Tribune Company to File Chapter 11?

For the last several months, Drive and Dish has followed the demise of several print media publications (more here). Of particular interest to Drive and Dish has been the precipitous decline of the Chicago Tribune following the sale of Tribune Company -- the parent company of the Chicago Tribune -- to Chicago real estate mogul Sam Zell (more on Mr. Zell's takeover of Tribune Co. via The New York Times).

This afternoon, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Tribune Company may be preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy:

In recent days, as Chicago-based Tribune continued talks with lenders to restructure its debt, the newspaper-and-television concern hired investment bank Lazard Ltd. as its financial adviser and law firm Sidley Austin to advise the company on a possible trip through Chapter 11 bankruptcy, people familiar with the matter say.

Edit:

Interestingly, the Tribune Company's law firm, Sidley Austin, used to employ both President-elect Barack Obama and future First Lady Michelle Obama. It was at Sidley Austin in the summer of 1988 that Michelle Robinson and Barack Obama first met. At the time, Ms. Robinson was a young lawyer and recent graduate of Harvard Law. She was tasked with mentoring a summer associate (and Harvard Law student) named Barack Obama.

Sidley Austin also used to employ Bernadine Dohrn. Ms. Dohrn is the former leader of the Weather Underground, a former domestic terrorist, a former fugitive, and the current wife of controversial University of Illinois-Chicago Distinguished Professor of Education (and fellow ex-Weatherman, bomber and fugitive) William Ayers. More on the Weathermen (later known as the Weather Underground) and Bernadine Dohrn here (Ms. Dohrn reads a declaration of war on the United States 40 seconds into the video), and here. View the FBI's 1976 file on the Weather Underground here. Finally, The Claremont Institute discusses Ms. Dohrn's past here.

President-elect Obama's friendship with Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers (as well as his work with Mr. Ayers on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and on the board of the Woods fund) was a source of controversy in both the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary and the 2008 general Presidential election.

Bernadine Dohrn began working as an associate at the prestigious Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin in 1984, four years after ending an eleven year run as a fugitive. Ms. Dohrn worked at Sidley Austin from 1984 to 1988. As the Northwestern Chronicle notes (Ms. Dohrn is currently a faculty member at the Northwestern University School of Law), " at the time, the law firm was headed by Howard Trienens, who (represented) Dohrn's father-in-law Thomas Ayers when he was running Commonwealth Edison."

The Chronicle noted the concern of some Northwestern Law alumni that Ms. Dohrn's employment at Sidley Austin may have "represented a serious conflict of interest and reeked of influence peddling." It also noted that Ms. Dohrn was unable to pass the Character and Fitness portion of the New York bar due to her criminal past, and cited one Northwestern Law alumnus' befuddlement as to the kind of work she could have done for the firm, given her criminal record:

"Show me another law firm that hires a known criminal who can't get into the bar," O'Shea said.

In October, Drive and Dish noted the Tribune Company's close ties to (and apparent sympathies with) the campaign of then Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama.

So what is Drive and Dish trying to say? We're just noting that Sidley Austin is a firm that has clout. And in Chicago, there's nothing more important than clout. But while the word clout may have originated in Chicago, the old saying that it's not what you know, but rather who you know is not exclusively applicable to the Windy City. No one enters the spheres of power and influence without having connections.

At his old blog, the Belmont Club, Richard Fernandez discussed three pieces which dealt with Barack Obama's rise in Chicago politics and Mr. Obama's place in what Mr. Fernandez termed the "Byzantine labyrinth of Chicago connections." Mr. Fernandez cited the work of University of Santa Clara law professor Steve Diamond who asked "who sent Barack Obama:"

(Mr. Diamond) explains the context of the word "sent".

In Chicago politics a key question has always been, who "sent" you? The classic phrase is ... from an anecdote of Abner Mikva's, the former White House Counsel (Pres. Clinton) ... As a young student ... he walked into the local committeman's office ... and was immediately asked: "Who sent you?" Mikva replied, "nobody sent me." And the retort came back from the cigar chomping pol: "Well, we don't want nobody that nobody sent."

So it is reasonable to ask, who "sent" Barack Obama? In other words, how can his meteoric rise to political prominence be explained?

Mr. Fernandez continued:

Diamond's answer is speculative, but informative because it provides a look back into the youthful life and times of the man who might be the next President of the United States.

(So), who did “send” Obama? The key I think is his ties not to well connected uber lawyer Newton Minow, as Kaufman suggests, but more likely to the family of (in)famous former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers – not just Bill Ayers, but also Bill’s father Tom Ayers and his brother John as well. Obama was a community organizer from about 1985 to 1988, when he left Chicago for Harvard Law School.

