Category: Politics

Olbermann dives into a steaming vat of hot water

Keith Olbermann

MSNBC talk-show host Keith Olbermann has been caught stepping way over the line. According to Politico’s Simmi Aujla, Olbermann made campaign contributions to three Democratic candidates in the just-concluded campaign. The network has suspended him, the New York Times reports.

Olbermann has acknowledged making the donations — the legal maximum of $2,400 apiece — to Jack Conway, who lost to Kentucky Republican Rand Paul in a U.S. Senate race, and to two Arizona members of Congress, one of whom was recently a guest on Olbermann’s show, “Countdown.”

It gets worse. Olbermann’s donations were in direct violation of NBC News’ ethics policy. Like many news organizations, Aujla writes, NBC executives ban their employees from making such donations because they consider it “a breach of journalistic independence to contribute to the candidates they cover.”

There are no longer any such scruples at radio talk shows, whose largely conservative hosts have morphed into out-and-out political activists. But there is a long tradition of opinion journalists’ refraining from political activity even though they are paid to express their political views. As Aujla notes, it’s a matter of independence, not objectivity.

Even if NBC made an exception for talk-show hosts like Olbermann (to be clear: it shouldn’t), he has often co-anchored MSNBC’s election-night coverage — as he did this past Tuesday. That is clearly a journalistic role, and the fact that someone who has given money to political candidates would fill such a role is pretty outrageous. That no one apparently knew about it only makes it worse.

It will be interesting to see how NBC handles this beyond the just-announced suspension. MSNBC finally stumbled upon an identity in recent years as the liberal alternative to Fox News, and it’s Olbermann who led the way. He is the network’s signature personality — a huge asset for MSNBC. He is not expendable talent like Rick Sanchez or Juan Williams.

Olbermann’s gotten some favorable attention for announcing that he is ending his “Worst Person in the World” segment. Maybe he ought to do one more — and this time award it to himself.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Two questions about Howie Carr’s latest

Two questions about Howie Carr’s column in today’s Boston Herald:

1. Now that everyone knows he’s an actual Republican operative, and not just a Republican-leaning pundit, why is he even allowed to call Democrats and pretend that he’s entitled to a response?

2. Carr has always had a vicious cruel streak, which undermines his considerable talent. But back in his heyday — oh, 25 years ago — did he go so far as to make reference to someone’s “worthless younger brother” and “worthless son”?

Maybe he did. But it wasn’t as noticeable because the rest of his columns were more readable back then.

Conflicting reports on a possible Brown foe

Setti Warren

Is Newton Mayor Setti Warren saying different things to different reporters about his future political aspirations? Or does it come down to a matter of emphasis and interpretation? That’s what folks at the Newton Tab want to know.

After Matt Murphy of the State House News Service reported that some Democrats were hoping Warren would challenge Republican Senator Scott Brown in 2012, Warren told Tab editor Gail Spector there was nothing to it.

But Warren didn’t come off as quite so emphatic in a Boston Globe story today by Alan Wirzbicki, who wrote, “Warren said he was focused on his job, but did not rule out a run and attacked Brown’s record.”

Lacking the full transcript of either interview, it’s hard to know what’s going on. Warren’s quote in the Tab — “My intent is to finish my term” — isn’t exactly a denial. And the Globe quotes Warren indirectly, so we don’t know what he actually said.

My guess is that both stories are right. And that Warren will soon be issuing a clarification.

More: The Tab’s Spector follows up with Warren. And he won’t be pinned down.

Photo via the City of Newton’s website.

Election Night in Danvers

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Click on image for more photos.

Right after supper, Mrs. Media Nation, Media Nation Jr. and I headed over to the Holten Richmond Middle School in Danvers to cast our ballots in the 2010 election. It was a proud moment — this was our son’s first time voting, so we are now officially a three-voter household. Next time there should be four of us.

There are eight precincts in Danvers, and Precints 1 and 2 vote at the Holten Richmond. I was the 1,233rd person in Precinct 1 today. Given that the polls would close in a little more than an hour, that didn’t strike me as particularly high. Nor was there any line when we came in.

After voting, I took a couple of photos of the stalwart volunteers who had set up on the edge of Plains Park so they could wave to passing motorists. Everyone seemed to be having a good time. And, pretty soon, we should have some results.

Broder’s disturbing advice to Obama

I realize Washington Post columnist David Broder’s expiration date came and went some time ago. But suggesting that President Obama prepare for war with Iran in order to boost his re-election prospects is surely a new low.

“I am not suggesting, of course, that the president incite a war to get reelected,” Broder writes. Good lord, what is it he thinks he’s doing?

