Once Again, Chris Powell of the Manchester Journal Inquirer Gets Linda McMahon Right

I don’t know Chris Powell, managing editor of the Manchester Journal Inquirer; never met the guy. The closest I’ve come to contact with him was in 2008, when I was beginning my Connecticut Freedom of Information Act fight with the Stamford police to acquire the videotaped interrogation of the “Benoit Wikipedia hacker,” and I mistakenly emailed Powell. He politely informed me that he was legislative chair of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information, a public-interest group, and directed me to the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, the state agency that ultimately adjudicated my complaint.

Nor do I know what Powell’s ideology is supposed to be, or what my own supposed ideology is expected to feel about anything I say that might support his supposed ideology.

All I know is that, for the second time in ten days, Powell has penned a column for the Journal Inquirer that nails the larger meaning of the phenomenon of Linda McMahon’s Senate candidacy. (The first, on May 15, was “Nothing’s different about buying an election,” http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2010/05/15/chris_powell/doc4bed598a55650171354821.txt.)

Highly recommended again is Powell’s latest, “If money is everything, all the rest is nothing,” http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2010/05/24/chris_powell/doc4bfa8691c8e43399660344.txt.

Here’s a sample:

“If McMahon really is prepared to spend $30 million or more showing Connecticut some perspectives on [Democratic opponent Richard] Blumenthal that the state’s fawning news media have largely declined to pursue, no response may be very effective. After his 20-year free ride as attorney general, during which his own targets felt similarly overwhelmed by his command of the media, Blumenthal may have such character assassination coming. But does Connecticut? For its price may be six years of McMahon in the Senate.”

Irv Muchnick