In a May, 2008, article about Mr. Obama's connections with Mr. Ayers, the Chicago Tribune's Ron Grossman wrote of how Ms. Dohrn's and Mr. Ayers' connections had helped to propel the former fugitives to prominence in Chicago:

(I)t's hard for an outsider not to see the map of family connections behind their paths.

Ayers' father moved in philanthropic circles with Howard Trienens, an attorney with the powerhouse firm of Sidley Austin. The two served together on Northwestern University's Board of Trustees. Ayers was chairman of that group, then handed the post off to Trienens in 1986.

Trienens headed Sidley Austin when the firm hired Dohrn in 1984. She had never practiced law and had been out of law school for 17 years.

Ultimately, the Tribune Company's retention of Sidley Austin to handle it's rumored bankruptcy proceedings is more instructive than it is surprising. As Mr. Grossman wrote in the Chicago Tribune, Sidley Austin is a "powerhouse" law firm; it has deep ties to many of Chicago's movers and shakers. And Chicago, like New York and Washington, D.C., is a city where powerful individuals run in small, insular circles.

There's nothing wrong with the Tribune Company's retention of a powerful law firm to represent it's interests. To the contrary: hiring Sidley Austin was an obvious move for Tribune Co. But it's worth noting that in Chicago -- the city that gave rise to the concept of "clout" -- the Tribune Company's law firm has more clout (i.e., connections to the powerful) than almost any other.

Tribune Company: That Was Then, This is Now

Drive and Dish started out as a blog devoted to offering commentary on the game of basketball -- with a heavy emphasis on dishing out commentary about college basketball. But we found that when basketball was out of season, we didn't have much to write about. So after slumming through the summer of 2007, Drive and Dish's editorial staff decided that when the 2008 Final Four was in the history books and the NBA Finals' game clock hit 00:00 for the last time, Drive and Dish would expand its reach to include subjects other than basketball -- at least until basketball resumed.

We'll get back to being basketball intensive once college basketball tips off (the NBA regular season just started, but our core readership is primarily made up of college basketball fans, and as such, our NBA material goes largely unnoticed). But for now, our crack team of writers (me) is chomping on the bit to weigh in on so much non-basketball material that it would simply be an untenable position for Drive and Dish's editors (me again) to force them to remain focused exclusively on the hardwood.

Lately, Drive and Dish has been following the rapid decline of the once great Chicago Tribune (more here).

Now the Chicago Tribune's parent company, Tribune Company, is embroiled in a controversy over the Los Angeles Times' (the Los Angeles times is a Tribune Co. newspaper) refusal to release a videotape that purports to show Illinois Senator and Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama offering a toast to -- and lavishing praise on -- Rashid Khalidi, a college professor and political activist who has been both an outspoken opponent of Israel, and a supporter of Palestinian terrorist activity.

Mr. Khalidi currently serves as the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and as the Director of the Middle East Institute at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. But as the New York Sun reported in 2005, Mr. Khalidi was a director of the official Palestinian press agency, WAFA, from 1976 to 1982 and later served on the PLO "guidance committee" at the 1991 Madrid peace conference (more background on the PLO here, more background on Mr. Khalidi's involvement with the PLO here).

The videotape in question was filmed in 2003, at a Chicago going away dinner for Mr. Khalidi (who, at the time, was departing the University of Chicago to take his current post at Columbia). The event was hosted by the Arab American Action Network,* a political advocacy and community organizing group which Mr. Khalidi founded in 1995 with his wife Mona. Allegedly, the dinner featured several speakers who voiced fervent anti-Israel sentiment, as well as disapproval for America's support of Israel. One speaker is said to have compared Israeli settlers on the West Bank to Osama Bin Laden. Another speaker supposedly voiced her anger over U.S. support for Israel and warned that if Palestinians can't reclaim their own land, "you will never see a day of peace."

Although the L.A. Times refuses to release the videotape, Times staff writer Peter Wallsten did acknowledge the tape's existence in an April article in which he examined Senator Obama's position on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. In his account of the videotaped going away dinner for Mr. Khalidi, Mr. Wallsten did his best to pave over the assorted speakers' rough edges. But he hinted at the incendiary nature of some of their remarks by stating that Senator Obama "adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground."

