MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell is getting hammered in the press this week following the publication of a leaked eight-minute tape showing the cable news host repeatedly berating and shouting obscenities at his staff.
It’s not pretty.
“Stop the hammering! Stop the hammering out there!” O’Donnell yells at one crew member. “Who’s got a hammer? Where is it? Where’s the hammer? Go up on the other floor! Somebody go up there and stop the hammering! Stop the hammering! I’ll go down to the goddamned floor myself and stop it, keep the goddamned commercial break going!”
He continued, growing increasingly agitated, “Call fucking [MSNBC president] Phil Griffin! I don’t care who you have to call! Stop the hammering! Empty out the goddamned control room and find out where this is going on!”
It goes on like that for quite some time, and it all reflects rather poorly on the cable news host.
Sadly, though, he’s hardly the first political commentator to go full Mommie Dearest on his crew.
In 2008, for example, the world got a peek at ex-Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s more unpleasant side when footage from his stint at Inside Edition surfaced, revealing an impatient and foul-mouthed man going absolutely bananas on his staff.
“We’ll do it live,” O’Reilly screams at his colleagues. “We’ll do it live! Fuck it! Do it live! Look – I’ll write it, and we’ll do it live! Fucking thing sucks!”
Then there’s right-wing talk radio host Laura Ingraham, who is infamous within the industry for her short temper.
Most recently, in 2016, she lost her cool on her radio show over an apparent technical difficulty.
“What’s going — What do I do guys? I can’t hear anything! What do I do? Drew can you hear something in yours? No, right? Are you on ‘Best of?’ Are you on ‘Best of?’ We have dead air? We got to put a ‘Best of’ on, Drew. We’re going to lose every fucking station we have!” she shouted at some hapless subordinate.
She added, “This is unbelievable. I don’t know what to do. What do I do? Just read stories? What? Everything’s dead in here; I heard a click!”
Ingraham landed a primetime show recently with Fox News. Lucky them.
