Wonkette
Oh jesus christ, we think Michael Steele may have finally pushed himself into a position where firing becomes a near-future possibility, but what the hell do we know? It’s been quite a day for Steele, “the black Barack Obama.” First he canceled an ABC interview at the last minute. Reports came in that there was an “emergency meeting” he had to attend at the RNC at noon instead. The RNC later clarified that there was a meeting, but not an “emergency” meeting, so reporters should fuck off. Either way, Steele’s scheduler (Puff Daddy) appears to have done a poor job managing conflicts today — or maybe a good job, because he managed to get Michael Steele off the teevee for once.
Intra-party smoke and mirrors abound on this day, one day after Michael Steele told members of his party who don’t like him — and had no idea his book was coming out — to “shut up.”
What the heck happened? In a case of what might be bad communication or could be trouble brewing for Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, we delve into today’s Steele Mystery.
Here’s what we know: Steele was scheduled to appear on ABC’s “TopLine” show at lunchtime, but canceled and cited an emergency RNC meeting that raised red flags about the embattled chairman’s tenure.
The RNC denied to us that any meeting was happening, flatly saying “No,” when we asked.
This afternoon, an RNC spokesperson backtracked and told ABC that there was a noon meeting at the RNC, just not an “emergency RNC meeting.”
An ABC spokeswoman told TPMDC that Steele’s book publicist called the network at 11:30, 30 minutes before the scheduled interview time, to cancel.
The publicist’s explanation was that Steele “was called into an emergency meeting at the RNC,” said Emily Lenzner, an ABC spokeswoman who also referred us to the publicist, who hasn’t returned several calls.
Still confused? Us too. So… blame Emily Lenzner? Blame Emily Lenzner! BOO EMILY LENZNER!
Meanwhile:
Steele had the time to appear on Laura Ingraham’s radio show between 11 and noon, just before the publicist canceled. On the show he said he would like to be governor of Maryland.
Ha ha ha! Is that his actual escape plan from this shitty job of his, to run for governor of Maryland this year? Please! Last we checked, Martin O’Malley had no strong potential challengers besides the prospect of ex-governor and current wingnut radio host Bobby Ehrlich re-running, but he will never make up his mind, because he’s an asshole.
Hey Maryland, get excited: America may be deporting Michael Steele back to you!
Solving The Steele Mystery: Why Did He Cancel On ABC? [TPM]
THIS IS GREAT NEWS FOR MICHAEL STEELE!
Probably one of his male lovers wants too much more money to keep quiet.
What troubles me the most about all of this is that ABC’s has another newsmagazine - “TopLine”? I have never fucking heard of it. Jeebus, this media beast will never be fed.
How will the GOP reach out to it’s peeps now? Maybe Alan Keyes is available?
You would think Steel’s experience of being resoundingly rejected by the Maryland electorate when he ran for senator might give him the hint that a Governorship is not in the cards.
He is probably just trying to jump ship to get in good with the teabaggers…. boy is he going to be dissappointed.
Has the “Daily Tuck” weighed in on this yet?
Cicada: But you know who it’s bad news for….
Ain’t nuthin’ but a “G” thang, baaaaabay!
I think Mr. Steele would be much happier across the River in Virginia.
His party may not be ready to lead, but he is — ready to lead his ass right out onto the street.
Based on the stupidity coming out of Steele’s mouth, if one were conspiratorially inclined then one would think that Mikey were some deep cover Demrat mole working to single handedly retard the electoral efforts of the GOP by making them look like hapless feebs. Of course this is based on the assumption that the GOP aren’t really a bunch hapless of feebs and that the Demrats actually have some dark cunning.
Repubs better be careful. If they lose Da Steele, the only comedy back-up will be Tucker Carlson’s News Adventure Playset. Bow ties are no match for street lingo.
Michael Steele’s new gig is being the new fake Alan Colmes. Hannity and Steele, now with an actual black person to abuse!
Maybe, after he gets fired today, Steele will bring a little of the hip-hop vibe he was promising to Bill Bennett, by popping a cap in his (Bennett’s) fat, ugly ass. Or the fat, ugly asses of whichever “major contributors” WaPo said were bringing this sideshow to a close.
Terry: He can have it. Hell, he can buy our house if he wants the goddamned thing.
So, if Steele actually does get fired, who does the GOP have who’s available, capable and willing to take over, not to mention acceptable to the insane teabagger base? Ah, who am I kidding; they’ll go with a true crazy idiot, instead of just a bumbling goof; like that white supremacist dude who came in second place.
