Quote of the Day (Keith Olbermann, With a Different “View” Than Today)

“I don’t vote. It’s the only thing I can do that suggests that I don’t even have a horse in the race.”—Keith Olbermann on “The View,” November 2008

Look what comes from playing the political ponies—a near-death experience. Or, at least, the modern media equivalent—having a camera and microphone withdrawn for several days, and probably advised by lawyers to shut up until the storm blows over.

The image accompanying this post appears to have been taken in 2008, some months before the Countdown host’s appearance on The View. But judging from the look, it suggests a sense of quiet relief, meaning it could just as easily have been snapped earlier this week, when Olbermann received the news that his “indefinite” suspension for violating an NBC ban on journalists making campaign contributions without prior permission had been lifted.

The other night, aimlessly channel-surfing, I came across Olbermann, back on MSNBC, providing a teaser to an upcoming segment of his show: “Should journalists make political contributions?” Given what he’d admitted to in the last few days, his answer to this question was as obvious as whether he regarded George W. Bush as a war criminal.

The right-wing blogosphere, with some exceptions, chortled while Olbermann roasted on a spit last weekend. That glee was not only short-lived but, in view of the even more egregious support provided conservative candidates by Fox News, horribly myopic.

Oh, to be sure, there has been tut-tutting from traditional journalists about the ethics of contributing to candidates being covered.

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts, for instance, was particularly outraged at what happened: “A journalist who has a financial stake like Olbermann, or stakes an entire career on achieving a certain political outcome by any means necessary like [conservative blogger and provocateur Andrew] Breitbart, forfeits any expectation of being taken seriously by serious people—and yes, that applies even to a pundit.”

Olbermann tilts toward the leftist wing of the Democratic Party as surely as Bill O’Reilly veers toward the hard-right wing of the GOP. Why shouldn’t he back up what he says on the air by putting his money where his mouth is?

Well, it’s because Olbermann himself makes a pretense of being “impartial,” just as much as O’Reilly, the circus master of the right-wing media, constantly talks, ludicrously, about being “fair and balanced.” Olbermann was being more than a little hypocritical by claiming he didn’t vote because of that need to show he didn’t “have a horse in the race.” Quite obviously, he did--or, in the case of the contributions that got him temporarily in trouble, three political horses.

Olbermann’s initial troubles appear to have been practically foretold by his employment history. I imagine that he, like O’Reilly, was vain enough to have enjoyed making the top 10 in Newsweek’s recent list of the “Power 50”—the highest-earning politicians, ex-politicos, media personalities, and media consultants.

But one section seems eerily prophetic about Olbermann’s run-in with his NBC bosses: “Most of his previous career stints have ended bitterly. He was the only host of SportsCenter not invited back for the network's 25th anniversary.”

And in the desperate hours of this past weekend, the following point in the Newsweek article must have seemed very, very frightening indeed: “Nearly all his income [an estimated $7.5 million] is believed to come from his contract with NBC.”

In other words, a nice little independent blog of his own, free of corporate oversight, simply would not have compensated him for the loss of his big payday.

Make no mistake: Olbermann dodged a bullet when his “indefinite suspension” was lifted. Think he learned anything from this, like the virtues of humility and honesty?

Doubtful. What he discovered was that, if he took positions without compromise or nuance, his base would support him even through the consequences of his own mistakes.

Come to think of it, that’s the same thing learned by the most successful politicians Olbermann covers—even the ones he makes no bones about despising.

Quote of the Day (Nancy Franklin, on “Jersey Shore” and the Reality-Show Genre)

“Our ability to take any pleasure, or even interest, in shows like this—in which participants are depicted as energetic but essentially aimless, oblivious of their own deficits, and delusional about their attractiveness and their importance in the world—hinges not on our ability to identify with them but on our ability to distinguish ourselves from them. Unless the show manages to make us feel as though we were anthropologists secretly observing a new tribe through a break in the trees, it hasn’t done its job. MTV has succeeded on that score; it can give itself a pat on the back for enabling viewers to feel superior to at least eight other people.”—Nancy Franklin, “On Television: Jersey Jetsam; MTV Goes to the Beach,” The New Yorker, January 18, 2010

“I’m watching your favorite show,” my oldest brother told me recently.

