Normally, anchor/newsman Keith Olbermann saves his Worst Person in the World Award for someone like, say, John McCain.

Last night he went a whole different direction.

We quote in its entirety Keith’s worst person in the world bit:

Our winner tonight, Paula Froelich of the gossip section of Page Six, the entirely disreputable portion of his almost entirely disreputable “New York Post,” the paper that makes its readers every day feel like they need to shower immediately.

Preparing at this hour an item about Chris Matthews and me to be run as early as tomorrow, in which, as Miss Froelich describes it, quote, both are vying for Tim Russert`s job. Chris at the reception for Tim`s memorial at the Kennedy Center was overheard by several guests talking to presumably his agent about pitching NBC for the job and what he should say in the meeting with NBC execs. Keith, apparently, has threatened to quit if he doesn`t get the job.

As we mourned Tim Russert yesterday in Washington, a Pennsylvania acquaintance of Chris` came up to him and said, you should be on the list to succeed him. Chris said he didn`t want to be on any such list. He changed the topic immediately. He asked this Pennsylvania man, who was not his agent — no agent would be crass enough to bring up such a topic now or there — for advice on a speech Chris is to give at Gettysburg, PA next week. What he should say, how should he approach it, the speech.

As for myself, not only have I never threatened to quit if I don`t get Tim Russert`s job, not own have I not vied for it, not only has the subject not even come up between me and anybody who will be involved in this sad task, not only did the Post make this up, not only is the very subject of Tim Russert`s job not appropriate now, as anyone with a shadow of a heart would understand. But I don`t even consider myself qualified for it.

Would that Ms. Froelich and her boss, Richard Johnson, and his boss, Mr. Murdoch, understand just how unqualified they are for the jobs that the mistakes of fate have given them. Paula Froelich of Page Six of the “New York Post,” today’s worst person in the world.

Quite a lengthy denunciation of a story which really no one cares about, nor would probably have seen.
But more important: That qualifies as worst person in the world?  Simply because he is mentioned in the item?  Either Keith is cheapening the currency, or we might want to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Keith doth protest too much, methinks.