Olbermann chastises McCain: Grow up!

As Nate Silver at the website 538.com noted, Andrea’s reporting, reporting of what the Obama camp claimed, included two essential observations:

• “McCain may not have been in the cone of silence” and that he
• “May have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.”

Rick Davis writes to NBC: “The fact is that during Senator Obama’s segment at Saddleback last night, Senator McCain was in a motorcade to the event and then held in a green room with no broadcast feed.”

As Silver astutely notes, for roughly the first half of Obama’s participation, his own campaign manager places McCain in a car where he could have been made aware of the questions to Sen. Obama. “In a motor vehicle,” Silver writes, “one may use the radio, a cell phone, a Blackberry, Bluetooth Wireless, a Sling box, and perhaps a satellite TV feed. Whether McCain actually used any of those devices, we have no idea. But he absolutely had the ability to use them, which is all that Mitchell had reported. Silver also tripped over Mr. Davis’s strange observation that for roughly the second half of Obama’s participation, his own campaign places McCain “in a green room with no broadcast feed.” Not a green room without cell service or internet, nor without a closed-circuit feed, nor, for that matter, without a guy running back from the audience with notes, written in crayon.

Rick Davis’s argument is, in short, illegitimate.

It is an attempt to pick a fight with the media, over the journalistic equivalent of chewing gum in class.

“This is irresponsible journalism and sadly, indicative of the level of objectivity we have witnessed at NBC News this election cycle,” he writes.

“We are concerned that your News Division is following MSNBC’s lead in abandoning non-partisan coverage of the Presidential race. We would like to request a meeting with you as soon as possible to discuss our deep concerns about the news standards and level of objectivity at NBC.”

What Davis is really saying here, of course, is that he wants no level of objectivity, that the only campaign he wants questioned is Obama, and that “partisan coverage” consists of questioning whether McCain or his campaign support the stage whispers branding Obama as somehow ‘foreign,’ or whether McCain is to be inoculated from all criticism by dint of his military service.

Sen. McCain, did you pay any attention to the Democratic primaries?

Did you notice the hair-pulling frenzy of some of Sen. Clinton’s supporters who could not face the possibility that her loss might have been her fault or theirs and thus it must be ours?

Do you remember the apoplexy of a washed up Republican operative named Ed Gillespie, writing a furious letter to NBC on behalf of President Bush?

Mr. Bush’s support has since dropped.

And Sen. Clinton’s supporters have now relocated to such a degree that her “eighteen million voices” first re-counted themselves as “two million” and were then unable to get even 250 people to show up at a meeting.

The public sees through this nonsense, Senator, they see through it quickly.

NBC and MSNBC do not have the power to seriously impact an election.

If we did, Sen. Pat Buchanan would already be serving with you.

Besides which, Senator, who in your camp thought it was a good idea to take a shot at NBC and MSNBC during the Olympics on NBC and MSNBC?!?

During the Olympics, Sen. McCain, on which you have already run millions of dollars’ worth of McCain Campaign commercials on NBC and MSNBC!?!

Senator, let me wrap this up. You and your campaign need a serious and immediate attitude adjustment. Despite what you may think, Sen. McCain, this is not a coronation. Despite how you have acted, Sen. McCain, you have no automatic excuse to politicize anything you want.

Despite how you have whined, Sen. McCain, you have no entitlement to only sycophantic, deceptive, air-brushed coverage in the media. And despite how you have strutted, Sen. McCain, you have no God-given right to the Presidency.

Let’s have an adult campaign here, in other words and I am embarrassed to have to say this to a man who turns 72 at the end of this month Senator, grow up!

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