Let Me Finish (or Jay Levine is gonna deck you)

You have got to love Chicago Politics.  For those who may not have heard, President Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel has tossed his hat into the Chicago Mayoral race.  It was no secret that Emanuel had his sight set on the office.  He had spoken both privately and publicly about his intention to some day run for mayor of Chicago, even before Richard Daley the younger decided to step away from the office he has held since 1989.  Emanuel resigned his post with the White House and hit the ground running in this fair city of ours with what he has entitled his “Tell It Like It Is Tour.”  And he is quickly becoming the center of attention and many would say front-runner for the February, 2011 election, despite questions surrounding his residency and eligibility to run.

And that brings us to the other day, and a confrontation between self-proclaimed conservative satirist and commentator, William J. Kelly and veteran political journalists, Jay Levine of CBS2 and Charles Thomas of ABC7.  After welcoming Emanuel back to Chicago, Kelly is intercepted by a woman in red who asks “Who are you with?” to which Kelly replies that he is with WIND radio.

Ok, lets stop here for just a second and correct something.  Although Kelly does host a one hour radio program on WIND here in Chicago entitled The Kelly Truth Squad, he is not an employee or representative of the station.  He pays for his air time each Saturday at 6.  In effect, that makes him an advertiser not a reporter for the station.  He is as much an employee of WIND as the Sham Wow Guy is of the Turner Broadcasting Networks.  Mr. Kelly’s “show” is just a cleverly disguised infomercial.  This is not just my opinion, WIND general manager Jeff Reisman himself said, “It was wrong for Kelly to call himself a reporter at WIND when he does not work for the station.”

After misidentifying himself, Kelly then asks Emanuel if the stimulus package was in fact a payback to his Wall Street friends, a question Rahm chooses to ignore and turns his attention to the other reporters present.  Kelly, not satisfied with being ignored, pushes his way between Levine and Thomas and continually interrupts Emanuel with questions about his residency.  Microphones and cameras catch the interruptions because the media is trying to get a soundbite or quote for the evening news or morning additions.  After being asked several times to stop and let Emanuel speak, Jay Levine finally loses patience and gets the quote of the day.

Let him finish or I’m gonna deck you!

Was Emanuel avoiding the question?  Absolutely.  He was changing the subject faster than a man who had just been asked by his wife if these pants made her butt look fat.  It was one of those no win questions that politicians are taught to avoid answering, you know the old “So have you stopped beating your dog yet?”  Emanuel was trying to avoid giving Kelly ammunition for his “Truth” but unfortunately, Levine walked right into the trap.  Emanuel should actually thank Jay for taking the heat on this one.  Kelly’s story is no longer about a left-wing politician skirting the rules, but about how the liberal media is protecting that politician by helping him avoid the really tough questions.  Helping him to avoid “The Truth.”

WIND is a conservative radio station, and Mr. Kelly does share the airwaves at 560AM with the likes of  Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Michael Savage, but the difference is that WIND pays those hosts, not the other way around.  In addition to his one hour a week on radio, Mr. Kelly also has a website and writes a column for The Washington Times also called The Kelly Truth Squad.  His guerilla warfare tactics seem reminiscent of older David Letterman or Howard Stern, and not the impartial media I learned about in high school journalism class.  I have never listened to Mr. Kelly on the radio or read any of his columns, so I really can not speak to his talent or abilities as a host or writer.  But what I do have a problem with is when someone openly proclaims their version of things “The Truth” without any consideration for people whose opinions may be different than their own. 

In the coming days and weeks, I imagine we will hear conservatives proclaiming Mr. Kelly is an oppressed voice, while liberals call him a nutcase.  It will make good news and propaganda for a while, and then it will all just fade away.  Before this event, I had never heard of The Kelly Truth Squad, and William Kelly was just some guy who lost to Judy Baar Topinka in the republican comptroller primary.  Hell, I am not even real sure what a comptroller does, but Mr. Kelly wanted to be one.  But now he is a conservative satirist.  And Jay Levine wants to deck him.

The truth is, I could really care less what happens to Mr. Kelly from this point on.  And if I were Mr. Kelly, I wouldn’t care a bit about what some guy blogging on a website has to say about him.  It’s all just entertainment, right?  We write and we talk in the hopes that someone will listen and agree or disagree.  It’s about the 15 minutes that we all get and how long we can each hold onto it.  Mine only lasted a few seconds, and most of it ended up on the cutting room floor.  Mr. Kelly has done much better than me.  He is now and forever, the guy that Jay Levine wanted to deck.  He has officially now  had his wow moment.

Sham WOW!