What’s the big friggin’ deal? Nothing like hearing liberals complain that this image is offensive as if they don’t get the joke. Even worse: Watching CNN conduct an informal poll at a newsstand where they show unsuspecting citizens the “offensive” cover illo and ask, “Is this positive or negative?” Wow. Then there are the commentators, the pundit class who should know better, act like they’ve never read the New Yorker lamenting that there should have been an article to go with the front cover. Why, oh why, they ask wasn’t there a headline or some sort of explain-y thing to go with the cover art? Gee.

And almost even worse: David Gergen. This former adviser of presidents turned wonk, academic, and CNN talking head, usually represents some clear-headed CW and carefully calibrated insight. He’s great at being a  blowhard without actually sounding like a blowhard. Over the years, I’ve come to rely on his commentary. But last night, Gergen joined the chorus to declare that the New Yorker really whiffed and called the joke unfunny, etc. At least he judged the illo as a joke.

It’s art, people. Deal with it. The New Yorker had every right to publish it. And despite all the huffing and puffing, the cover did its job. It provoked a conversation about all those bad Obama rumors. If only the conversation actually got deeper than hating on a drawing and dealt with the real reason those rumors persist: racism.

In this year of faux umbrage, the flap over this New Yorker cover is perhaps the worst example.

So it could be just me, but a guy’s gotta wonder how McCain isn’t drawing more fire for…just about everything, no?

Okay, perhaps it is just me who gets bummed when Fox wins big in the ratings after accusing Obama of proffering terrorist fist jabs and calling Michelle his “Baby Mama”, when McCain gets a free pass to assert that everyone knows who Hamas wants to be President, when the presumptive Republican nominee hires Steve Schmidt, Bush footsoldier, to rejuvenate his wizened, ailing campaign—this after giving a “full-throated” (phrase of the season) and thoroughly inane shout-out to the current Vice President—when Gen. Wesley Clark finds himself caught in some serious media crossfire for the simple crime of pinpointing the basis of McCain’s campaign and questioning its validity…and when Obama gets accused of elitism and out-of-touchism for his Ivy Leaguesmanship when McCain owns…what, like, thirty houses?

So a rant’s a rant, and rarely adorable. Here’s the question: is the MSM holding out on full-throttle McCain excoriation because:

a. They’re trying to shake their rep of being LIBERAL, or

b. They want to make it an interesting fight, for the sake of preserving ratings and because one of the candidates can’t raise money or adrenaline on his own steam?

Lemme know in the comments. Or, you know, don’t. After all, a fella like me only cares what they say in commie rags like the New York Times.

Meanwhile…Michael Douglass:

Olbermann sampled this speech in a recent special comment…merely proving Aaron Sorkin’s abiding influence on U.S. infotainment.

Dear Jason,

Enough with the goddamn election.

Sincerely,

Your had-it-up-to-here coworkers

Dear Hillary:

I am sure that I am not part of your PowerPoint presentation. I don’t count in your world. I’m a marginally over-educated white boy who doesn’t think much of your gas-tax relief plan, your fighter cred, nor your previous attempts at YouTube viral video. I don’t buy your big-state argument, your blue-collar argument, nor any arguments whatsoever to count Michigan. I don’t think you’re a fighter. I think you are just desperate.

But forget all that. I need you to quit sometime today. I bet a co-worker that you would. The bet is substantial—way more than what I would gain from your gas-tax holiday—two appetizers and two beers! That’s like at least $20. As you can see a lot is riding on this bet.

You’re probably thinking that I’m a total fool for making this bet, that I just don’t know you—that you really are a fighter. Well, I had my reasons. I figured the superdels would flock to Obama [which they are kinda starting to], that you’d tire of loaning yourself money, and that the press would turn against you. I think I’m closer to being right than you’d want to admit. I mean did you see the cover of Time? That has to hurt. I figured you wouldn’t want to put up with that kind of humiliation.

Please say I’m not wrong. I really could use those two beers and two orders of nachos.

You have about 7 hours to quit. Think about all the free time you’ll have tomorrow.

Please consider my plight.

Sincerely yours in 2016,

Jason Cherkis

Dear Marx Cafe:

Last night, I was stuck. I was hungry and I desperately wanted to watch the election returns. I picked your establishment because a) you were relatively empty and b) you had CNN on two out of three TVs. And I live near you.

I hate to say this but I regret this decision. Why you decided to pipe in bland adult contemporary alternative [think a Dawson's Creek episode where Pacey drops some bad E] instead of the shout-y mantones of Wolf Blitzer is beyond me. Didn’t you hear that last night was the last real primary night loaded with delegate-rich states? Didn’t you hear that last night could have been—and probably was—a real game changer? Didn’t you hear that Indiana had been changed from a too-early-to call status to a too-close-to-call status?

Even if you don’t scan TPM every five minutes, you should at least have been able to give me the closed-caption option after I requested it. There are nerds out there. They can be your audience too. I am one of them.

Live up to your name. Why call yourselves Marx Cafe if you’re gonna make patrons watch the Celtics game? Why call yourselves Marx Cafe if Indiana is still Very Much In Play and you decide to flick off CNN for “Dancing with the Stars?”