Throughout his run for the Presidency, Senator Obama has done his best to ameliorate fears that he may not favor the continuation of America's longstanding support for Israel. Officially, Senator Obama has positioned himself as a pro-Israel candidate, which has helped him keep Jewish voters -- an important constituency within the Democratic party -- and other supporters of Israel more or less happy. Yet in his L.A. Times piece, Mr. Wallsten implied that Senator Obama's videotaped remarks at Mr. Khalidi's going away dinner may have left some room for doubt about the veracity of the Senator's support for Israel:

"(the) warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say."

What's more, the L.A. Times piece quotes Mr. Khalidi as having pointed to Mr. Obama's sympathy for the Palestinian cause when he instructed the primarily Palestinian American crowd to support Mr. Obama, then an Illinois state senator, in his bid for the U.S. Senate:

"You will not have a better senator under any circumstances."

So what does all this have to do with the Chicago Tribune?

Well, Chicago based Tribune Company is the parent company of both the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. And in the case of the L.A. Times' embargoed videotape of the Rashid Khalidi going away dinner, a Tribune Co. owned newspaper is refusing to release information -- in the form of a video that would likely go viral within minutes of its release -- that could damage Senator Obama's chances of becoming the next President of the United States. The Times cites its desire to preserve "journalistic ethics" as the basis for its decision to withhold the potentially incendiary video (the paper maintains that the anonymous source who leaked the videotape to them requested that the video not be released).

But the L.A. Times has already cited the videotape as evidence that Senator Obama's official position on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict -- and by extension, his position on U.S./Israeli relations -- may be little more than political window dressing.

Thus, by refusing to release the videotape, the Tribune Company's L.A. Times gives the appearance that it is attempting to lend a hand to Senator Obama's bid for the Presidency -- a bid which the both the L.A. Times and Chicago Tribune have endorsed -- by shielding the Senator from the political fallout that the videotape's release could prompt.

But in 2004, the Tribune Company's Chicago Tribune lent Senator Obama a hand in his bid for the U.S. Senate by filing suit to gain access to the sealed divorce records of Mr. Obama's Republican opponent, Jack Ryan. Prior to the Tribune's lawsuit, Mr. Ryan had refused to answer questions about his divorce. So the Tribune hired a team of high-powered lawyers and sent them to Los Angeles to pry Mr. Ryan's divorce records open. Mr. Ryan and his ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan, fought to keep their divorce records sealed, citing their concern that the records' release could have an adverse affect on the welfare of their disabled 9 year old son. But despite acknowledging that "(p)eople are desperate to prevail and are often willing to say almost anything" in divorce cases, that "(f)alse allegations may arise in as many as 80 percent of custody battles," and that "a growing body of evidence (demonstrates) that high-conflict divorces create more long-term problems for children," the Tribune argued that the Ryans' privacy and the well being of their son were less important than the "public interest."

Ultimately, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Schnider ruled that the Ryans' divorce records should be partially opened to the public. Among the contents of the Ryans' divorce files was Mrs. Ryan's allegation that Mr. Ryan had taken her to sex clubs, where he had attempted to persuade her to engage in amorous behavior in front of crowds.

Mr. Ryan denied that specific allegation, charging that it was employed as a tactic by his ex-wife in an attempt to gain the upper hand in their child custody dispute.

But the damage was done. The Tribune's headline read: “Ryan File a Bombshell; Ex-Wife Alleges GOP Candidate Took Her To Sex Clubs.”

Jack Ryan was forced to drop out of the U.S. Senate race four months and one week before the 2004 election.

And Jack Ryan wasn't the first political opponent of Barack Obama's whose sealed divorce records were uncovered by the Chicago Tribune. Indeed, the Tribune exhibited a bipartisan interest in the sealed divorce papers of Mr. Obama's political opponents: Mr. Obama's chief rival in the 2004 Democratic Senate primary, Blair Hull, saw his campaign implode after an anonymous tipster informed the Tribune that Mr. Hull’s ex-wife had filed for an order of protection during their divorce proceedings. It is widely believed that the source of the Tribune's leak in the Blair Hull's divorce proceedings was long-time Obama adviser and current chief political strategist for the Obama campaign, David Axelrod (who is, himself, a former City Hall reporter for the Chicago Tribune).

In a 2007 profile of Mr. Axelrod, the New York Times acknowledged that the Obama campaign -- and perhaps Mr. Axelrod himself -- had been responsible for leaking details of Mr. Hull's divorce proceedings to the Chicago Tribune:

"Axelrod is known for operating in (the political) gray area, part idealist, part hired muscle. It is difficult to discuss Axelrod in certain circles in Chicago without the matter of the Blair Hull divorce papers coming up. As the 2004 Senate primary neared, it was clear that it was a contest between two people: the millionaire liberal, Hull, who was leading in the polls, and Obama, who had built an impressive grass-roots campaign. About a month before the vote, The Chicago Tribune revealed, near the bottom of a long profile of Hull, that during a divorce proceeding, Hull’s second wife filed for an order of protection. In the following few days, the matter erupted into a full-fledged scandal that ended up destroying the Hull campaign and handing Obama an easy primary victory. The Tribune reporter who wrote the original piece later acknowledged in print that the Obama camp had “worked aggressively behind the scenes” to push the story. But there are those in Chicago who believe that Axelrod had an even more significant role — that he leaked the initial story. They note that before signing on with Obama, Axelrod interviewed with Hull. They also point out that Obama’s TV ad campaign started at almost the same time.

(Emphasis mine).

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines irony as:

"1a. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. b. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning. c. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. See synonyms at wit1. 2a. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs ..."

(Emphasis mine).

Considering the zeal with which the Chicago Tribune pursued, uncovered, and reported on the sealed divorce records of Barack Obama's opponents in his 2004 bid for the U.S. Senate, one might have expected that the Tribune owned Los Angeles Times would have adopted a similar urgency toward releasing the videotape of Rashid Khalidi's going away dinner -- especially since Peter Wallsten's April, 2008, L.A. Times article implied that the videotape opens the door to the possibility that Senator Obama's official position on American foreign policy toward Israel may not actually reflect his true feelings on the issue.

How ironic, then, that the L.A. Times refuses to release the video. When Barack Obama's opponent Jack Ryan, and his ex-wife sought to keep their divorce records sealed, a Tribune newspaper sued to have the records unsealed on the grounds than the Ryans' privacy -- and their young son's well being -- were less important than the "public interest." But now a Tribune newspaper is refusing to release a videotape that could further illuminate Senator Obama's position on American foreign policy toward Israel on the grounds that doing so would violate their "journalistic ethics."

In fairness, the Tribune Company is now under different ownership than it was under in 2004. But one thing that hasn't changed since 2004 is the Tribune's apparent imperative to lend a hand to the candidacy of Barack Obama.

* Through his service on the board of the Woods Fund, Barack Obama voted to grant more tha $70,000 to the Arab American Action Network, an organization created by Rashid Khalidi (more here, and here).

Waiting With Baited Breath: Obama VP Mania Prediction

By this point, everyone and their grandmother knows that Barack Obama has pledged to reveal the identity of his choice for Vice Presidential nominee to supporters via text message, before he formally announces his VP pick to the media/rest of America. It's, hands down, the biggest news story of the day. And it's arguably been the biggest news story of the week, even with the Olympics in full swing.

With radio stations and TV networks promising to break in as soon as the text message is delivered, the media is in a veritable Obama VP text message frenzy.

I've been around politics for most my life: with political junkie parents, I was subjected to the weekend political TV shows as far back as I can remember and politics was one of the main topics of conversation at the dinner table. I've worked in Illinois state politics and have worked for a couple of campaigns. But I've never seen this level of media hype over the revelation of a VP nominee.

It kind of reminds me of the hype that always surrounds the announcement of the winner of American Idol.

In fact, I can only think of one other pending announcement from a notable person that attracted this level of media hype/buzz. And that was way back on March 18, 1995, when Michael Jordan, after weeks of having teased the media with hints of an NBA comeback, announced the end of his first retirement and his subsequent return to the NBA's Chicago Bulls by sending out a two word fax -- it simply read, "I'm back."

The merits of the Obama campaign's decision to announce his VP nominee via a mass text can certainly be debated. Some may see it as evidence that Barack Obama is young, dynamic and on the precipice of changing cultural trends. By that logic, Obama's attempt to make the announcement of his VP nominee viral can probably seen as a master stroke by a change agent who has connected with and inspired the millennial generation like no other politician has.

But the VP announcement by mass text could just as easily be seen as a shallow attempt to play up his image as hip/cool guy, and reinforce the Obama campaign's narrative that John McCain (Mr. Obama's opponent) is old, tired and out of touch (see here, and here and here).

One thing's for sure: this is going to be a very expensive text message.

So, readers may be wondering why Drive and Dish, a basketball website that occasionally covers other sports, would concern itself with the news of the day in politics.

The answer is because the Obama VP mania has been so over the top (and will become even more so after the Senator's running mate is actually announced) that the Drive and Dish editorial board has deemed it deserving of mention ... and a prediction.

Prediction:

So what's Drive and Dish's prediction about the Obama running mate announcement text?

