Posted by Morbo
Maryland is a perfectly nice blue state cursed with a Republican governor. Like Maryland governors of the past, the current occupant of that office, Robert Ehrlich, appears to be slowly going insane.
Ehrlich, who apparently thinks he is King George III of Great Britain, has ordered his press secretary to stop communicating with two Baltimore Sun staffers, a reporter and a columnist. Ehrlich says the writers are being unfair to him.
Morbo has lived in Maryland since 1986 and has witnessed three governors gone wild. William Donald Schaefer, a Democrat, endorsed the first George Bush for president in 1992 — at a time when every poll in the nation showed Bush going down to defeat. Several people called to complain. Schaefer returned some of the calls personally, called his own constituents names and insulted them. Now, as state comptroller, Schaefer spends most of his time attending public meetings and babbling incoherently about, well, anything. Amazingly, Marylanders continue to allow Schaefer to oversee the state’s finances — even though it’s obvious he’s mad as a hatter.
Schaefer’s successor, Parris N. Glendening, was a perfectly nice, if dull, technocrat and former president of the University of Maryland. During his second term, Glendening abruptly dumped his wife of many years, took up with a much younger woman on his staff and promptly impregnated her. His personal life is his own business, of course, but state residents undoubtedly did wonder when exactly the governor became a sex mo-sheen.
Which brings us to Ehrlich. This guy was in Congress before he was elected governor. One would think he would be used to hard-hitting journalism and tough questions. Anyone in political life had better grow accustomed to that or get out.
The Baltimore Sun is Maryland’s leading newspaper, and Ehrlich’s decision to cut off access to two of its writers just ends up making him look like a whiney-pants. The paper’s editors say they won’t back down or reassign the writers. Good. Here’s hoping they stick to that — and the reporters themselves become even more aggressive.
No one likes a bully.