Keith Olbermann has sympathy for Brian Williams on David Letterman

Sportscaster Keith Olbermann is no stranger to being suspended -- he was briefly taken off his ESPN show last month after getting into a fight on Twitter -- so it’s not surprising that he has great sympathy for embattled newsman Brian Williams.

Olbermann appeared on the “Late Show With David Letterman� Tuesday and discussed Williams, who is currently suspended from NBC News for six months without pay after fabricating facts about a helicopter ride he took during the Iraq war in 2003.

“People who have enjoyed his newscasts, his appearances [on ‘Late Show’] probably don’t know, of all the people I’ve ever worked with in television -- in news, particularly -- the guy who would get most personally hurt when there was a mistake or factual error on the air was Brian Williams,� Olbermann said.

“There’s more to this than we understand,� Olbermann said. “I don’t know what it is, but I would like to think it’s fixable and I would like to see him back on the air. And I’d like to see this resolved.�

Olbermann probably has some idea of what Williams is feeling while he sits at home. The ESPN host was told to stay home for a few days in February after engaging in a nasty back-and-forth on Twitter with a group of Penn State students and alumni.

“I got into a dispute with some folks on Twitter and it got personal because on Twitter you don’t think of anybody else as an actual human being, just as something, somebody you have to bury or they’re going to bury you,� Olbermann explained to Letterman.

When one student sent him a tweet with a link to a story about students raising money for pediatric cancer research, Olbermann responded with “Pitiful.� He says he never read the link he was sent but assumed it was negative.

As he said on Letterman, “So my horror at this when the folks at ESPN said, ‘Tell you what, just stay home a couple days, let’s let it cool down.’ I said, ‘Thank you.’�

Something tells us Williams wasn’t quite as thankful when he got pulled from the air.

Follow me on Twitter: @patrickkevinday