Meet Greg Mitchell, Media Fix blogger for the Nation. He is the author of 10 books, and more recently, 74 separate Tweets about Keith Olbermann‘s long weekend. How could one human person possibly Tweet so exhaustively about such an almost singularly uncomplicated story revolving around a few thousand dollars with our president spending $200 million a day in Mumbai? It is actually a mystery, to me, but earlier this morning I subjected the Keith-related portion of his weekend feed to rigorous analysis and determined that there were six separate subcategories of substance (or lack thereof) into which most of Mitchell’s missives fell. Read and learn:
1. Miscellaneous wry color commentary, to sustain audience interest through fallow development-free ten minute periods of time i.e. “Waiting to see if Spitzer suspended by CNN for ACCEPTING campaign donations two years ago” and “Rachel ready to talk Keith, pointing out he is #1 story on Google News. Not McRib?”
2. Keeping abreast on critical subplots i.e. Mitchell’s co-worker Christopher Hayes‘ courageous Glenn Greenwald–admired decision to refrain from hosting “Countdown” Friday night, which consumed five or six speculative Tweets before Hayes himself broke his approximately seventeen-minute silence on the matter:
3. Miscellaneous housekeeping intended to subtly reinforce with readers their media blogger is flooding the proverbial zone, and the least you can do is click i.e. “If you need to catch up to Olbermann story, here is my piece updated to late last night” and “My update on Olbermann. Do me a favor, let me know if link doesn’t work—have had some problems.”
4. Periodically floating alternative narrative of Olbermann debacle as conspiracy theory in which Politico and new contributor Joe Scarborough are deliberately plotting to ruin their ideological enemies at network.
5. Engaging in bitter Tweet battle with Mediaite reporter Tommy Christopher, who wrote a post Friday floating an alternative conspiracy theory casting debacle as MSNBC publicity stunt. Mitchell’s initial reaction to Christopher’s post was to glibly dismiss him as an “idiot” but when Christopher tweeted suggesting that Mitchell might not have actually read his entire post and thus missed its central sarcasm, Mitchell called up a veritable “tweet surge”, accusing Christopher of sloppiness, cowardice, and, comparing him rather unfavorably with Tolstoy, writing his post in three minutes.
6. Endlessly trumpeting bipartisan, non-ideological nature of outpouring of support for Olbermann, to the point of inadvertently endorsing glib but unmistakable line of reasoning in favor of plutocracy = ideal form of government:
