Liberal Talk Radio

Gotta love Mitch Albom.  His folksy, leftist populism has always been a big hit with sports fans in Detroit.  Mitch is crafty enough to be overtly non-partisan, but if you read his columns long enough, you get the impression that he’s a closet D.

Reading Mitch’s piece yesterday on the firing of Matt Millen, I’m buoyed by new hope for Obama.

… Millen was hired with no experience. What exactly did people expect? He was a former player turned broadcaster who had a smart and sometimes snarky way of handling his on-air analysis, and many people said, “Hey, he’d make a good GM.”

This is a little like telling a photogenic teenager, “You’d make a good news anchor.” It may be true, one day, after years of training. But you don’t give her Katie Couric’s seat tomorrow.

Which should inform the [Lions] as to their next hire. Whoever it is, please, dear Lord, do not make it a former big-name coach who wants to get his feet wet running a team. This job cannot be a proving ground. It cannot be a place where you make your first mistakes.

[emphasis added]

Mitch, in his understated way, has just drawn a connection between the ineptitude that is the Detroit Lions, and the ineptitude that would undoubtedly be a McCain-Palin administration. It was just yesterday, you see, that Sarah Palin appeared on Katie Couric’s Evening News. By connecting Millen’s enthusiastic inexperience to Palin’s enthusiastic inexperience, Mitch Albom just gave voters in the critical state of Michigan a new metaphor by which to express their discontent with the GOP ticket.

Thanks, Mitch.  And thanks, Matt Millen.  America — and the world — may yet owe you one.