Jon Keller is still at large

When CBS unveiled a new WBZ website a couple of days ago, political analyst Jon Keller’s blog seemed to disappear — just a few days before a wild state election.

Fortunately, Keller is using his old blog until the new site can be fixed. You won’t find it linked from WBZTV.com — or, as it has now been dubbed, BostonCBSLocal.com. But you will find it here.

Update: WBZ is working out the kinks, and Keller is now asking his readers to join him here.

Rewarding those they despise the most

If the polls and the pundits are to be believed, voters nationwide are about to deliver a stinging rebuke to our most popular elected official by casting their ballots in favor of our most despised political class. No, I’m not making this up. And it really calls into question what people are thinking, given that they appear poised to vote Republican on Tuesday.

Now, who is the most popular elected official? That would be the much-maligned President Obama, whose job-approval ratings are in rough shape, but who, as we shall see, stands head and shoulders above Congress. Take a look at this, and you’ll see that, in recent polls, Obama’s job approval rating is almost evenly divided between positive and negative.

A CNN/Opinion Research poll shows that 45 percent of respondents approve of the president’s performance and 52 percent disapprove. That seems to be in line with other polls I’ve seen. Yet some polls actually reverse those numbers in Obama’s favor. For instance, this Newsweek poll finds that 54 percent approve of Obama’s job performance and 40 percent disapprove. That does not sound like a president who’s down for the count.

Obama’s numbers are not only much better than those of Congress, but the congressional numbers break down in a way that is favorable to him. The public, according to surveys, despises Congress — but it loathes the Democrats slightly less than the Republicans.

Just one out of many examples: A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that the public gives Democratic members of Congress a 36 percent positive/61 percent negative job-approval rating. The same poll shows that respondents gave Republican members of Congress a 30 percent favorable rating and a 67 percent unfavorable assessment.

You might find a few exceptions, but the emphasis would be on “few.” I’ve been following these numbers off and on since Obama’s inauguration, and congressional Republicans have consistently come in last in the three-way race for job approval.

How to explain the likelihood that the Republicans will make huge gains on Capitol Hill next week? I’m not sure it can be explained. For instance, today’s New York Times reports the results of a poll it conducted with CBS News that shows next Tuesday will be a huge day for the GOP. Yet, bizarrely, the poll also finds:

[N]early 60 percent of Americans were optimistic about Mr. Obama’s next two years in office and nearly 70 percent said the economic slump is temporary. Half said the economy was where they expected it would be at this point, and less than 10 percent blamed the current administration for the state of the economy, leaving the onus on former President George W. Bush and Wall Street.

Those findings are everything Obama and congressional Democrats could hope for. The most you can say, though, is that voters will give the president an opportunity to dig out from the rubble they are about to dump on him next Tuesday. Strange days indeed.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

What Jeff Perry saw

From the time the story re-surfaced last spring, the problem with trying to hold Republican congressional candidate Jeff Perry responsible for a rogue police officer’s illegal strip searches of two teenage girls was that the matter had already been thoroughly litigated.

Perry, a former Wareham police sergeant, was not directly charged in either of the two incidents. Nor has anyone been able to tie his subsequent resignation to his actions in those incidents. Perry’s Democratic opponent in the 10th Congressional District, Bill Keating, has been pounding away on the issue. But according to the polls, the race has remained close. No doubt to a lot of prospective voters, it sounded like typical campaign mudslinging.

That all changed yesterday. Now we have one of the victims declaring that Perry had to have known that then-police officer Scott Flanagan was sexually assaulting her one night in 1991 near a Wareham cranberry bog. “He had to hear me screaming and crying, said Lisa Allen in a statement, according to the Boston Globe. “Instead of helping me, Jeff Perry denied anything happened.”

The Cape Cod Times — which, along with the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, may be the most important local paper in the district — plays the story huge today beneath the headline “Strip-search victim blasts Perry.” As the Outraged Liberal notes, the Boston Herald relegates the story to Margery Eagan’s column — a questionable bit of news judgment, though Eagan, to her credit, is in high dudgeon. So is Globe columnist Joan Vennochi.

The online news site Cape Cod Today has pushed the Perry story relentlessly, and I take this as something of a victory lap.

If there is a congressional district in Massachusetts ripe for a Republican takeover, it is surely the 10th, a conservative part of the state that stretches from Quincy to Provincetown. The Republicans had a chance to pick nice guy Joe Malone, but instead went with Perry. No doubt many of them are regretting that decision today — but surely they knew something like this might happen.

What happened to Lisa Allen may have taken place a long time ago. But the questions she raises about Perry’s empathy and judgment are just as valid today as they were in 1991.