They’d probably like Sarah Palin, but the job doesn’t pay as much as she demands and involves actual work.
ManchuCandidate: “….Demrats actually have some dark cunning.” Ha ha ha ha ha ha…. Speaking of cunning, do you know the difference between a girls’ track team and a band of pygmies?
Michael Steele is the only one at the RNC who doesn’t know he’s a quota hire…”Look, we have one too!”
ManchuCandidate: My money is on Alan Funt in blackface.
Honest Injun? Too bad for us, he had a funny.
Republicans are becoming like a funny sit-com comedy, all runnin’ ’round crazy and mixed-up, and having crushes, and popping out the crazy one-liners to make us laugh. The Depression-era people had the noble Seabiscuit to inspire them…but I’ll take these crazy shenanigans any day!
JMP: Sarah Palin would be perfect for that job — there’s half a term left.
Larry Fine: Probably one of his male lovers wants too much more money to keep quiet.
Nah, MC Steele is definitely a man for the ladies; which raises the question of why he’s not a Democrat.
ManchuCandidate: Based on the stupidity coming out of Steele’s mouth, if one were conspiratorially inclined then one would think that Mikey were some deep cover Demrat mole
Huh.
He wants to be governor of Maryland- well, I want to win Powerball and I have more chance to win Powerball without buying a ticket than Mikey does of becoming my governor.
Aww, Mikey. I knew you were too good to last.
Maybe they’re taking him up on that ‘fire me’ suggestion.
Well, but is it possible to actually fire him? He was kind of elected, wasn’t he? Can there be an impeachment policy that covers making assinine comments constantly? This is AMERICA, after all!
Does this mean that the racist country club guy he beat out gets to be RNC Chair? I hope so, if not I fear for the lost laughs.
What’s that? Oh they’re all racist country club guys, right. Carry on.
Please Mikey, Don’t Hurt ‘Em!
Isn’t Baltimore looking for a new
common thiefmayor?Steele: fire me or shut up.
GOP: mmmmm, tough choice. you’re fired.
V572625694: do tell
ManchuCandidate: the entire repub party are deep cover demrat moles, in so deep they don’t know it, the same way a fish doesn’t know it’s in the water.
V572625694: Does it involve measuring verticals and taking an average?
Jim:
Why you mock Emily Lenzer?
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlDC/original/emilylenzner2.JPG
…. Okay, nebbermind.
If they terminate Mikey who is gonna be the token designated to provide token commentary?
DAMN!!!!, SHIT!!!,Dat shut is WHACK…!!!
I’m gonna guess that this will not be a book that World Net Daily and NewsMax will give away for free with a subscription.
Edit fail: Dat SHIT is WHACK…
Terry: Don’t even JOKE like that. NOT FUNNY!
He just clarified on Smart Line. He was “Bulletproofing his Cadillac”.
S.Luggo: EL - more bangable than Dana Peritonitis -
Am I alone in thinking that if this were Tim Kaine, it would be splashed across the front page of every major paper in the country? If this were the DNC we were talking about, the WaPo and NYT would come out with special afternoon editions just so they could have a front page to put this on.
We’re back in the shadows again.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/01/08/steele-rival-re-emerges-amidst-rnc-turmoil/
Steele Rival [S.C.’s Katon Dawson] Re-Emerges Amidst RNC Turmoil
January 8, 2010
…
Katon Dawson, the former South Carolina Republican Party chairman who lost to Steele by just 14 votes in last February’s RNC election, will travel to the committee’s Winter Meeting in Hawaii on Jan. 25 in the place of Karen Floyd, the current South Carolina GOP chairwoman. Floyd asked Dawson to make the trip in her stead because the RNC confab conflicts with a Republican gubernatorial debate in South Carolina. [Sure.]
Dawson told CNN he is “thrilled” to travel to the Winter Meeting in Honolulu so he can re-connect with “a lot of really good friends and associates” on the committee.
….
Dawson said Republicans “will come very close to taking a majority” this fall.
*********
He’s scouring the Innernet to change the date on all references to 9/11/2001 to 2009. The GOP does not suffer uppity tokens within its ranks.
If he’s even lost Megs McCain you know it’s over:
http://twitter.com/McCainBlogette/status/7529970466
I thought all that hippity-hoppity talk was supposed to appeal to the youngs?
I_KILL_ZOMBIES_ALSO: Sadly, there’s no way to frame this as “Bad News for Obama” or “This is good news for John McCain” so there’s no point in covering it. I’m guessing most of the press is too busy cruising the halls of Congress waiting for a Democratic intern to quit to notice this is going on anyways.
