Nathanael Blake receives commentator Keith Olbermann's satirical daily honor for his Web commentary following the Virginia Tech shootings

Each night on his MSNBC show, liberal commentator Keith Olbermann presents a satirical look at current events and appoints a "Worst Person in the World."

On Tuesday he zoomed in on former Corvallis resident and Oregon State University alumnus Nathanael Blake, giving him the silver medal on the worse, worser, worst continuum. Blake is a former columnist for the OSU Daily Barometer who created controversy in 2006 with a Barometer piece he wrote about Islam.

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting, Blake wrote a piece titled "Where Were the Men?" for the conservative news outlet Human Events' Web site.

On Monday, Cho Seung-Hui, an English major at Virginia Tech, shot 32 people to death and committed suicide in what is being called the deadliest one-man shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.

When commenting on the tragedy for Human Events, Blake, 22, wrote, "College classrooms have scads of young men who are at their physical peak, and none of them seems to have done anything beyond ducking, running and holding doors shut. Meanwhile, an old man hurled his body at the shooter to save others.

"Something is clearly wrong with the men in our culture. Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys and protecting others: in a word, courage. And not a one of the healthy young fellows in the classrooms seems to have done that."

For these sentiments, Blake was named the world's second-worst person on Tuesday's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann." Third worst was Debbie Schlussel, a conservative political commentator and columnist, who, Olbermann said, used the massacre as evidence against international students.

Dubbed the worst of the day was John Derbyshire of National Review Online, who bemoaned the slain students' lack of "spirit of self-defense."

After learning about his inclusion on Olbermann's show, Blake wrote a follow-up piece for Human Events, "And Yet I Am Unmoved."

Blake, who graduated from OSU in July with an honors degree in microbiology, has defended his original stance, although he acknowledges that perhaps it could have been more sensitively stated.

"The man who fired the bullets bears all the blame for these murders. Possible guilt for perhaps not responding courageously is not the same as guilt for murder and assault," Blake said via e-mail. "Many people, I think, wondered how one gunman who often had to reload could kill so many people, with no one being able to stop him.

"I voiced that and offered a hypothesis, which was that that physical component of the heroic ideal of resisting evil and defending others has been abandoned in much of our society. Those who most actively resisted were both older (one was ex-military also) and part of a cultural outlook that had more old-fashioned ideas about how to respond to evil like this."

Blake said he can't be sure how he'd respond if put in a similar situation, but added, "I hope I would have the courage to fight back, especially if I thought I was likely to die no matter what."

Blake is no stranger to controversy. In February of 2006, he wrote a piece for the OSU student newspaper accusing Muslims of demanding special treatment after a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Riots over the cartoons amounted to "savagery," he wrote. Blake also derided the founder of Islam.

In response, OSU Muslim students held a protest, saying it was offensive to their faith, and community and university members called for the resignation of Barometer staff members.

Blake now resides in Virginia and is working as a writer, editor and analyst at American Life League. He will begin graduate studies in political philosophy this fall at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

It's not that he likes incensing readers, but Blake has a thick skin and is willing to speak his mind, he said.

"I enjoy writing and debate, certainly, but don't enjoy stirring up anger for the sake of anger. I am much less bothered by hatred directed at me than most people are, which does allow me to write on subjects, such as Islam or abortion, that most people shy from."

To read Nathanael Blake's commentary on the Virginia Tech shooting, see http://www.humanevents.com/rightangle/index.php?id=22093&title=where_were_the_men and http://www.humanevents.com/rightangle/index.php?p=22147

To see a clip of Keith Olbermann naming Blake the second worst person in the world, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia_b4N4SvT4.

Mary Ann Albright covers higher education. She can be reached at maryann.albright@lee.net or 758-9518.