Yes, it’s true: the most famous graduate of Cornell Cow College has picked up his marbles and is leaving the Daily Kos liberal lunatic asylum/playpen, hurt feelings trailing in his wake.

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It seems that, in the aftermath of his less-than-enthusiastic reception of President Obama’s widely panned speech about the Gulf oil spill, the Kossacks took serious issue with him. You can read the gruesome, sorrowing details here from Politico:

Keith Olbermann announced Wednesday night that he will cease blogging for the liberal Daily Kos over a comment directed at the MSNBC host’s coverage.

Olbermann and some of his MSNBC colleagues surprised their left-leaning fans on Tuesday with eviscerating critiques of President Barack Obama’s Oval Office address on the oil spill spewing off the Gulf Coast.

“It was a great speech if you were on another planet for the last 57 days,” Olbermann said of the president’s remarks, echoing similarly negative comments from fellow MSNBC hosts Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow.

It’s ironic that on one of the few occasions Olbermann and the rest of the choir at MSNBC actually stand up on their hind legs and bark at Barry a little, the Kossacks go ape, as if to say: don’t these idiots know we’re all supposed to be singing from the same page of the progressive hymnal?

Even better, the Kossacks seem to think that there is some sort of conspiracy behind the near-universal panning of Obama’s speech at MSNBC:

One commenter on the Daily Kos, where Olbermann has frequently blogged over the years, speculated that the pattern of hosts generally sympathetic to the president bashing the administration was too consistent to be a coincidence.

“Can’t verify, of course,” the commenter began, “but a friend in the news biz tells me he got a damaging e-mail from one of his pals at NBC. Something to the effect that their anger was pre-planned because ‘beating up on the president has been good for ratings.’ I haven’t checked, but I’m hearing that Olbermann slammed the speech on Twitter before it even started.”

Olbermann, incensed by the commenter, later fired off a posted titled “Check, Please” explaining that he won’t be “back” to the site until it stops delving into “conspiracy theories.”

Indeed he did. Keith, take over:

For years, from the Katrina days onward, whenever I stuck my neck out, I usually visited here as the cliched guy in the desert stopping by the oasis. I never got universal support, and never expected it, nor wanted it (who wants an automatic “Yes” machine?). But I used to read a lot about how people here would ‘always have my back’ and trust me this was of palpable value as I fought opponents external and internal who try to knock me and Rachel off the air, all the time, in ways you can imagine and others you can’t.

Now I get to read how we pre-planned our anger because ‘beating up on the President has been good for ratings’.

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Frustrating, huh?

If I can understand people’s frustration with seeing a speech by a Democratic president criticized in a venue such as mine, why is it impossible for some people here to accept my frustration about the speech? You don’t agree with me, fine. You don’t want to watch because you don’t agree with me, fine. But to accuse me, after five years of risking what I have to present the truth as I see it, of staging something for effect, is deeply offensive to me and is an indication of what has happened here.

You want Cheerleaders? Hire the Buffalo Jills. You want diaries with conspiracy theories, go nuts. If you want this site the way it was even a year ago, let me know and I’ll be back.

We’re usually pretty tough on the super-special special commenter here, but in this case let me say I admire Olbermann’s outrage, as well as his decision to flee — at least temporarily — the Kossack nut house. On some level, both the suits and the on-air talent at MSNBC know that from time to time they have to at least pretend to play it straight if they want to appeal to any audience other than the dwindling band of dead-enders who still believe in the malevolent farce that is Hope and Change. And Olbermann — who, let’s face it, was very good back in the days when he teamed with Dan Patrick on ESPN for the funniest, freshest sports show on the air — can in fact be quite a trenchant observer when he manages to keep his emotions in check.

So good for you, Keith — and congrats on telling the Kossacks to stuff it.