[First published in AM New York]
WHO WILL REPLACE POWELL? No, this is not about Colin Powell‘s successor. Yesterday, Condoleezza Rice, despite last-minute gestures from some energized Democratic senators, won confirmation as Secretary of State.
But now Colin’s son, Michael Powell, has to be replaced as well, as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
The sudden leave-taking of this business-friendly regulator was odd. It leaped out from a post-Inaugural paragraph in that universally acknowledged right-wing echo chamber, the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial pages. Imagine the stir if a left-leaning government chief – say, Bill Clinton‘s Food and Drug czar, David Kessler – had exclusively announced his own job becoming vacant in a partisan venue like “The Nation” or “Mother Jones“?
Observers have already started wondering if it’s a signal from the Bushites that while the FCC may officially be a matter of public interest, information about it need merely be revealed to their ideological fellow-travelers.
So who’s next? Having just spent time breathing the renewed red-states atmosphere of the nation’s capital, I’m freshly warned that the great state of Texas should never nowadays be “misunderestimated” – to quote one of President Bush‘s craftiest bits of self-mockery.
Leading the field of possible incoming FCC Chairs is Rebecca Klein. For the past four years she has been commissioner and then head of the Texas Public Utility Commission. Perhaps awkwardly for her, or perhaps not, her watch coincided with Houston-based Enron‘s colossal implosion. Before that she served “W” as a policy director at the governor’s mansion in Austin.
Klein’s also a major in the Air Force Reserve. And (CBS News, take note) documents show” she has a spot less record, earning service ribbons for her Desert Storm service in 1991.
THE NEW YORK TIMES‘ PUSH to drive unwarranted anonymous sources out of its news stories has run into resistance. The unnamed “senior official” or some other such veiled euphemism, thin or otherwise, still makes frequent appear ances, despite repeated exposure of this lazy, rarely justified journalistic practice by Dan Okrent, the paper’s public editor.
Reporters have sometimes resorted to a half-hearted explanation that their source is requesting anonymity “because of the sensitivity of the subject.”
But that won’t cut it for Okrent. He calls it a “rimshot” or “worse than useless.”
Curious variances are emerging among Times writers. Recently Elisabeth Bumiller provided an informed post-mortem on how huge a fan President Bush had been of Bernard Kerik (remember him?) and dutifully explained that her White House source was anonymous because he “did not want the president and his advisers to know he was talking about the collapse of a cabinet nomination.” Pretty clear.
By contrast, Steven Weisman reported, in a separate story on allegations that the Bush administration was pressuring the United Nations over a new survey of democracy in Arab countries, that a “United Nations official” had confirmed to him that “the U.S. government has raised some concerns.” Equally, “a senior State Departrnent official asking not to be identified” had denied any such criticism was being raised. On neither side did Weisman explain the need for his sources’ anonymity.
Makes you wonder what Times reporters talk about in the mornings. Especially Weisman and Bumiller. They happen to be married to each other.
