One might think that releasing a report at 4:30 p.m. on the day before Christmas Eve would be a good way to have it avoid notice, but that was never destined to be the case when it came to the Obama transition team’s report on contacts with embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
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Actually, the media keeps repeating that it’s a good way to avoid notice, but that makes zero sense. Unless there’s a giant tsunami or something, Christmas is pretty much the definition of a slow news period. Any kind of story is going to get a lot of tube time, as did the release of this report, the contents of which were guaranteed to be completely uninteresting. I watched CNN for some time Tuesday evening, and this was all they were talking about. Some way to avoid media attention.
There was no way that report was going to have anything of interest in it — if there were any unsavory contacts between Obama and Blago, would they admit it? Of course not. We already knew Emmanuel was in contact with him. We already knew that Obama was trying to promote one of his people for the seat. There is no news here. But it got tube time, because there was nothing else to talk about.
Obama worked in Illinois politics for more than a decade, so he had to pick up some stink. Unfortunately for people like the guy who started this thread, he went through the process of running for President, and the best that all the kings horses and all the kings men could come up with on him was Ayers, Wright and Rezko, none of which is a big deal. Obama had to play ball to a certain extent with Blago (primarily by holding his nose and supporting him for governor in 2003), but Blago was persona non grata once he was under investigation and there is no way that a slick pro like Obama was going to approach him without wearing a slicker and hip waders.
