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Head Trauma

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(Photo: Getty Images)

KEITH OLBERMANN
Host, MSNBC's Countdown With Keith Olbermann

In a recent profile of Olbermann in the New Yorker, Peter Boyle recalls that he could be so "overbearing" that Suzy Kolber, a former colleague of his at ESPN, would sometimes "lock herself in the bathroom and cry." It's a sentiment that people who know him today echo. "I love his politics, and think he's really filled a void for the left that was missing on TV, but the guy is just a total asshole," says a former colleague of the frequent Page Six target. "He's just a full-blown, red-in-the-face screamer." Another former MSNBC staffer notes that Olbermann refused to communicate with underlings face to face when he worked out of the network's Secaucus operation, instead insisting that anyone who wished to get in touch with him leave him a note in a special mailbox. "His disregard for those beneath him is almost comical," the staffer continues. "I remember he had an assistant back then named Brian whom he made go out and buy presents for other people. Brian did, with his own money, and of course Keith never reimbursed him." Says an NBC producer who has worked with him: "He is, to put it kindly, brusque."



LAURA INGRAHAM
Frequent Fox News guest

"I've worked on a half-dozen programs at three different networks, and Laura was by far the most difficult person I encountered," moans a former producer of her short-lived MSNBC program, Watch It! "Which is unfortunate, 'cause she's actually pretty smart." Evidence of just how difficult working with Ingraham can be was made public last week, after a 10-minute video of her chastising her staff not to "come in my ear" and ranting about a mysterious Mexican person was released on the Internet. (Watch it above.) "What you see in that video was pretty typical of her interactions with her staff," says a P.A. on the O'Reilly Factor, where Ingraham routinely stops by to bloviate. "Part of the problem is that she's very tough on herself, so when she doesn't understand something, or, say, sees something wrong on the prompter, she flips out," says the former producer. "You knew to just keep your head down leading up to commercials. Producing her was more an exercise in trying to walk her down off the edge." Not that anyone has to worry about doing that for the time being: Just In, her new show on Fox News, was canceled after just three weeks.

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