Mediate-Keith Olbermann Talks About Bill O'Reilly Abused Childhood

Keith Olbermann: Mediaite

(Story reported by Frances Martel for Mediaite)

Last night, Bill O’Reilly made a flimsy argument that Jennifer Aniston (of all people) is a threat to America for encouraging little girls to consider single parenthood. In an unprecedented move, Keith Olbermann made O’Reilly one of today’s Worst Persons in the World. This near-daily occurrence would usually merit little more than a yawn, except the crux of Olbermann’s argument was that O’Reilly made this point because he was abused by his father as a child.

Olbermann gave O’Reilly his “Worser” award tonight for the comments, which he rehashed in their entirety against Aniston’s (also transcribed for the viewers). The argument was that Aniston calling the fact that older women can now reproduce “amazing” is a dangerous message to American girls who could misinterpret this as meaning that fathers are unnecessary in raising a child. Yes, it’s a pretty silly argument, and fairly easy to debunk on the grounds that, for starters, the type of single parenthood occurring in Aniston’s new movie (where she goes to a sperm bank to pick out a “father” but then– surprise! drunk Jason Bateman hijacks the motherhood attempt) is probably not the type of Teen Mom situation that O’Reilly is warned about. That, however, isn’t the argument route Olbermann took:

“There’s been a lot of amateur psychoanalysis of what O’Reilly is doing this time. If you’ve read Marvin Kitman’s biography of O’Reilly, it’s pretty simple: Virtually every reference O’Reilly makes to his own father describes how the man hit, slapped, punched him. As Kitman put it simply: ‘O’Reilly has a history of physical abuse with his father. It is actually very sad.’”

 (click here to read the full story on the Mediaite website)