Day 6: October 8

27 days to Election Day

The show begins with a discussion of the supposed suspension of William Ayres as a campaign issue -- "supposed" because in fact, he has continued to be mentioned by the McCain campaign. Though he does make a good point with this observation, Olbermann uses loaded language -- referring to the campaign as "pretending" to avoid Ayres, and calling Sarah Palin a "demagogue," among other things. Washington Post's Chris Cillizza joins the show then, to speculate on what the McCain campaign is doing and what they should be doing. He says that they're probably trying to figure out a strategy that will work -- he says there are a lot of things "being thrown at the wall" -- and that they will need to find one that will "stick." Olbermann also asks him to explain why McCain says that he won't talk about Ayres, and then talks about Ayres. Cillizza is basically being asked to provide the answers to questions he has no way of knowing the answers to -- he says "I think" nine times in about a three-minute span. It's a lot of interpretive reporting.

Lawrence O'Donnell then joins the show to talk about McCain's campaign strategy and right wing outrage over it. He's asked to speculate on whether McCain should have tried to mention Obama's "connections" during the debate, whether his use of Ayres is isolating him to his base, and whether Palin is a drag on the ticket. O'Donnell takes a crack at Sean Hannity, saying that "To say Sean Hannity is obsessed with Bill Ayres is an understatement." With the interpretive reporting comes some samples of game schema -- O'Donnell's heavy use of the polls basically casts McCain as the "candidate falling behind." There's some mild poiltical bias here, but it's minor.

The next segment is an application of McCain's "judgment and character"tests -- supposedly the reason why Ayres and Jeremiah Wright matter -- to McCain himself, naming several associations that he had that were unsavory. This seems like kind of a "gotcha" claim, as in that Olbermann was able to turn the tables on McCain to help Obama. However, it's done fairly well -- it's actual reporting, and the agenda Olbermann probably has isn't visible.

Next, Olbermann claims that John McCain "may be hazardous to your health." Bob Herbert, a New York Times columnist, joins the show to talk about McCain's health care plan, which he calls "radical" and says that "if the electorate understood it well, it would not be in favor of it." He does some pretty good reporting, laying out exactly what would happen in a McCain health care system, and why he believes it would be bad. Of course, there is some speculation involved -- he claims that McCain's plan would "be guaranteed to end in disaster."

"Worst Persons" includes a National Review blogger who attacked Olbermann for implying that McCain didn't "know who General Petraeus was," a former Maryland police superintendent who placed an anti-death penalty group on the terrorist watch list, and a McCain campaign county chair who wrote a column that was racist and derogatory about Obama. As usual, they are all Republicans. Political bias is present in this segment.

The show closes out with a segment on Obama communications director Robert Gibbs's argument with Sean Hannity on FOX News. Olbermann reads a poem that was written by John Cleese about Hannity, then talks to Rachel Maddow about what the supposed watershed event could mean for FOX -- the consensus is that now people have an example of how to beat them at their own game, or as Maddow puts it, "show, don't tell." They then briefly talk about the McCain campaign's decision to only allow Sarah Palin to appear either on Hannity's show or Greta van Susteren's show, calling it "insulting" for her to be treated like she needs protection. It's sort of a weird, un-journalistic moment on the show, from the poem to the mocking of Hannity. It's hard to classify it as bias though, more as just dislike for FOX. There is, however, some journalistic bias inherent in the claim that you have to "beat" FOX in order to say what you want to say.