Speaking in front of a packed Bailey Hall Tuesday night, political commentator Keith Olbermann ’79 addressed the problems facing the country, from welfare cutbacks to Ann Coulter ’84. 

Olbermann graduated with a degree in communications from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, a fact brought to public attention when Coulter accused him of promoting his “nonexistent ‘Ivy League’ education,” due to CALS’ status as a statutory college. 

Olbermann was quick to attack his fellow alumna throughout Tuesday evening, providing “empirical facts” to try to demonstrate her “stupidity.”

In response to a question about an article about Olbermann in the Cornell Review, titled “Looking Back on the Edward R. Murrow of Our Time,” Olbermann poured water on the stage of Bailey and used a crumpled up Review to wipe it up. 

“It absorbs more than Ann does,” he said. 

Olbermann also gave a short political speech concerning the importance of unions in America. He began by attacking House Resolution 1135, the Republican- sponsored “Welfare Reform Act of 2011,” which would end the food stamp program for any family in which one member is on strike.

Olbermann said that this proposal was “threatening low income Americans.” He went on to call strikes “inherently dangerous to the rich” and the only defense of ordinary Americans. He brought up several examples of the Republican Party’s “stupidity” in handling unions, including a Feb. 19 email from Indiana deputy prosecutor Carlos F. Lam to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker calling for a fake attack on Walker in order to win public sympathy.

Olbermann, best known for his MSNBC program Countdown, has been absent from the air following his departure from the network on Jan. 2. On Tuesday, Olbermann spoke extensively of his plans to return this spring on Current TV.    

Olbermann, who served as the Sports Director for WVBR while at Cornell, said he rarely went to class and was in danger of not graduating, having to take 28 credits his last semester on campus. 

“I had to call the dean’s office on May 25, 1979, to see if I was graduating,” he said. “I still have nightmares about it.”