The New York Post reported this morning, following a bunch of hysterical blog postings, that I asked the editor of a Keith Olbermann fan site to respond with a letter to our Interview with the man that appeared in the October issue. Well, faithful Playboy reader, it’s true! I invited Becky Last-Name-Not-Public-Knowledge over at BloggingOlbermann.com to read the Interview (she may have already done so) and write a letter if she felt so inspired.
Two quick points: (1) I didn't tell her to make her letter "gushing." In fact, she wrote a smart response and we were glad to have it. I try to include a variety of views in the letters pages because I know from experience that people who agree with something are less likely to write--and this is born out by the fact we have since gotten letters from K.O. lovers who can't believe all the K.O. haters who wrote. (2) Anyone who actually reads Playboy--rather than just posting snide comments about it (that “for the articles” joke is so clever! More, please)--can’t be too surprised. We have invited experts who might not otherwise see the magazine to comment, in whatever way they see fit, in our letters pages since the 1960s. It makes for a more spirited debate.
RSS 2.0
Comments on this entry:
When I emailed you yesterday about the first hysterical blog posting, you didn't expect the rest of it, did you? Welcome to my world, where the anti-fan meets political spin!
By the time you had contacted me, I'd not only read the Interview multiple times, but had discussed it on the blog. And you're right - even though I enjoyed the piece it would never have occurred to me to write if I hadn't been asked. It's good to know you've had others come out of the woodwork!
Even though I enjoyed the Olbermann interview, and in fact have been a guest on his MSNBC show, as a journalist I'm troubled by the solicitation of a letter in order to "balance out" the response on the "Dear Playboy" page to a certain section or article. I'm not naive to the fact that this isn't the first time Playboy editors have done this, or that Playboy is far from the only publication to do it. But is it the job of the editor to make sure that there's balance on the letters page if the balance isn't naturally there, without asking to chime in, no matter how expert they are? I'm not sure about that.
You’re right about being less likely to write a letter when you agree with what’s being said or how it’s being presented. I didn’t feel compelled to write in about Keith Olbermann’s Playboy Interview even though (a) I often admire his skillfully worded body slams on George W. Bush and his cronies on MSNBC; (b) felt it was one of the best Playboy Interviews of 2007; and (c) considered him an appropriate subject, given our current social/political environment. The fact that his Playboy Interview caused such an uproar among my fellow readers makes me wonder if I’m one of Playboy’s last remaining ACLU-card-carrying liberals.
LOVE THE BLOG!
I also thought the standard procedure was to wait until responses came in from this month's issue, which would show all the negative replies, thereby getting the fans to write in without you having to beg them to do so. But congrats in getting your name plastered across so many media websites. At least you are man enough to own up to your deceits.
I'd just like to know how you came to find this woman's blog to begin with. By her own admission, it's not even in the top 10 of search results on Google when you search for Olbermann. So how did you find it and why did you choose HER to write these comments? Did someone steer you in that direction. . . . . say Olbermann perhaps? His PR agent? Something's very fishy here.
Yeah, that's it, Andy, you nailed it -- we had a big meeting with KO's Playboy Interview reaction crisis team about how to handle the negative emails and after much discussion decided to print them all. (I think he has since fired his team.) Then I met with KO and his flacks and some former Navy Seals and Lee Harvey Oswald's double to address the topic of getting a positive letter in the magazine, because KO wasn't sure he could sleep unless someone said something nice about him.
I found Becky's site by using Technorati.com to search for blog discussion about the Olbermann interview. I expected her response would be positive, but would have printed it even if she surprised me and blasted him -- a fan so alienated by KO's comments that she broke rank would have been interesting too.
Just to set the record straight on a key point Mr. Rowe.
I could not help but notice that your pen pal Becky made it a point to place blame on me and my staff for the negative reaction to Keith's Playboy interview and the blog storm that erupted when she revealed that you had solicited a letter from an Olbermann fan site to "balance" the reaction.
You see I run a blog called "Olbermann Watch" which has been for many years the leading blog in the world dedicated to Keith Olbermann. The site is regularly critical of Keith and so his "fan girls" like Becky have come to hate our site and me as its editor in particular. These women imagine that any criticism of Keith is somehow manufactured by my team of writers.
Based on her posts and comments and her linking to a deplorable blog called "Watching Olbermann Watch" Becky has given every indication that she is under the delusion that either I or people who write for me at the Olbermann Watch blog had something to do with all the negative Letters to the Editor you received following the Keith Olbermann interview. And further that the editorial staff at Olbermann Watch somehow orchestrated the "blog storm" the erupted over the past few day.
So, let me take the opportunity to say here that no one at Olbermann Watch had anything to do with the the negative Letters you received over the past few weeks in response to the KO Interview. We did not write them, we did not ask our readers to write them. Anyone who cares to can verify this quite easily be reviewing the archived posts on our site.
Quite frankly we resent this type of wanton slander posing as news commentary emanating from Becky's Relevant Torture blog. We were sad to see a fine publication like Playboy dragged into the muck by, in effect, lending credence to the reckless accusations. We had expected better.
As for the blog storm that erupted, apparently we were responsible for that as one of our contributors spotted Becky's post (part of his job for our site is to monitor the KO fan-girl sites). We regularly share information with Jossip, Wonkette, Hot Air, Fox News and Page Six in the post.
Hope that clears things up.
Robert Cox
Managing Editor
Olbermann Watch
#1 Keith Olbermann blog since 2004
PS, we never read Playboy for the articles!
UPDATE: Keith Olbermann has now weighed on the Playboy letter scandal; he has written a blog post at Daily Kos advancing the same delusional notion as his gal pal "Becky" that OlbermannWatch.com orchestrated a letter writing campaign to dupe Playboy. Apparently Keith cannot accept the fact that people might take issue with his inflammatory statements in the Playboy interview especially given the high percentage of active duty and retired military readers of the magazine.
Keith writes:
"Normally I let this stuff go, but if you read said letters, you'll note they each hit one of the five or six talking points of an obscure website devoted to trying to annoy me (it's actually so bad it's good). Playboy got played."
More lies from Keith.
Anyone can search our archives and confirm that there was no call to OW readers for a letter writing campaign to Playboy. OlbermannWatch.com and no "talking points" memo. The "obscure" web site to which Keith refers, gets well over 100,000 visitors a month and is regularly quoted in newspapers stories about Keith. The site is among the top 10 search results for just about ANY phrase with the keyword "Olbermann" in it. We're hardly obscure as we are regularly linked by some of the biggest web sites in the blogosphere and our reports about Keith are often picked up by conservative talk radio and TV shows and the tabloid newspapers.
Keith knows this full well which explains why he has "attacked" OW many times since the site was launched in 2004, and is doing so again in his latest Daily Kos blog post.
More here: http://www.olbermannwatch.com/archives/2008/01/keith_olbermann_74.php