Mainstream news can't get much more homogenized.

I doubt that covering the ups-and-downs and occasional broken promises of the Obama White House had the same thrill as exposing Obama’s thoroughly corrupt predecessors. — Will Bunch, Jan. 24, Attytood

Bunch went to high school with Keith Olbermann and seems to think the latter left MSNBC because he got bored. I didn’t go to school with Olbermann, don’t know him at all, but I’m guessing he left for exactly the opposite reason — because he was disgusted at the extent to which the Obama administration reminded him of the Bush administration.

What if it slowly dawned on Olbermann, as it has on many others, that Obama is either a phony or simply not brave enough to confront the reactionary forces that have driven the economy into a ditch and undermined our constitutional rights?

Maybe disgust set in after he realized Obama’s team had no intention of looking into possible prosecution of Bush’s gang for lying to us about WMD in Iraq. Maybe it happened when it became clear that Obama’s notion of health care reform involved even more riches for the insurance companies that have been robbing us. Or maybe it happened right away, when Obama hired corrupt Wall Street insiders to help fix the economy.

I’d mostly stopped watching Olbermann’s show but did tune in to see his response when Obama caved on extending bonus tax cuts for the rich, which will put the country another billion dollars in debt. Olbermann was angry, but he didn’t seem his old caustic self. He seemed sick to his stomach.

Olbermann could sometimes be a blowhard, too vain to see that his “special comments” would have packed a harder punch if he’d cut them down to TV size. But he was a left-leaning guy with intellect, conscience and spirit — in other words, a unique voice in mainstream media. (Rachel Maddow is smart and forceful, but she holds her nose and backs Obama, even when she disagrees with him. Laurence O’Donnell is a Washington insider who will never disagree with Obama.)

The Comcast factor should also be mentioned. Can you imagine Olbermann working for the Philadelphia-based, Republican-owned monster that ate NBC? I can’t.