The plan here is for this site to deal with at least two more substantive matters – each probably requiring two posts – before riding off into the sunset.

The hope was for part one of the first of these to appear today. Alas, the fates (in which the News Guy does not literally believe) have conspired against that. Check back Friday.

Meanwhile, to give you…well, not your money’s worth, because in most cases that would mean giving you nothing, but let’s say something to chew on, herewith some reflections on a national flappette which acquired a Vermont twist thanks to Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Who, as many no doubt already know, became enraged when MSNBC suspended commentator Keith Olbermann after learning that he had contributed to three Democratic congressional candidates.

The suspension, Sanders said in a statement released by his office, could “have a chilling impact on every commentator for MSNBC.”

So it could. Perhaps so it should.

No, not that it should chill commentators from speaking their minds. But maybe it should chill journalists from making political contributions.

Yes, the news world is changing, Keith Olbermann never claimed to be a neutral observer, and one could say he was putting his money where his mouth is. Furthermore, like every American, Olbermann has the constitutional right to make political donations.

But there is no constitutional right to be a political journalist, and there is a distinction between expressing one’s opinions (mouth) and personally participating in a campaign (money).

In 1980, the political world knew that columnist George Will favored Ronald Reagan. What no one knew was that he had helped Reagan prepare for his debate with President Jimmy Carter (using Carter’s debate briefing-book, stolen from the White House). When that news came out in 1983, Will was generally and properly condemned.

The distinction here is that even when a journalist is an avowed partisan, he ought to remain independent. That means not directly participating in anyone’s campaign, either by debate-coaching or money-giving. The honest reporter will criticize the candidate she is going to vote for as readily as the one she will oppose. That’s harder to do when she’s crossed the line from being an observer – even a committed observer – to being a participant.

Besides, in this confusion, somebody should raise a voice in behalf of the old notion – possibly outmoded but also possibly essential in a democratic society – of the journalism of the disinterested observer, the reporter who feels attached to no political party and no ideological faction. Keith Olbermann is not one, and never pretended to be. And he’s more marketable on cable TV for not being one.

But maybe the country still needs reporters who follow the motto of “no cheering in the press box,” a phrase not invented but popularized (it was the title of one of his books) by the late Jerome Holtzman, the  Chicago Tribune’s great baseball writer.

“We watch the game,” Jerome liked to say, speaking around both sides of his ever-present cigar. “We supposedly understand the game better than the average guy. We wear a tag around our neck that gets us on the field for batting practice and into the clubhouse after the game. But we don’t root for either team.”

Still not a bad attitude for a journalist.

Sanders was right when he said that  “talk radio is dominated by right-wing extremists (and) the Republican Party has its own cable network (Fox).”

Where, as he noted, not only the commentators but the company itself (the News Corporation) openly support the Republican Party.

But is the solution here really to bring MSNBC – and by extension the rest of the journalistic world – down to Fox’s level? The problem with Fox News Channel is not that it covers the news from a conservative perspective, which could be useful. It is that with rare exceptions it does not cover the news at all. It does something else altogether – basically anger enhancement, keeping a niche market riled up, often by feeding it misinformation, so that it will come back for more the next day.

The suspicion here is that the world will be no better off – perhaps worse off – if MSNBC merely becomes the left’s mirror image of the same marketing scheme.

Assuming, of course, that it has not already done so.

Steel yourselves for heartbreak, you teeming hordes who clicked in today expecting to read the post advertised last Friday – an in-depth analysis of the economic plans of the five Democratic candidates for governor.

Only four of those plans are ready. The fifth, from Doug Racine, was scheduled to be released Wednesday, but scheduling problems, said his campaign, forced a postponement until Monday. Out of fairness, then, the analysis will be put off until next week’s only scheduled post, again on Friday.

But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to say today. In fast-paced, ever-changing Vermont, the news never stops, so neither does the News Guy.

As noted in another recent post (Guilt By Association, July 27) finding politicians “guilty by association” is acceptable. We’re not sending them to jail, just holding them responsible for their choice of friends.

Earlier this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders chose as his friends an organization called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), which inspired him and two other senators to introduce legislation to phase out taxpayer-supported scientific experiments on chimpanzees.

