Ghost of Thurber Stalks Keith Olbermann

Keith Olbermann now admits he “screwed up” by once failing to complete Part Three of James Thurber’s “The Greatest Man in the World” and is haunted by the irate ghost of the long departed writer and cartoonist. Keith Olbermann, former volatile MSNBC host recently given a full bum’s rush by Current TV, now realizes a critical programming misstep he made back in 2010 has lead to his eternal doom in television.

After reportedly signing a five-year, $50 million contract with Current, Olbermann was there less than a year before Thurber’s ghost went “Deliverance” on his career and made Olbermann squeal like Rush Limbaugh’s sponsors. In related news, mediums across the country have reported channeling Thurber, who is threatening to feature Olbermann as the subject of his newest posthumous short story, “The Worst Pundit in The World”. He is currently interviewing channelers to ghostwrite the piece.

Television Broadcaster Olbermann began a tradition of reading excerpts from Thurber’s short stories as the last segment of his Friday MSNBC show, Countdown With Keith Olbermann on the suggestion of his dying father, to whom he read many of the stories in his hospital bed. This was a very humanizing gesture for a media creature rivaling Frankenstein, built from bits and pieces of career paths ranging from sports to politics. But, on September 10, 2010, Olbermann apparently angered the ghost of Thurber by preempting the 3rd part of his story, “The Greatest Man in The World“ for a viral, over-exposed clip of Phil Davison, candidate for Stark County, Ohio Treasurer blubbering on camera.

In an exclusive interview to Glossy News via Ouija Board in late 2010, the ghost of Thurber vowed vengeance and promised to destroy the career of Olbermann for the slight. “He made devout fans of ‘Thurber Fridays’ have to go on-line to hear the end of a three-part, dragged out short-story…just to show some over-hyped political video”, growled the ghost of Thurber. “Hell, the majority of my fans don’t even have internet access. How dare he leave them hanging?” A partial transcript of the egregious affront follows:

OLBERMANN: “If you‘re waiting for our usual Friday night readings from James Thurber, the conclusion of “The Greatest Man in the World,” don‘t worry, it‘s online right now, on our website, Countdown.MSNBC.com. We did this just this one time to make room for the equivalent of breaking news about a character even Mr. Thurber could not have drawn. Because in our number one story, there is a new rising star among the ranks of the Republican party. He is the would-be candidate for treasurer of Stark County, Ohio.”

Anyone enduring this mass of moronic media masturbation would agree that the spectacle was even more discombobulating than Olbermann’s final Thurber reading, “The Scotty Who Knew Too Much”. Olbermann has repeatedly denied Thurber’s ghost appeared to him that very night, screaming, “You are dead to me!” But, suddenly in January 2011, Olbermann was fired from MSNBC under “mysterious circumstances”, and less than a year into his Current TV contract, Olbermann found himself eeriely “relived of duties.”

Many attribute this cascade of misfortune for Olbermann to Thurber’s ghost, while others suspect Olbermann’s chandelier mouth has simply overloaded his butane-lighter brain. But certain unnamed sources in southern Louisiana attribute Olbermann’s demise to a certain avid Thurber fan with no internet access…but plenty of voodoo dolls. Regardless of the origin of Olbermann’s woes, one metaphysical observer noted, “Next time, I guess he’ll finish the freaking story!”