What the hell was that?

You didn’t even ask me what I thought of your selection. If you had asked, I would have suggested that MSNBC’s political team would have been the better choice. I would have told you that its anchor had just been featured on the cover of the New York Times magazine, that the channel is almost hip. I would have told you also that even Morning Joe holds up as web-only reruns.

Instead, you made me think about watching “stars” try to “dance.”

I will end this now. I don’t think I need to mention the food since you appear to treat it as an afterthought. I’m sure whatever voluntary agreement you have does not include having to make a decent veggie burger.

Anyway, please keep in mind that there are still some primaries left. I hear Oregon is going to be the next game changer.

Sincerely,

J.C.

Wired has the best stuff on the juicy scandal still percolating with D.C.-based Women’s Voices. Women’s Vote, which admits to being behind some high-tech “anonymous” phone calls going to primarily black households in North Carolina. The calls from a Lamont Williams imply improper voter registration and give instructions on re-registering, only the voters there have not necessarily improperly registered and the instructions to wait for a packet in the mail and send in another application would put voters well past the deadline to vote in Tuesday’s primary. Virginia State Police investigated similar robo-calls before VA’s primaries last February, also sourced to Women’s Voices. Women Vote.

The group’s president (and Duke grad, no less) is Page Gardner of Northern Virginia, who has been making the rounds in this hamster-wheel primary to talk about the impact of single women. According to the Institute for Southern Studies and OpenSecrets.org, Gardner has contributed $6,700 to Hillary Clinton in one form or another in 2005 and 2006. Her total contribution to the Obama campaign: $0.

Gardner does have a response to all of this: “We apologize for any confusion our calls may have caused.” That may not be enough for the Attorney General.

The mystery of the missing delegate ballots has been solved. This morning, Democratic State Committee member Stephen P. Gorman took the blame.

“I was the one who threw away the ballots.” Gorman wrote in an e-mail he sent to the committee’s membership this morning. “…I did so because I was unaware of the custom and mandate of the availablity of these particular election ballots. In all three years on the committee, no ballots was ever made available for review UNLESS there was a challenge made.”

In his letter, Forman explains he asked committee chair Anita Bonds what to do with the ballot box shortly after the vote; “Upon reflection, I can say I did not make myself entirely clear to her that the box contained ballots [when I asked] ‘what do I do with these?’” he wrote. “It is entirely reasonable that she thought I was talking only about the box and shrugged as if ‘whatever’.”

Gorman knocked down any rumors that there were unsavory motives attached to the ditching of the ballots. “There were no back room agreements or anything of the sort,” he wrote. “None of the leadership or other persons involved Thursday night had anything to do with my decision. I made an incorrect decision based on my own three year experience as vice-chair of the Party Organization and Function Committee which assumed that ALL ballots are secret.”

In a rather stunning display of accountability (or perhaps merely seizing the opportunity to slough off a thankless job) Gorman submitted his resignation from the state committee, writing, “This is a clear case of misfeasance on my part.”

LL was unable to reach Gorman for comment earlier today. Full letter after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last Thursday evening, members of the D.C. Democratic State Committee met and elected four delegates and various other party positions. In the hottest contest of the night, Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr.—a Hillary Clinton supporter at the time—edged out Barack Obama backer Miriam Sapiro by two votes.

Now, despite the close tally, no one has challenged the results. However, because of the politiciking behind the scenes, several folks—including LL—were interested in inspecting the ballots for various reasons, perhaps to see where party members’ loyalties lay or to thank members who supported a particular candidate. Having the ballots open to inspection is a practice that had been extended to the public in the past.

Well, not this year. The ballots have gone missing.

Committee spokesperson David Meadows said yesterday that the ballots “got mixed up, and somebody threw them away….From what I understand they were mistakenly trashed.”

What are the rules concerning the ballots? No one seems to be able to point LL toward a particular rule mandating that ballots be kept for a particular period of time. However, several committee members are hold that the trashing violates well-established party doctrine that there be no secret ballots at any point in the delegate selection process after the public primaries.

DCDSC chair Anita Bonds denies that any rules were broken by discarding the ballots, saying there was no provision in the local delegate selection plan for preserving the ballots. “It didn’t occur that we should be creating some sort of special rule for counting and handling of the ballots,” she said yesterday.

In fact, she says, there’s no saying where the ballots are: “The box may actually be in a corner somewhere; I don’t know.”

Could there be an ulterior motive? Well, those folks who didn’t get with the Obama ticket and voted for Thomas over Sapiro might have been in for some backlash from the Barack camp that they can now easily avoid. (Read tomorrow’s LL for more on that.)

Former DCDSC member Phil Pannell says that standard practice in the past was to keep the ballots for at least 30 days following these sorts of elections.

Pannell sent a letter to committee members decrying the loss of the ballots. The committee, he wrote, “should never be in a situation when DCDCS election ballots are not available for public review…..Democrats have a right to know how they voted….For the Democrats in DC not to have the opportunity to review the April 3rd ballots is not only unfair, it is an obscene outrage.”