The senator might want to reconsider.

Not that he or PCRM are necessarily wrong on the chimpanzee issue. According to Sanders, the animals are “no longer needed for research,” and the fact that only the U.S. and Gabon continue to hold chimpanzees for testing indicates that he has a point.

But chimps are not PCRM’s only issue. The organization and its senior medical and research advisor John Pippin, who was quoted supporting Sanders’ bill, also  advocate malariotherapy, or giving patients malaria to treat AIDS and other diseases.

In correspondence that the Cincinnati Beacon said was written by Dr. Eric L Matteson, chair of the Division of rheumatology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, Matteson said the World Health Organization has condemned such treatment as “charlatanism.”

(Dr. Matteson’s assistant, Beth Hielscher, said Dr. Matteson was on vacation until next week, and could not be reached to confirm that the correspondence was in fact his. But the Beacon a feisty independent weekly, printed what appeared to be copies of correspondence on the letterheads of both Matteson and Pippin).

There have been other allegations that PCRM is more interested in promoting vegetarianism than in sound scientific research, and that it is allied with PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) whose scientific reliability is also open to question.

When asked about PCRM, Sanders press secretary Michael Briggs emailed that the Senator and his aides “worked primarily with the Humane Society,” and were not aware of the controversy surrounding PCRM.

Another Vermont politician who might want to reconsider an association is Brian Dubie. In the financial disclosure of his campaign for governor, the Republican lieutenant governor candidly reported that the $3,050 his campaign spent with Stormo & Associates of Caledonia, Michigan, was for “opposition research.”

Nothing wrong with oppo research. All candidates do it. Nothing wrong with Stormo & Associates, either, unless one is running for statewide office in Vermont, where one would probably seek to play down any connections with the farthest right fringe of the Republican Party.

Which seems to be where Jeff Stormo is. He did not return a phone call yesterday, but there is ample evidence (see for instance here) that he is closely allied with Dick and Betsy DeVos, the very active, very wealthy (he’s the heir to the Amway fortune who ran for governor in 2006, largely financing his own campaign to circumvent Michigan campaign finance reporting laws), and very conservative couple who squabble almost as frequently with Michigan’s moderate Republicans as they do with liberals and Democrats.

Two of the DeVos’s major issues are opposition to abortion and support for an organization called All Children Matter (Betsy DeVos is or at least was on its board) which supports school voucher systems which would largely replace the existing public school systems.

Perfectly defensible positions, but not ones to run on and win in Vermont. The Democratic candidate, whoever he or she may turn out to be, is likely to try to make Dubie look as right-wing as possible. Here Dubie has provided him or her with some ammo.

And speaking of the Democrats, they all appeared on a televised debate on Channel 3 last night. Channel 3 lost.

Not because there was anything wrong with the questions. There was something wrong with the setting, outdoors at an Addison County fair in New Haven, with fairgoers making noise and several obnoxious children (some of whom were at least 30 years old) jumping up and waving their hands behind the candidates as they spoke.

The candidates were all fine, though Peter Shumlin and Doug Racine were clearly the most impressive on this occasion.

With only 11 days to go until the primary, Democrats are steeling themselves for a paltry turnout. If in fact that comes to pass, one reason will be both the weakness and the strength of the field of candidates.

The weakness is that none of the five has really caught on. Not one of them stands out as especially inspiring. If there is a surge for any one of them, it is well hidden.

The strength is that they all come across as reasonable, enlightened, reassuring. Any one of them seems as though he or she could be a good candidate and a competent governor, maybe even a very good governor.

Perhaps strangely, this may hold down the turnout. Picture the typical Democratic voter, who would gladly support any of the five in November. This voter will have to do some work and some thinking to decide which one to support. Worse, to vote for one person the voter likes requires him or her to vote against another one, two, or more the voter also likes. What a quandary. It all creates a psychological disincentive to vote. Let the other folks decide.

Still, if the turnout is low, and the pundits, chatterers and grouchy letter-to-the-editor writers want to blame someone (assuming for the moment that ‘blame’ is the right reaction), don’t blame the mid-summer date or the candidates. Just blame the non-voter. Everyone should know when Primary Day is. Furthermore, early voting has been open since July 12. No one is disenfranchised.