1/7/99
I passed it by several times at Mr. Paperback as I would a
newspaper insert for spaghetti sauce. But there it came to be as
a Christmas stocking stuffer.
"An Insider's Guide to Maine Politics, 1946-1996," by
Christian P. Potholm is indeed spaghetti sauce covering some 700
names of political pizza eaters with the sycophantic check picked
up by the tenured professor of Bowdoin College.
This creamy collection of political indexing is a courtier's
laudatory collection of paragraphia thumb sketches of those pols,
poops and political "scorps" who have snuggled up to
Potholm's elitist sheepskin slippers over the decades.
Apparently the Bowdoin prof does not have enough to keep him
college busy, outside of lecturing on understanding Maine
politics, and so has been sideline compiling political anecdotes
on the bees and birds of ballot bunkum for 25 years.
Not finding enough name species to stuff into 370 pages, Potholm
has plagiarized and pilfered enough political phases from around
the planet to fluff up his Library of Congress Catalog entry.
Considering that there is not one negative mention of the some
700 names in the book, then consider it the biggest potential
political fund-raiser in Maine history. Potholm, you see, also
does very expensive for-hire polling, track and off-track, via
his Command Research outfit to supplement his measly Bowdoin day
job pay envelope.
This is a toady dictionary of political species interlaced with
the prof's self-congratulatory bafflegab of I made them or I made
them up. Indexing just about every Maine peanut and jackleg
politician who ever ran for or from office, Potholm can't find
one who is or was a party hack, baby kisser, wonk or one of the
swell uptown boys and girls.
Potholm dedicates his book to "Billy and Angus, the best of
the best," presumably, comfortably Cohen and King both of
whom filled Potholm for-hire polling basket with plenty of fried
clams. Cohen gets three mugshots in the dictionary. Kings gets
two. In a 1978 election huggily photo of Potholm and Cohen with
Cohen's wife, Diana, in the background, Potholm forgets to
identify the prominently Diana. Or more probable, a 1998
manuscript redaction more befitting Cohen's current status.
Potholm has a cattle call of mediamites which he calls
"scorp's," (short for scorpion) not original thought
but attributed to real life subterranean James Carville in Joe
Klien's animal safari "Primary Colors."
It's obvious that in riffling through his media index card file
by fireplace, that the Bowdoinite never set foot in the State
House complex except for sit-down Blaine House cocktail hours and
honored spinner dinners of incumbent governors whom Potholm has
said he has singularly put there. Nix Angus King who refuses to
live in the joint preferring to domicile in collegiate Brunswick
a horseshoe toss near the Bowdoin campus - and Potholm.
Potholm's take on the so-called State House press corps is Three
Stoogies hilarious in his observation that that they are all
objective scribes. Bull. They all, like fields of straw, bend
liberal in the current leftist breeze of State House politics
preferring to keep their rootballs safely in the
non-investigative soil of a down-sizing newspaper employee
pasture.
A big chunk of limited available SH press space is stuffed with
Maine Public Broadcasting, that is, government subsidized, King
friendly folks. (MBPN did an on-air interview with Potholm drum
beating his book.) The rest is occupied by FOA's (friends of
Angus) duly dog-trotting to King press say-nothing conferences
called by King's wacky flacky Dennis Bailey.
Potholm positively adores King and all the King's court including
Bailey. About King, Potholm cock-a-doodle-doo's "one of two
truly self-made figures in post-war Maine politics." (The
other, he claims, being Jim Longley Sr.) Of the guv's press
poisoner, Bailey, Potholm says, "one of the most effective
press secretaries cum strategists of the last several
decades."
Then why did Bailey rat-jump former political campaign ships and
why does Bailey use the "dead agent" tactic on press
critics of King? Dead agent is a term coined by scientologists as
an all-out effort by any means to destroy the credibility of a
journalist or opponent.
Potholm's political dictionary is $19.95 down a rat hole. He has
about as much true insight into Maine politics as a space alien
cemetery sexton. The best advice for anyone who has been
intrigued or scammed into buying the thing is to throw the book
away and use the bag for peanut shells.