Soap Box: Turn Out the Lights, This Race is Over

An open letter to Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ed FitzGerald:

Ed FitzGerald (center) meets with supporters at a Dayton campaign rally this past January.

Dear Mr. FitzGerald Ed,

Let me try to put this as delicately as I can--what in the wide, wide world of sports were you thinking? How could a former FBI agent believe that in the current age of bulk data storage and instantaneous access to public records that those potentially embarrassing issues from your past would not become known? And you thought that this would simply be ignored in a political climate where style—and its associated “political games”—trumps substance? In the hands of a wily opposition research operation, rather innocuous events could be spun so far out of proportion so quickly that even the most firmly established, textbook-perfect political campaigns would be vulnerable to such shenanigans (and as we have seen since you announced your desire to be Ohio's next governor, yours does not fall into that category).

Second Season of "The Newsroom" Starts Tomorrow Night

One of the posts that I had sitting on the "back burner" was to be a critique of last year's premiere season of HBO's The Newsroom, a show that was supposed to give its viewers an inside glimpse into the personnel, logistics and purpose behind today's cable news programming.  Set at the fictional Atlantis Cable Network, we follow the lives of News Night's on- and off-air personnel in their complicated professional and personal lives.  I won't attempt to cover all of the season's highlights and plot lines but I'll let series creator Aaron Sorkin and others provide an overview.