In a post from a couple weeks back, I wrote about enjoying Keith Olbermann’s castigation of President Bush over his “giving up golf” comments. I even appreciated the freshness of finally having an unabashed liberal beating the O’Reillys and Limbaughs at their own sensationalistic game. But I did express a bit of a hesistancy over the way Olbermann’s style risks losing the message within the machinations of the messenger/entertainer.

Well, I think Olbermann’s latest “special comment” concerning Hillary Clinton’s reference to the assassination of Robert Kennedy just confirms my worries. And I’m not alone. James Poniewozik, TIME’s TV critic, writes:

The substance (or lack thereof) of the controversy notwithstanding … Olbermann is edging ever-closer to self-parody, or, worse, predictability. (As soon as the Clinton gaffe broke, blog commenters were wondering how ballistic he would go, and he obliged, and how.) Even if we concede his argument — that Clinton was at best callously and at worst intentionally suggesting she should stay in the race because Obama might be killed — every time he turns up the volume to 11 like this lately, he sounds like just another of the cable gasbags he used to be a corrective to.

While years of frustration might have — might have — justified Olbermann’s outburst over Bush’s disregard for soldier’s lives, Clinton’s comments don’t rise to that level.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I see Clinton as the consummate Machiavellian — and I’m sure, apologies notwithstanding, that she really was saying that an assassination might just happen this year and that is a reason to stick in the race (although I can’t imagine she wanted to say it publicly). I don’t give her the benefit of the doubt.

But all she did was make herself slightly more irrelevant than the day before. And that’s not worth the anger.