Bob Somerby (who continues to do yeoman’s work on the failures of MSNBC) catches Keith Olbermann engaging in some absurd faux mind-reading of Dick Cheney during an interview with Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff:

WILKERSON (5/21/09): So, he [Cheney] is frightened and he’s trying these very Orwellian tactics of using his own techniques and his own results, and accusing his opponents of having perpetrated these techniques and results.

OLBERMANN: Yes.

WILKERSON: It’s insanity.

OLBERMANN: Yes. Some psychologist could probably have a field day with the fact—

WILKERSON: A field day!

OLBERMANN: —as when, when he was talking about water-boarding, he suddenly had a coughing fit, as if he couldn’t—as if water had gone down the wrong way.

WILKERSON: Yes.

It’s another step in the novelization of politics. Olbermann is proving that the market for gong show psychology extends across ideological lines.