Well, since the Obama campaign has waited until Friday (the end of the week's news cycle) to announce Sen. Obama's choice for VP nominee, and bearing in mind the fact that ABC news' George Stephanopoulos has said that an Obama campaign insider informed him of the campaign's desire to maximize buzz over the text by sending it out at a time when the greatest number of people will be by their phones, I predict that the Obama campaign will keep everybody waiting all day before sending out the much anticipated/hyped text.

The media will have to wait the entire day with baited breath.

And then it will happen ... the much awaited text will be sent out sometime around midnight Central time, when the target audience for the text -- Sen. Obama's legion of affluent, twentysomething supporters -- will be in bars, in clubs and at parties.

I don't know who Sen. Obama will announce as his VP nominee (although if pressed, I'd say it will most likely be a Southern white male -- Democratic strategists are quick to acknowledge that no Democrat has won the white house without a Southern white male on the ticket since Harry Truman [and even then, an argument can be made that Truman -- a Missouri native -- was sort of a Southerner]), but I do know that, considering the fact that, as a group, young women overwhelmingly support Sen. Obama's bid for the Presidency, any guy who receives an after midnight text from Barack Obama while out bar-hopping will have a major leg up on the competition.

By sending his text message, Sen. Obama will essentially serve as a virtual wingman for thousands of guys across America tonight. Make no mistake: Sen. Obama is going to get lots of guys laid.

And don't think the Obama campaign isn't aware of that.

Update:

"Slow Joe" Biden?

Seriously?

Did Barack Obama really chose as his Vice Presidential nominee the most arrogant, verbose, self important, plagiarising, tone deaf (more here), gaffetastic (more here), foot-in-mouth prone and easily lampoonable windbag (more here, here and here) in the Senate (with apologies to former Ku Klux Klan member turned United States Senator, Robert Byrd -- more here, here, and here)?

I'm really surprised.

Biden represents everything that people don't like about the Beltway. He's the ultimate self aggrandizing political hack.

Even among the most die-hard of Democrats, Biden has long been regarded as a buffoon and a laughingstock (note the less than flattering comments that I linked from the Daily Kos above).

If Biden really is Sen. Obama's choice, Drive and Dish will almost certainly be dishing out more political commentary in the near future (and that's a shame -- we really like to stick to basketball/sports).

More:

Robert Stacy McCain (no relation to John McCain) reacts to Sen. Obama's announcement:

"To jerk around the national press for a full week, only to deliver Joe Biden -- this is a disappointment. Imagine the reactions of those poor saps getting their text messages: 'WTF? Dude. Joe Biden?'"

I generally agree with the above sentiment, except that I'm not sure whether most of the people who received Sen. Obama's text actually know who Joe Biden is.

Update (Saturday, Aug. 23, 2008):

Yesterday, I took note of the almost ridiculous the media feeding frenzy over the pending Barack Obama VP nominee selection text. Today, 23/6 has a brilliant short montage of yesterday's CNN coverage of the Obamania waiting game (or as CNN dubbed their own coverage, "Obama VP Drama").

Disclaimer:

For the benefit of people who land on Drive and Dish via political blogs, Drive and Dish does not officially side with any political party or political ideology. We're a basketball/sports blog. We don't normally do politics.

My characterizations of Sen. Biden are not based on any opposition that I may or may not have to Biden's positions on political issues. Drive and Dish does not take sides in political arguments.

My characterization of Sen. Biden as an arrogant windbag is based solely on my opinion that, after years of having observed Sen. Biden in action, Sen. Biden is an arrogant windbag. But that's completely separate and unrelated to any opinions that I may hold with regard to his political positions or party affiliation.

Whether or not I agree with Sen. Biden on political issues has little, if anything, to do with the fact that I think he's a complete asshat whose flaws and shortcomings obscure his strengths.

Drive and Dish is a blog that writes primarily about basketball. We hold the opinion that sports, and sports coverage, should not be politicized. Politics is a vital facet of life in our republican democracy and every citizen has a responsibility to make sure that he/she has a reasonable understanding of the principles, traditions and documents on which our government is based, the mechanics by which our government operates, and of the issues of the day. And while it's often said that politics is itself a sport, Drive and Dish remains steadfast in the belief that politics doesn't belong in sports (or in entertainment, for that matter).

Simply, sports are fun. Politics ... not so much.

But Sen. Biden's long history of overt douchebaggery transcends politics. He's lampoonable because he's an undeniable buffoon and an absolute living parody of the archetypal windbag United States Senator ... independent of his politics and party affiliation (archetypal windbag Senators populate both sides of the aisle).