I’ve fallen out of the habit of watching primetime TV, so I tried to imagine what show my brother might think kept me glued to the boob tube. “What, Jeopardy?” I asked.

Not even close. “Try Jersey Shore,” he answered.

I had heard rumblings in my neck of the woods here in northern New Jersey that Italian-Americans were complaining that this reality show perpetuated stereotypes, but I had never watched a second of this, so I had to ask my brother which cable station ran it. (Answer: MTV, for those of you who, like myself, are abysmally oblivious to this contribution to American culture.)

Now, let it be said that my brother was, as he is predisposed to do, pulling my leg about my cultural tastes. Moreover, though he only makes it into New Jersey on visits nowadays, he’s had slightly more than a quarter century of experience with Jerseyites from growing up here, and he’s continued to run across more than his share.

Living in a place for a long time should, by rights, make you less susceptible to racial and ethnic myths, including the pernicious ones plaguing Italian-Americans about organized crime. From that standpoint, I don’t think Italian-American protest groups are being overly sensitive about what MTV is conveying about them.

From encounters in other regions over the years, I’ve learned how much impressions of the state where I’ve lived virtually my whole life are formed by TV, the movies, and other forms of popular culture.

Early in college, my shorthand description of my hometown as the place where John Travolta also hailed from met with some incredulity. That man can move on the dance floor, the bemused expressions of other students said. What happened to you?

(On the plus side: Travolta’s Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever might have been able to move, but he was a little on the inarticulate side, liable at any moment to lapse into “Youse.” No Demosthenes myself, I was credited, by default, with slightly more facility with the Mother Tongue.)

A few years later, Bruce Springsteen made it cool to be from the state again, though I’m afraid his songs conveyed to outsiders the impression that I lived in a tight triangle bounded by the New Jersey Shore, highways, and oil refineries.

Though “Born to Run” never became, as some advocates wanted, our “unofficial anthem,” it did foster the notion that New Jersey was nicknamed the Refinery State rather than the Garden State. Even this, however, turned out to be a comparatively positive impression compared with a show that made a far more powerful impact before the turn of the millennium.

About a half dozen years ago, during a writer’s workshop in Minneapolis, I offered, in a mass group introduction, details on where I came from. “Oh, Jersey,” one of my fellow students exclaimed, as if an inner light bulb had lit up (though not enough to illumine the idea that “New” belonged to the state’s title). “The Sopranos State.”

I smiled but groaned a little inside. Why couldn’t I have come from a state with a more positive image? At least Minnesota had Mary Tyler Moore, America’s Seventies Sweetheart, tossing her cap ebulliently into the air in her show’s opening credits. (And if anybody ever came close to forgetting, TV Land now reminds them with a statue capturing the immortal moment in downtown Minneapolis' Nicollet Mall.)

Everybody remembers warm, wonderful Mary hugging, for no apparent reason other than that she was Mary and Love Was All Around, every person in the newsroom. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that the most vivid scene involving Tony Soprano concerned the psychologically conflicted mobster whacking a former associate-turned-informant out in a field while taking his beloved daughter Meadow on that inevitable parental rite, the automotive circuit of colleges.

I’m sure the reality-show denizens of Jersey Shore wouldn’t mind whacking Nancy Franklin, television critic of The New Yorker—but first they’d have to hear about The New Yorker. From what I gather from her review, the show’s stars/participants (many of whom proudly if inexplicably proclaim they are “Guidos”) spend an inordinate amount of time chug-a-lugging, belching, and hitting (and hitting on) on each other.

One of these “stars”—I’m half-tempted to call him “specimen”—is Mike, the individual in the photo accompanying this post. I’ve long wanted to provide faithful female readers of this blog with some beefcake, and I suppose this Staten Island guy fits the bill. (You’ll notice from the washboard abs that the only thing he shares with the CEO of this blog is a first name.)

Still, ladies, if you are captivated by this male who cheerfully goes by the nickname “The Situation” (because said abs immediately create "situations" when women accompanied by boyfriends catch a glimpse of him), you might have to put up with—shall we call it a slight vacancy in the ol’ cranium?

Well, I’ve gotta go now. Watching this show is contagious, so it’s time for me to crush a beer can against my forehead. If I’m anything like the guys on this show, there’s no possibility whatsoever of any interior damage occurring.

