Wow, that was one heckuva mauling by the Boston Globe yesterday in a front-page story about Bill Delahunt, a former Bay State congressman raking in big bucks as a lobbyist and political consultant since leaving Congress three years ago.
But conspicuously absent from the story, written by Globe reporter Stephanie Ebbert, is a word that comes to mind for many a politico in this overly politicized part of the country when Delahunt's name is bandied in conversation -- Democrat.
UPDATE, 6:15 P.M.: An unbylined 11:57 a.m. AP report (i.e., 54 minutes after the time stamp of the original post at BizzyBlog) contains two paragraphs about Delahunt's involvement. Based on a search on Delahunt's last name at about 6:15 p.m., this version of AP's report is either still not at its main site, or has not been indexed by its search engine.
Democratic Congressman Bill Delahunt's far from minor role in the 1986 release of Amy Bishop, the University of Alabama in Hunstville biology professor implicated in the murder of three colleagues on Friday, has garnered significant press attention in the past 24 hours or so. Some reports have noted Delahunt's party affiliation; others, mostly but not entirely out of New England, where Delahunt's party affiliation may be common knowledge, have not.
But in two stories time-stamped early this morning -- a 12:02 a.m. 300-word item by Jay Lindsay and a 6:43 a.m. comprehensive 1000-word report co-written by Lindsay and Desiree Hunter (saved here and here, respectively, for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) -- the Associated Press failed to even note Delahunt's involvement.
An extraordinary thing happened on Friday's "Countdown": host Keith Olbermann actually included a Democrat Congressman in his "Worst Person in the World" segment.