I don’t like to encourage masochism, but if you were ever going to watch Keith Olbermann, tonight is probably the night. After all, given Olbermann’s tendency to quit his meds and start frothing at the mouth over corporate hypocrisy, he has a juicy target today. Who’s the latest fat-cat to get wealthy from taxpayer bailout money? Why, it’s the pride of Cownell – Keith Olbermann. If you feel inclined, go sign the petition.

While General Electric, the parent-company of your MSNBC network, was negotiating a $126 billion taxpayer-funded bailout, you signed a new contract raising your salary from $4 million to $7.5 million annually. You have used your show as a platform to call for the resignation of corporate executives accepting excessive bonuses on the backs of taxpayers who are picking up the tab for these atrocious bailouts, yet you yourself have no problem engaging in the same “class economic rape” that you accuse them of.

Please heed your own advice and stop accepting taxpayer money to subsidize your nightly diatribes. Resign or return the balance of your excessive raise to the U.S. Treasury.

To express this in terms even Olbermann might understand, how dare you sir!

Too bad for Olbermann – he can’t even use the defense that the AIG bonus recipients did. He can’t claim to have earned the money. Those bonuses were awarded pursuant to a prior contract; Olbermann’s was a new deal. And if you look at his track record, it’s hard to argue that Olbermann is doing anything right.

Olbermann has a lot of nerve taking taxpayer money while he rails against others for doing the same. If he has any integrity, he’ll follow the lesson set by the executives he has attacked. When the AIG bonuses approved by the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress caused public outrage, those execs by and large returned the money. Olbermann has to do the same. He’ll still be a joke, but at least he won’t be a conspicuously hypocritical joke.