This Day in Television History (C-Span Begins)

March 19, 1979—In a post-Watergate measure designed to ensure greater accountability and transparency, the House of Representatives went on television, as public TV and cable’s C-Span network began regular live coverage of congressional floor proceedings.

The hope for the new medium was expressed by the first representative to speak before the cameras, Al Gore Jr. The Democrat from Tennessee observed: “It is a solution for the lack of confidence in government. The marriage of this medium and of our open debate have the potential, Mr. Speaker, to revitalize representative democracy.”

It’s good that the future Vice-President used a rather than the before “solution,” because at this point, “lack of confidence in government” is perhaps more rife now than it was after the seamy revelations of Vietnam and Watergate. The solution to the lack of confidence, I’d say, is competent people who govern honestly. But there’s the rub!

Gore’s statement, however, does raise a question: Has C-Span changed the way Washington does business?

In a certain way, yes. Approximately 97 million cable/satellite households have access to C-Spa’s public affairs programming, and the notion that 39 million American watch it at least once a week should put a chill down the spine of corrupt lawmakers.

Only, as we’ve come to know well over the years, it hasn’t. A certain breed of politicians (cynics would say all of them) would try to steal a hot stove if they could.

C-Span has at least provided the following:

* Opportunities for politicians to check each other. Newt Gingrich took advantage of House rules that allowed members to make after-hours speeches when only C-Span cameras were around, repeatedly charging the Democratic leadership with corruption. House Speaker Tip O’Neill, who’d pushed for the live programming to begin with, finally got disgusted with Gingrich's bombast and ordered the cameras to pan all around the room to show the empty chamber.

* Nonpartisan coverage of politics. Conservatives gravitate toward Fox News and liberals toward MSNBC. The other various broadcast and cable networks, along with blogs and talk radio, have become increasingly partisan as well. C-Span is the one institution that airs House and Senate proceedings in full, and, whether you’re a devotee of Noam Chomsky or the American Enterprise Institute, you can hear them in full, unadulterated, in speeches that the 24-hour network broadcasts.

This Day in Yankee History (Steinbrenner Agrees on Cable Megadeal with MSG)

December 9, 1988—George Steinbrenner made a 12-year, $500 million pact with the Madison Square Garden (MSG) cable TV network that formed the bedrock of whatever financial stability has existed for the New York Yankees franchise—and left other major-league baseball owners figuring how they could create their own versions of this megadeal.

These days, speculation on The Boss is turning into Kremlinology in the late atherosclerotic era of the old Soviet Union: There’s not only endless if pointless curiosity about the leader’s health, but also an attempt to ferret out the true nature of the Yankees’ financial health as well.

Like any other fan, I’d prefer talking about what happens between the lines, the stuff that makes it into the Baseball Almanac (and gives me an interest in statistics that I never had on any other occasion through 20 years of elementary-through-graduate-school education, not to mention more than a quarter century in the workforce).

But the business aspect of sports can’t be ignored and, on occasion, can fascinate—particularly when it involves the New York Yankees, which still holds the record for most championships in professional sports. In 1964, for instance, CBS bought what seemed like a perennial champion—a harbinger of an era in which baseball passed from small, family-run operations into corporate ownership.

I would say that the deal that Steinbrenner inked with MSG formed one of two cornerstone events of the franchise’s return to glory in the 1990s. The agreement not only provided a source of revenue that would stay constant over the next decade, impervious to the inevitable ups-and-downs of even the best baseball teams (a fact of life that The Boss denied, in much the same way that some economists erroneously believed recently that this country had flattened out the possibility of a prolonged and severe recession), but also served as a milestone in creating professional sports’ most famous “brand.”

The other event, of course, was The Boss’s exile from the game in the early 1990s because of his sordid use of gambler Howie Spira to obtain intelligence that would discredit the slugger with whom he was feuding, Dave Winfield. That hiatus from the team forced the Yankee front office, by necessity, to rely on building up the farm team and trying out newcomers such as Bernie Williams, Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter in the field, even if they made the occasional mistake.

With the conclusion of the MSG deal several years ago, the Yankees embarked on something new: the YES Network, which took the aforementioned branding efforts to its natural extension, including interviews with Yankee greats by Michael Kay, kid-friendly features featuring past, present, and soon-to-depart Bombers, and my favorite feature of all, the “Yankeeography” series on players and managers who played significant roles in the dynasty.