Day 4: October 6

29 days to Election Day

The show opens with a discussion of John McCain's new strategy of trying to shift attention from the economy and toward negatives about Barack Obama, specifically a relationship with Bill Ayres. Olbermann delivers some biting retorts: he says that McCain plans to ignore the economy and attack Obama with "every bit of sleaze he can sling." He then characterizes the strategy as "McCain first, country not so much." Finally, after playing a quote from McCain about not needing advice on truth-telling from "a Chicago politician," Olbermann replies, "Ask almost anybody, they'd help you out, pal."

After the open, Richard Wolffe joins the fray. Olbermann asks whether the McCain campaign is making a coordinated effort to paint Obama as a terrorist sympathizer, and he speculates that they are, but that it will not work because voters already have formed impressions of the candidates, which they are unlikely to change. They also discuss McCain's attempt to avoid discussing the economy, with Olbermann mentioning "pretending" to suspend his campaign. Honestly, this segment would not be that obviously biased -- it's a relevant subject to cover -- except that Olbermann seems so obviously outraged by the situation.

Chris Hayes from The Nation magazine then takes over for Wolffe, to discuss the wisdom of avoiding the economy -- or, as Olbermann puts it, "dropping out of the battleground issue of the election." This section is also pretty fair analysis, though it's interpretive journalism, and the two make some jokes at the expense of McCain and Sarah Palin. They both also use several cliches related to the game schema, including a reference by Olbermann to having "ceded the territory" of the economy, and Hayes commenting on "offsetting penalties."

The next segment is a discussion of the changes in the electoral map in the past week with Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com. It's basically just five minutes of interpretation and the horse-race. There isn't really a ton of bias in this segment, though -- neither journalistic nor political -- so as far as objectivity goes, it's a relatively fair segment.

After that, Olbermann talks with columnist Clarence Page about the effect that increased negativity in the campaign will have on the next debate. Again, this is mostly speculation, like when Olbermann asks whether McCain will bring up the Ayres issue if none of the questioners do it. When Page says that the debates aren't debates, "they're a TV show," that's a blatant example of journalistic bias -- a cynicism about the candidates manipulating the public, rather than answering questions. There's a lot of "I think" and "maybe" in this segment.

The "Worst Persons" list appears next, starring two right-wing radio voices with some creepy Palin voyeurism, a McCain foreign policy adviser who cited a relationship with a model as foreign policy experience, and Senator Joe Lieberman for getting "hung...out to dry," in Olbermann's words, concerning use of Rev. Jeremiah Wright in the campaign. The usual "Worst Persons" political bias is present in this segment.

The show ends with a Special Comment, an editorial monologue delivered by Olbermann. The subject of this comment is Palin's accusation that Obama was "palling around with terrorists," and Olbermann's claim that Palin should be forgiven, because she basically doesn't know what she is doing -- but also that if Obama's linked with terrorists and anti-Americans, Palin should be as well because of actions by her own pastor in Alaska and her links to the Alaskan Independence Party. This is significantly more fiery and biased than the content of the rest of the show, but it's a little different in that it's under the heading of a Special Comment -- essentially an editorial. Even so, it's hard to believe that Patterson would approve of this explosion of rage.

It was really visible in this show how much Olbermann's pithy and sarcastic quips -- while entertaining and pretty funny -- contribute to the feeling of political bias. The show feels like it's just an hour or so of mocking Republicans, which detracts from the news value that can be extracted from it.