On Monday night’s broadcast of Countdown with Keith Olbermann, host Keith Olbermann matched the show’s edgy new look with some choice language for Motor City Madman Ted Nugent. Flouting the obviously more=relaxed standard of his new home at Current TV, Olbermann gifted the Nuge with the coveted “Worst Person in the World” prize for calling Occupy protesters “dirty, stinky hippies,” and stuck a big profane bow on it, calling Nugent “Asshole!” as he finished the segment.

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Olbermann took issue with this passage from a recent Ted Nugent column from The Washington Times:

While I don’t condone violence, watching the cops pounce on and pepper-spray a few Occupy stooges and then drag the dirtballs off to jail in shackles is good for my conservative soul and gold for my sense of humor. Everyone needs at least one hearty laugh every day. You have to admit that watching a stinky, dirty hippie being dragged off to jail is as funny watching James Brown drive across railroad tracks on the rims of his pickup truck, listening to Joe Biden stick his foot in his mouth, or watching Moe hit Larry and Curly with a pipe wrench. This is funny stuff, funny stuff. Lighten up.

Nugent got his coveted “Worstie” for the pot/kettle sin of calling anyone a dirty, stinky anything after becoming marginally famous as the long-haired singer of an ode to pubic lice. (That is what Cat Scratch Fever is about, isn’t it?)

The cynical media critic in me, of course, wants to make the obvious observation that the use of the choice verbiage is a self-conscious attempt at provocation and attention-getting edge. Earlier this month, in fact, Olbermann pointed out his unleashed-ness to his Twitter followers by twice reminding them that he had called Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker a “fascist bastard.”

We get it. Current TV is not MSNBC, and this is not your father’s Countdown. Sets are for poseurs and suspensions are for children’s pain relievers.

On the other hand, Ted Nugent really is an asshole, and if calling him an asshole on basic cable can draw more attention to the problem, who’s to say there’s anything wrong with a little self-conscious provocation?

Here’s the clip, from Current TV’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann:

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