Joe Kovacs
Feathers are flying in the media world after ESPN’s Keith Olbermann urged the public to make the life of a private citizen “a living hell” for daring to kill a rare white turkey during turkey-hunting season.
Hunter Waltman is the target of the SportsCenter host, after he was featured in a news article by the Mississippi Clarion Ledger.
The article reported how Waltman was surprised to come across the all-white-feathered turkey, and stalked it for three hours before finally shooting it with his rifle from 60 yards away.
That prompted Olbermann to mockingly tweet: “It be rare and beautiful so me should kill it.”
“This pea-brained scumbag identifies himself as Hunter Waltman and we should do our best to make sure the rest of his life is a living hell,” Olbermann told his 1.08 million followers online. “And the nitwit clown who wrote this fawning piece should be fired.”
The newspaper is not backing down, and is blasting back at Olbermann.
Sam Hall, editor-in-chief at the Clarion-Ledger, said with tongue-in-cheek: “What was I thinking? I guess I should have fired our outdoors writer for writing about a hunter killing an unusual turkey during turkey hunting season.”
Hall continued: “Keith Olbermann’s tweet was recklessly irresponsible. Someone with his following needs to understand the possible impact of his words. Telling over 1 million people to make someone’s life a living hell could have seriously dangerous consequences.
“In our newsroom, that would be a fireable offense, not writing a story about a hunter bagging a turkey.”
The Clarion Ledger reported Waltman is now actually receiving verbal attacks.
“I didn’t like the idea of that too much,” Waltman said. “I don’t think a lot of people would like to be called out on social media like that, especially (by someone) with so many followers.
“They text me all kinds of stuff. If he (Olbermann) hadn’t done that, none of this would have happened.”
“To tell you the truth, it seemed like a threat to me,” Waltman added. “Make (my) life ‘a living hell?’ That seems like a threat to me. I’d be glad to see him fired. He went overboard.”
Alex Griswold of the Free Beacon, which also reported on the fray, said of the matter: “Just got an ESPN statement on Keith Olbermann siccing his million or so follower on a turkey hunter and asking them to make his life a ‘living hell’: ‘We have spoken to him about not making personal attacks”.
Griswold also noted: “On the topic of firing, Olbermann has at various times been fired by MSNBC, Fox Sports, Current TV, and GQ, and had previously been fired twice by ESPN before his current tenure.”
As WND reported in December 2016, in a heated commentary in which he angrily pounded his fist on his desk, Olbermann claimed that allowing then-President-elect Donald Trump to be sworn into office could mean the end to future elections in America.
“Permitting Donald Trump to assume the office of president reduces the chance that we will have any future elections,” exclaimed Olbermann in a video commentary called “The Resistance” on GQ’s YouTube channel.
“The nation and all of our freedoms hang by a thread, and the military apparatus of this country is about to be handed over to scum! Who are beholden to scum?! Russian scum! As things are today, January 20th will not be an inauguration, but rather the end of the United States as an independent country. It will not be a peaceful change of power. It will be a usurpation, and the usurper has no validity, no credibility, and no authority under the Constitution.”
“This is a reality that will become the only reality until this country rids itself of Donald John Trump. He is not a president. He is a puppet put in power by Vladimir Putin, and those who ignore these elemental, existential facts – Democrats or Republicans – are traitors to this country and will immediately and forever after be held accountable. Resist”.
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