It all began innocently enough.

On Wednesday afternoon, MSNBC host and recent Twitter-quitter Keith Olbermann tweeted that he enjoyed a piece at the liberal website Daily Kos about New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's handling of the East Coast blizzard. This prompted a response from Twitter user Tony Prock: "@KeithOlbermann It is highly ironic that you support Daily Kos, yet think Fox News is slanted. Keep it real, Keith."

Olbermann took it from there:

As Olbermann's tweets suggest, other parties have joined the spat. At Business Insider, Glynnis MacNicol has this to say:

Here's what fascinates me about Olbermann's use of Twitter: This is a man with an enormously powerful media platform who is completely unable to rise above the nitpicking of a handful of Tweeters who themselves have a handful of followers. Instead of responding like a professional grown-up (Exhibit A: Rachel Maddows's sharp takedown of Fox) he continually sinks to their level of discourse: Namely, name calling.

As for Prock, he's largely moved on to other matters, though he did react to Olbermann's initial salvo: "@KeithOlbermann 100% BS? So, EVERYTHING they report is made up. OK. Got it. The Kos is 100% legit. So Markos Moulitsas is neutral? Ha!"

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Uri Friedman