Olbergrandeur

Pop quiz: What's the most efficient way to kill the longest-running television show in history?

TIM Russert's body wasn't even cold in the ground before MSNBC anchors Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann started jockeying for his job, sources claim.

Matthews was heard loudly discussing what seemed to be his strategy for landing Russert's "Meet the Press" show at Wednesday's memorial reception for the NBC Washington bureau chief at the Kennedy Center in DC. After Brian Williams, Carl Bernstein, David Gergen, Barbara Walters and NBC brass eulogized their friend, Matthews huddled with an unidentified "agent type" and seemed to be plotting.

Gross.

But even more asinine than the prospect of installing Ol' Tingly Legs behind the vaunted desk is that of considering his profoundly deranged colleague for the job.

Meanwhile, Matthews' MSNBC cable cohort Olbermann, who was also at the memorial, is "threatening to quit if he isn't installed as Russert's replacement," another insider said. "I know, it sounds ludicrous, but, then, Keith Olbermann is ludicrous."

A rep for MSNBC said, "All of this is utterly untrue."

Russert himself wanted Chuck Todd, the NBC News political director he hired, to succeed him, said one source, who added that MSNBC hosts don't stand a chance of landing "Meet the Press." The insider said, "They're cable. They're far too partisan. They have no gravitas. If gravitas is eight letters, they're about seven letters short."

If the past is any indication, MTP would stop booking actual guests and Olbermann would spend the whole hour screaming with trademark spittle-flecked indignation about Chris Wallace.

Previously: Olberlogic

(HT: JWF)

Update:  Heh.  Via Ed Morrisey, here's Olby last night, preemptively branding Paula Froelich the "worst person in the world" for preparing to run the story about his and Matthews' unseemly jockeying for Russert's job.

Update:  WWTDD has the quote of the day.

Olbermann is a f***in creep.  I never missed a show when he and Dan Patrick did Sportscenter, but today he’s an insufferable jackass.  And he looks like a pervert.  Mark my words, one day you’ll wake up and there will be sketches of him on flyers and you’ll see the FBI confiscating his home computers.

He also claims she's lying, and claims it exuberantly, using impressively long sentences with lots of parallel construction.  So, you know... point Olbermann, I guess.

He also laments Froelich's (and, by extension, NY Post parent company chairman and Olbermann's Great Tormentor Rupert Murdoch's) decision to trample Russert's memory by whacking a couple of petulant MSNBC employees for trampling Russert's memory in their frenzied bids to replace him.