It has never been easy to be the Moms Mabley of the GOP, surrounded by a sea of uppity pink people. I will be genuinely sorry to see Bunza go, just as he has been genuinely sorry as RNC chair. I sincerely wish him abject failure in his upcoming projects, too.
imissopus: Is she showing us how she broke hymen?
Norbert: AnnieGetYourFun: Well, one of them is a cunning bunch of runts.
I_KILL_ZOMBIES_ALSO: What are talking about? It’s obvious that a full two Democratic Senators retiring, while only six Republican Senators are, spells disaster for the Democratic party.
S.Luggo: The Republicans would be embracing their pure modern principles by replacing a black guy with an overt racist.
His inevitable firing will come as a shock to us all.
All Republicans are “niggars” to Steele’s RNC.
snideinplainsight: yes but most girls are, no?
imissopus: Actually, I think Meghan McCain was the *ONLY* visible evidence of Steele’s urban-suburban hippity-hoppity strategy for being cool (if you don’t count the rotating pool of half a dozen “Faces of the GOP” on the party’s website). So yes - in all likelihood, he’s done.
READ THE BOOK!
Oh, crap! Pull yourself together, Michael Steele.
Don’t let ‘em teabag you. You’re PERFECT for the job of head of the RNC. Now. Go sell yourself.
We hired a Negro once, he didn’t work out.
Doesn’t he know to keep his mind on the money and the money on his mind?
I nominate Harold Ford’s Aunt Ophelia.
Good thing for Steele it’s not late on a Friday because that’s usually when bad news is announced.
“We had a blackout at our RNC convention once - we told him to go back to Maryland.” Ba-dum-dump!
puleeese, massa republicans, don’t fire Steele. he’s much ore entertaining than American Idol. okay, if you have to fire him, can we have the lovely & talented ms mccain so we dream about her sweater puppies?
dougbob: If there was an alternate universe where it was even possible for Megs to be the RNC chief, I would live in it forever.
El Pinche: Niggers=bad
Niggaz=hip
Niggars= *stupid
*stupid=dumb, not stoopid=fresh which means bad
(the good bad not the bad, bad)
Did anyone see his whole interview on C-SPAN Washington Journal this morning? I missed the whole thing…I am one of the fortunate who’s life is interrupted by work during the week.
Michael Steele is a loser….fo’shizzle.,
Does anyone else now think that this meeting was to discuss getting the RNC’s “colored brother” in front of the faux outrage over Harry Reid’s “light skinned” comments?
Maybe this will be Steele’s lithmus test, can the RNC use a dark skinned negro to force the Whitest Man in America to step down from the Senate Leadership?
If not, they’d have excuse to cut Steele loose.
They misspelled “duncey”? Steele is too dense to realize he’s no more the GOP Chairman than Junior was really ever the president. Word is he’s been gettin’ uppity with his own GOP critics, too. Told ‘em to fire him, or shut up if they didn’t like the way he was runnin’ things. Ha! Guess he thinks they won’t get all lickered up and lynch his dumb ass on some dark and stormy night.
I would send him back to Maryland but I have family there and I am quite fond of them….
The worst thing about all this is that almost everyone has missed the mark on the latest “version” of our Michael Steele.
Michael used to be in a virtually obscure rock band. Let’s call it “The Bangles.” A few folks might have remembered them had they put out three pretty damn good CDs.
Strangely, they did.
But they wound up breaking up in the late 80s over the group’s investments in the tanning industry. However, “The Gurls” did re-unite about 7 years ago and still do gigs (sans Steele) in LA and other cities. Michael left the 2nd edition of “The Bangles” in 2005 to have a sex change operation. Soon after that, she had a race change operation.
A life-long member of the neo-conservative movement and a Free Marketeer, Michael has gone to considerable extreme to become a fixture of the GOP inner sanctum. Why no one has given Steele any credit for his/her efforts to attract both liberated women and blacks to the GOP is beyond me. And no doubt musicians besides Yanni, the Association, and Barry Manilow will be considering a swing to the GOP as well.
Which may also explain that pretty damn good-looking tropical shirt being sported by our Chairman of the Bored. Surfer music fans have already contributed to the Haitian relief effort. No doubt Steele will be making an impromptu side trip to Haiti after his RNC tryst to keep the carnuba wax crowd on-side.
Which reminds me. Steele has long since traded in her breast implants for pec implants and will be invaluable in hauling corpses out of heaps that were once sub-standard Haitian housing. That is — just as soon as the after shocks die down a bit.