My Progressive Populist column is on the Web site. It is on the false sense that elections make a democracy and the need to emulate the French protesters.
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| AP file photo from MSNBC |
(Update below)
MSNBC has suspended host Keith Olbermann indefinitely because he apparently made political donations to three Democratic candidates.
Perhaps, we shouldn’t be surprisd — Olbermann has been pushing a highly partisan brand of commentary for some time. This wouldn’t be a problem except it is more than just a philosophical or ideological bent. It literally has been pro-Democrat/ant-GOP, which oversteps the boundaries.
Some on the left — or the partisan left, meaning Democrats — will point to Fox’s partisan faux news and say Olbermann offered a counterweight. And I can understand the argument. But my question is this: Since when do we lower our ethical expectations to the level of Rupert Murdoch and the GOP chain gang?
I listen to both Olbermann and Rachel Maddow on podcast most days, and often to The Young Turks and I’d been growing dissolutioned with Keith and Rachel’s creeping partisanship, especially when compared with Cenk Uygar’s unapologetically progressive, but nonpartisan commentary.
The contributions were the final straw in a growing push not to the left but toward the Democrats.
I assume Olbermann will return, but it is unclear when. For now, expect substitutes to babysit the chair (Chris Hayes from The Nation will sub tonight).
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Hayes apparently is not hosting the show tonight, but more significantly The Nation reports that Olbermann was just one of many political hosts on cable who have made contributions. This doesn’t change my criticism of Keith — he had grown too partisan (and apparently had one of the candidates he gave money to on just before his donation was made, as per The Nation).
It only expands my criticism of a news industry that is built on personalities and not journalists. The fact that Sean Hannity gave money to Republicans does not excuse Olbermann’s political contributions. Neither should be giving money if they want to pretend to host news and commentary shows.
Robert Scheer, in a column that I should have linked to yesterday, offers probably the clearest takeaway from Tuesday’s election results. “Hey, stupid,” to paraphrase the 1992 Clinton campaign, “it’s the economy!’
This interview with Martin Espada is worth reading for a lot of reasons — for its exploration of political commitment, discussion of Latino America and its politics and the need for grassroots mobilization — but this quotation from the poet would have been enough on its own:
I believe there has to be an aesthetic; that we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard. I believe that political poetry should be grounded in the image, in the five senses, in the concrete, and that serves as a barricade against the rhetorical, because political rhetoric is often too abstract.
It is something all of us who try to merge the political with our poetry.
There are a lot of things one could say about Tuesday’s win by Linda Greenstein in the race to finish the final year of the 14th District state Senate seat, which had been held by Republicans for 19 years.
First, Greenstein had much better name recognition — she had been in the Assembly for about 10 years, while her opponent — Tom Goodwin — was a Hamilton councilman who lost an Assembly race for the same seat in 2007.
Second, we could make the argument made by Senate President Stephen Sweeney, who claims that the win is an indication that voters want the governor and Legislature to make nice (they might, but I’m not sure how the Greenstein win demonstrates this, given
Or, you could argue something I’ve been saying about Christie since he was sworn in: He may be governor, but he does not have a mandate. Remember, he won with less than 50 percent of the vote and had no coattails in 2009. And, while he may be popular in the polls, he had little impact on the races in New Jersey on Tuesday. In fact, the Greenstein win means a larger Democratic majority than Christie faced just a week ago — not exactly a glowing endorsement of his approach to fixing the state’s problems.
And the Democrats won all four special elections on the ballot Tuesday — two Assembly seats (5th and 31st) and two Senate seats (Greenstein and Donald Norcross in the 5th) — while the GOP captured county government in Bergen County and regained the third district Congressional seat won by Democrat Jon Adler two years.
If anything, New Jersey politics has grown even more muddled than before.
