Behold the power of an ill-conceived email message. For it wasn't horny, drunken voice mail or repeated bouts of excess drinking that got Pat O'Brien fired from celebrity news show the Insider. It was that pompous, undermining email where he called himself a "favorite son" of bitter poor Iowans who "want to vomit" over segments by his replacement in the anchor chair, Lara Spencer. "I'm actually not the one afraid for my job," he wrote, ominously.

Bosses were "infuriated," the Post reports this morning, and O'Brien is now out.

Speculation will inevitably turn to whether O'Brien was drunk when he wrote the email, but a coworker already told the Post it sprang from his "insecurity and jealousy." Which are the sort of emotional problems that tend to come vividly to the fore when one is no longer blunting them with drugs or alcohol.

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