Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly take the Ali-Frazier approach to cable news: They simply beat the crap out of one another. O'Reilly slams Olbermann on The Factor, calling for his immediate dismissal; Olbermann hits back on MSNBC's Countdown, regularly naming his higher-rated rival, "The Worst Person in the World." It's time-slot warfare of the first order. Off-air, however, Olbermann's take on O'Reilly is less hyperbolic. In fact, it's downright clinical. According to Olbermann, O'Reilly's ineptitude has a good explanation. Sheer lunacy.

Olbermann delivers his diagnosis exclusively to GQ:

When you're attacked by someone or criticized by somebody who's beneath you on the food chain, you don't respond at all. All you're doing is publicizing what they're doing. And instead of doing that, he threatened to send the cops to the house of somebody who mentioned my name on his show. It's insane.

We've been covering him kind of as a cultural freak show for about 2 years. We did a lot on the little [sex] tape scandal from 2004, but it was only when we started to quote him that he started to respond in a strange way—like when he said, "Let Al Qaeda bomb San Francisco" after they passed a non-binding resolution saying there couldn't be military recruiters on high school campuses. He doesn't like having his stuff quoted on another show, so he'll call the president of NBC, or have his agent call, 4 times in 4 weeks, demanding that the show be taken off the air. He'll start a petition to fire the host of the show. His reptilian brain is not serving him well.

In terms of bullying or baiting, he's jumped the shark. It was the moment he told the listener that he would send Fox security to their house and said to them, "We have your phone number. We have your information and we'll turn it over to Fox security and you'll get a little visit from your local authorities." At that point it became clear that he thought that if you disagreed with him, he could somehow send the police after you.

It's a McCarthyesque kind of moment. Joe McCarthy destroyed Joe McCarthy by smearing some guy who had done nothing wrong. He kept insisting that this guy needed to be fired or whatever and he just went on and on with this and people were essentially moving their chairs away from McCarthy so they wouldn't be seen sitting next to him on TV. He didn't realize how psychotic he looked and I think that was sort of mirrored with the night Bill did that to the caller. I mean, you think you have police powers? Do you have magic powers, too? What else can you do? What else do you think you can do? I think that's a moment when, outside of the body of support that watches that show every night, anybody who would have taken him seriously as a threat suddenly realized that the guy is essentially delusional. It's abnormal psychology in one way or another.

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The O'Reilly Factor has been one of the most contentious—and entertaining—shows on television. To many, it doesn't matter that the host spews venom, cuts mikes, and rarely gives a guest a fair shake. But pity the person who finds himself on the wrong end of Bill's bile. We rounded up some of the show's most memorable guests to hear their tales from inside the No Spin Zone. Pick up the October issue of GQ—on newsstands now—to read more.