the tone needs to change” on the show. “The anger in this news hour was not an original part of it, nor was it an artifice we added to it,” he said. Of the “Worst Person” feature, he explained:

Its satire and whimsy have gradually gotten lost in some anger, so in the spirit of the thing, as of right now, I am unilaterally suspending that segment with an eye towards discontinuing it. We don’t know how that works long term. We might bring it back. We might bring back something similar to it, might kill it outright, and next week we will solicit your input.Its just that today, given the serious stuff we have to start covering tomorrow, we think its the right thing to do short term and then we will see what happens. And we’ll also see if anyone else, on tv, or radio, will do something similar.

The segment has featured Minnesotans a few times, but most prominently Bachmann. In October 2006, she merited a mention for telling congregants at Living Word Christian Center that God called her to run for Congress. In August 2008, she was featured for her comment that Nancy Pelosi needn’t worry about saving the planet from global warming because “someone” — Jesus — “did that over 2,000 years ago.”

Brown was the most recent to draw Olbermann’s attention. This August, he posted a video on a district GOP website that compared the attractiveness of GOP women with Democratic women — Helen Thomas, Rosie O’Donnell and Michele Obama, among others — who were shown in unflattering and often photoshopped photos accompanied by the song “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

Said Olbermann: “Just remember it anytime you hear Sarah Palin or anybody else in the GOP complain about sexism or misogyny on the part of the mainstream media or the Democrats.”