Was Tucker Carlson's Keith Olbermann Prank a Hoot?

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Tucker Carlson's latest Internet prank isn't going over well with the left. As Wire readers will recall, the former Crossfire co-host purchased the domain KeithOlbermann.com in July and also acquired the e-mail address Keith@KeithOlbermann.com. It was basically a gag that allowed Carlson's conservative website, The Daily Caller,  to run the headline "We Own You" with a big picture of Keith Olbermann on the homepage. Now, four months later, the joke continues.

This week, Olbermann allegedly sent some fiery e-mails to Stu Bykofsky, a columnist at the Philadelphia Daily News. The letters were then published by the Philly gossip site Phawker.com and revealed a rant about MSNBC President Phil Griffin penned by Olbermann:

As I’ve said publicly before, Phil Griffin is not my boss (thank god), nor is he intellectually qualified to be. Phil pretends otherwise in public. I’m not his shrink, but I assume it makes him feel better. The remarkable thing is that fools like you believe his fantasies. That pleases Phil, but only exposes your ignorance. The proof? I'll be anchoring on election night 2012, long after Phil Griffin has moved on to a job for which he's actually qualified, perhaps on QVC."

As you might have guessed, the e-mails were not actually sent by Keith Olbermann. Yesterday the MSNBC host felt compelled to publicly renounce them, tweeting "If you see a supposed email exchange between me and somebody named Bykofsky @PhillyDailyNews - complete fake. Email address shown not mine."

Then, last night, Carlson fessed up to Yahoo News:

"Could you resist?" Carlson said.  "It was just too funny. The flesh is weak."

Carlson said he didn't expect the email exchange to be published.

Cue the reaction from the left:

• Shame On You Tucker, writes Alex Pareene at Salon:

The fault here lies less with the Olbermann-impersonator than with the people who didn't take two minutes to Google and learn that that e-mail address belongs to Tucker Carlson. But his apparent willingness to engage in light character assassination by writing back to people "as" Olbermann does make Carlson's dumb stunt a little less defensible. And from what I know of Carlson, he'd throw a huge fit if someone did this to him.

• This Reminds of Something, writes Mistermix at Balloon Juice:
  

I grew up with a kid who didn’t distinguish himself in much. He was an OK student, a mediocre athlete and was kind of funny looking. Since he didn’t have a lot of a positive nature to offer the world, he started to do things like wear funny looking clothes and taunt known bullies. He seemed to enjoy being teased about his appearance or getting punched for making a smart remark to a easily angered jock. I guess he decided that negative attention was better than no attention at all, and that being annoying was easier than putting in the hard work needed to excel at something.

The difference between that kid and Tucker Carlson is that the former grew up and made something of himself, and the latter founded the Daily Caller, bough keitholbermann.com, and decided it was really funny to send out fake emails as Olbermann.

• Has it Really Come to This, writes Michael Tedesco at Comments from Left Field:

Talk about a meteoric fall. Tucker Carlson, once the well respected media heir apparent to George Will’s bow-tie empire has taken to internet crime as a way to amuse himself. What’s next, impersonating a 15 year old?

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