Keller @ Large
WBZ-TV Political Analyst Jon Keller is full of opinions, and he isn't afraid to share them. Check back often for Jon's unique take on the world of politics, with some occasional Pop Culture thrown in.
You can watch Jon's commentaries from WBZ-TV to the right of your screen. Read his blog entries for wbztv.com below.
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Bio: Meet Jon Keller
How To Deal With Willie Horton
05/12/08 1:04 PM
Here is an excellent column by Susan Estrich, manager of Michael Dukakis's 1988 presidential campaign, explaining how they bungled their handling of the infamous Willie Horton affair and why Barack Obama should learn those hard lessons as he begins a racially-charged general election campaign.
It should be required reading for the scores of delusional liberals for whom the Horton affair (as well as the 2004 anti-Kerry Swift Boat ads) are never cautionary tales of their own inability to properly handle hardball political tactics (not to mention their inability to admit mistakes) but symbols of right-wing depravity and voter stupidity. Want to win in November, instead of the usual outcome? Pride cometh before the fall, and attention must be paid.
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All The Hypocrisy That's Fit To Print
05/09/2008 3:25 PM
New York Times columnist Harvey Araton, stirring the pot as hard as he can, writes in today's paper of record that Patriots' coach Bill Belichick should be crucified for his egregious offenses against everything we hold sacred (e.g. videotaping the hand signals of opposing coaches):
"I believe Belichick should now be barred from coaching the Patriots for one season, on top of the $750,000 in fines and the forfeiture of a first-round draft pick levied on him and the Patriots by Goodell last fall."
Read the whole thing if you want a hearty chuckle. Meanwhile, although I don't have the time to waste on surfing back through Araton's entire print catalog, I'll venture an educated guess that he has never come close to demanding comparable punishment for the following New York sports cheaters, such as:
* Yankees drugger/slugger Jason Giambi. Surely, Araton will now militate for the Yanks to be stripped of their 2003 American League pennant, in which a human growth hormone-laden Giambi played a key role;
* Jets coach Eric Mangini, an assistant under Belichick here from 2000 to 2006 and, thus, complicit in what Araton hysterically labels Belichick's "decade of sin";
* The New York Knicks' NBA championships of 1970 and 1973 should be rescinded due to the obvious cheating of star player Bill Bradley. To this day, Celtic great John Havlicek has scars on his body from Bradley's chronic, patently-illegal clutching and grabbing;
* The 1994 NHL Stanley Cup victory of the New York Rangers was definetly the result of the constant tripping, holding, cross-checking, slashing, boarding and elbowing that has been part of every pro hockey game ever played, and should be erased from the record books, along with appropriate fines and suspensions for the participants. (We'll overlook the three pre-1940 cups won by the Rangers because they occurred prior to the advent of clueless moralizers like Araton.)
I'm sure there are many more venial New York sports sins that need to be expunged under the Times' ludicrous new code, but I'll leave their compilation to you. Gotta run to the mens room and wash Araton's column off my hands.
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It's The Pits
How many times have you said that about something in your daily life – an ugly building you see every day, a tangled intersection you must navigate on your commute, a broken-down playground in your neighborhood, a piece of dubious public art outside your office?
And how often have you said to yourself: "Gee, I wish Jon Keller would get himself over here to see this and do a report on it for WBZ News?"
Your prayers have been answered. OK, maybe you weren't exactly praying for it, but I think we can have a lot of fun, generate some constructive debate, and cast a spotlight on some dubious decision-making by the powers that be….if you'll help me.
Submit Your 'Pits' Nomination
Watch recent 'It's The Pits' reports
Dangerous Comm. Ave/BU Bridge Intersection
Harvard's Hideous Grad Student Dorm
Searching For Kerry
05/07/2008 2:33 PM
That's the theme of this amusing new web ad from the US Senate campaign of Republican Jim Ogonowski, one of two Republicans (along with Jeff Beatty) competing for the right to oppose John Kerry and assorted minor party candidates in November. Notice that the ad zeroes in on a sore subject – Kerry's alleged indifference to local concerns – that the incumbent has been trying to address by dramatically accelerating his local visibility in recent months.
(Full disclosure: my adult son is a Republican political activist involved in the Senate race; see the right-hand channel of this web page for details.)
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Obama On The Brink
May 6, 2008
Some nuggets gleaned from tonight's exit polls in Indiana and North Carolina:
Obama did a better job than he has in quite a while of drawing Reagan Democrats. In Indiana, he lost union households to Clinton by only eight points; the gap was also narrowed to eight among voters aged 50 to 64 in that state. He did better than "usual" among the Dunkin' Donuts voters, too, in addition to his usual avalanche of support from the Starbucks crowd.
If you believe the gas-tax debate was a proxy for voters as they tried to figure out who might best represent their economic interests, then it looks like a draw; the two were basically tied in the exit poll on that question.
A huge part of the electability argument has to do with who can best draw independent swing voters in November, and here, again, Obama showed improvement. He lost independents to Hillary in NC by only four points.
Now, the bad news; Obama remains unable to close the unsettlingly large racial gap. He lost whites overall in both states by about 60 to 40%. Among white women, his NC numbers (64-32) were even worse than in Indiana (61-39).
Why? Check out the surprisingly modest percentage of voters who said they made their decision in the final week of campaigning, when Rev. Wright was dominating the news. In Indiana, 25% of voters were in that category; they broke for Hillary 58-42%. In NC it was only 20%, and they split evenly between the two, but consider how far off the overall trend that is. The reverend hurt Obama, there's no question about it.
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Obama's Boomer Appeal
May 5, 2008
Finally, here's someone who agrees with what I've been arguing – here and here about the generational aspect of Obamamania.
An Obama Preview?
05/05/2008 6:41 AM
I explore how the first 16 months of the Patrick administration might foreshadow an Obama presidency in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece here.
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Spin Buster
May 2, 2008 7 p.m.
As we head into the weekend before the crucial North Carolina and Indiana primaries, I urge you to read this analysis of the Democratic race from Ronald Brownstein of the National Journal, one of a handful of national political reporters you can rely on to cut through the partisanship and ideological spin of the blogs, much of the national pundit pack, and most TV talking heads.
Money quote: "Obama and his team insisted that he had carried [working-class white voters] in many other states, was improving his performance among them, and did not need them to win a general election; to the extent he faced a problem at all, Obama declared, the difficulty was age and not class. But exit polls from this year's Democratic primaries show that almost all of those assertions are debatable and some are flat-out wrong. Together, the arguments from Obama and his aides raise questions about whether his campaign is honestly confronting the challenge he is facing with working-class whites--or whether he is in some measure of denial."
The Politics Of Talk Radio
May 2, 2008 6 p.m.
That's what we'll be talking about with Steve Elman and Alan Tolz, co-authors of the excellent new book "Burning up the Air: Jerry Williams, Talk Radio and the Life in Between" this Sunday at about 8:30 am on the WBZ Sunday morning news (available online shortly thereafter).
The book, perhaps the best ever written about talk radio, is must reading for anyone who ever listened to the medium's inventor and unparalelled maestro. It's a moving character study that expertly captures the frontier-like feel of talk radio's evolution, and a well-researched evocation of a major slice of Boston's modern-day history. But it also raises some important questions about what talk radio has become as a forum for political discussion and advocacy, and where it might be headed. That's the focus of our interview with the co-authors.
Find a treasure trove of info about Williams and the book at www.jerrywilliams.org. And check out an interesting discussion with Elman, Tolz, and three veteran local talk radio producers, including Nancy Shack of the Howie Carr Show, Wednesday May 7 at 2pm at the Borders in Downtown Crossing.