I could not believe my eyes. A member of the American media has broken ranks and is reporting the truth about MSNBC’s prime-time clown. After years and years of glowing tributes and softball profiles, someone has dared to tell the real story of what has happened to Keith’s “ratings juggernaut.”

Apparently, the tingle down the leg has subsided for at least one television writer. Take a look at Jeff Bercovici’s piece over at AOL.

…there are creeping indications that the world may not have quite as much need of — or patience for — Olbermann and his shtick as it once did.

Ratings for Olbermann’s Countdown have been soft recently, and the 8 p.m. shows on CNN and HLN have narrowed the gap. In the important demographic of adults 25 to 54 — the group advertisers are looking to reach — Countdown was down 44% year-over-year in January. It averaged 268,000 viewers in that demo, only 3,000 more than Nancy Grace’s show on HLN, and 12,000 more than CNN’s Campbell Brown. Fox News’s O’Reilly Factor dominated the hour with 964,000 viewers age 25 to 54, and was the only cable news show in the time period to increase its audience, by 55%.

Sycophantic media writers were writing puff pieces about Air America practically until the day it went out of business. Maybe, they see the writing on the wall this time.

How do you explain such a ratings fiasco? Lately, could it be that Olbermann (and David Shuster) seem absolutely, maniacally obsessed with the James O’Keefe story - like two little girls on their way to see the Jonas Brothers? No, make that two little girls with backstage passes for the show. The folks over at Olbermann Watch even posted a nifty chart to show the unbelievable fixation.

Meanwhile, terrorists continue to plot our deaths, more and more Americans find themselves in soup kitchens, and our soldiers continue to die on the battlefield. Luckily, though, we have Keith and Shuster to let us know what is important.

Another recent juicy take on Olbermann can be seen over at The American Thinker. Stuart Schwartz brings up some of the long bubbling rumors about Olbermann’s questionable behavior:

And now the fat lady is howling her delight as she joins a decades-long string of females in Keith’s life — beginning with his mother, who thought her son needed psychological help — whose fist-bumps will come when he has exited their lives.

Olbermann does not like women, especially attractive and/or accomplished women. Nor is he particularly fond of men. He is forever the awkward, angry teenager of his high school days who mystified psychologists, the überdork whose cruel taunts of the athletes he covered as a sports broadcaster were legendary, even as he yearned to be thought of as the stud that covers studs

This reminded us of an older Jossip piece that brought out some of the even older rumors:

“Keith Olbermann is the last person who should comment on someone being stalked,” snipes a source inside ESPN. “While [Keith] was at ESPN, he went out with UCONN women?s basketball player Rebecca Lobo a few times, but it didn?t end there.”

According to our tipster, Olbermann wouldn’t leave Lobo alone once she decided she was no longer interested, and reportedly starting keeping tabs on her by monitoring her calls and persistently writing her notes.

Says an insider, “Lobo was close to taking out a restraining order against him, but spared him—and herself—the negative publicity that would have ensued.”

Jossip readers started commenting almost immediately introducing the allegation of a second woman. A writer identified only as “Anna” said the following:

There’s more. When he was working at MSNBC the first time around, he became fascinated by a producer named Jean who worked there. She was engaged to a lawyer but he called, pestered, and otherwise harassed her to the point that she too wanted to swear out a restraining order on him. He has a real history of this. And the whole sleeping with fans thing? Also not something that only happened once. Wake up fan girl at 6:11PM: the real Keith’s a creep…

Olbermann has cracked up and alienated staff and superiors everywhere he has been. Just ask anyone in the business - it is no secret. Maybe since one intrepid reporter has come forward and dared to dissent from his flunky colleagues, the rest will now be free to bravely come forward and tell their readers the truth about what is happening in the world of cable news ratings.