It's been clear since its introduction -- Keith Olbermann has never meant that these are LITERALLY the worst people on the planet (even though they arguably could be described as such).
But Keith just announced on Countdown this evening that he thinks it's time to retool and rethink the segment on MSNBC's Countdown. So let's come up with a name!
I'll give a few nominations, and then come back with a poll to get community input tomorrow.
They aren’t really the worst persons in the world, of course.
Somewhere somebody’s ending freedom, or sticking a shiv into a witness, or defrauding an orphan, or bombing a home. And there’s almost nobody in this book who—in any kind of empirical analysis of the worst person in the world at a given moment—could truly hold a candle to any of them.
But my guys and gals have all, in their own ways, tried.
Orphans may have nothing to fear, and freedom is more likely to hurt itself laughing at them than to be hurt by their Rube Goldbergian machinations. But these Worsts (if you’ll permit the term) are the mortal enemies of honesty and dignity, of selflessness and class.
In short—they’ll do.
The exerpt above was from a Keith Olbermann "Today Show" appearance and discussion of his book "The Worst Person in the World".
TWPITW on Today
Keith even described how he came up with the segment:
And then one day late in June 2005, two things happened within hours of each other. First, I heard a tape of one of those Bob & Ray soap operas with the W.P.I.T.W. eating not just the wax paper but also the brown bag in which his lunch sat. Then, I read Alessandra Stanley’s review in the New York Times suggesting that our network needed to cancel Tucker Carlson’s new show. This rang as the quintessence of unfairness. MSNBC had been blasted, for years, for never giving new programs any time to develop. Tucker had been on the air less than two weeks.
Suddenly the two names merged. “Worst Person in the World . . . Alessandra Stanley.”
OK -- it's only 90 seconds of airtime. But nobody I've heard from wants to lose it completely.
How about "The Terrible Tweets" or "Dog Whistle Time"?