Keller tries to make a point about western Massachusetts, but fails miserably because he has no clue where western Massachusetts starts. Lance lends him a clue: It's not Leominster or Fitchburg.

Naturally, he's not very happy about it.

This morning, the Mouth that Roared declared that nobody cares what he's doing every minute of the day. And I couldn't help but agree: I don't care what he's doing every minute of the day.

Of course, Keller said that in the context of being roughly the 74,000th media pundit to sneeringly declare his disdain for people who use Twitter, because if he doesn't get it, there's obviously something wrong with it.

Twitter this, Mr. Keller.

Sadly, I think Keller was dead serious this morning on WBZ when he accused people who plan to cut back their Christmas shopping this year of being "selfish" because they are helping to ruin the economy. Good to know he still has a secure job.

Jon Keller breaks the news (dear Channel 4: Read up on permalinks and fix your busted RSS, 'kay?).

The Outraged Liberal thinks the controversy is a bit overblown, it's not like Patrick was Client 10 or something, but still, he's forced to ask: This couldn't have waited?

... The man who showed a great understanding for the yearnings of Massachusetts residents has developed a tin ear, the kind that made Michael Dukakis a temporary one-termer.

David Bernstein writes this is one case where perception matters:

... It's absolutely legitimate for Mass. residents to be wary of gubernatorial absenteeism, even to the point of hypersensitivity, after Romney, Cellucci, Weld, Dukakis. ...

FrankSkeffington: Even if he still lost big, he OWED it to the folks who were in the trenches fighting for HIS bill to provide support by being there:

But no, Deval went. That says a lot about the man and it's not good.

Jay Fitzgerald wonders when the Commonwealth got renamed "Titanic:"

Imagine the captain of a sinking ship exhorting his doomed crew and passengers to remain calm while he hopped into a life boat exclaiming, 'Well, nice knowing you. I'm off to sign a book deal!' ... Of course Deval's casino bill was doomed before it sank below the House surface last week. But the timing of Deval's trip to New York to sign a book deal just doesn't look right. ...

Blue Mass. Group says it sure can, which is why it's now encouraging people to prowl bookstores this weekend, counting up the number of footnotes in political books so that Jon Keller can be ground into the dust, or something.

Joe Keohane, meanwhile, surveys the burgeoning number of bloggers on both ends of the political spectrum kerfuffling it up and tells them why they suck, every last one of them.

One blogger Keohane did not include was Stacey J. Miller, a local book publicist who presumably is not doing any work for Keller because she writes that she doesn't understand how Keller could write a book without attribution, especially since that's a lesson that many people get drilled into them in, oh, middle school:

... How interesting it is to me that some professional journalists out there haven't learned that lesson yet.

In the Herald, Jessica Haslam calls Jon Keller a plagiarist (without actually using the word "plagiarist," but come on, that's what she's calling him):

WBZ-TV political analyst Jon Keller's highly touted new book, "The Bluest State," is riddled with almost three dozen instances of direct quotes and other material lifted from numerous newspaper articles without any attribution, a Herald review has found. ...

At the Phoenix, Adam Reilly defends Keller; says a careful reader can distinguish between quotes veteran reporter/commentator Keller got himself and those that came from other sources:

... True, the system could be clearer. But it's a real reach to accuse Keller of bad faith here.

Reilly writes he agrees with former Phoenix media critic, current Northeastern University journalism professor and Keller friend Dan Kennedy that the real problem is simply that Keller didn't use footnotes:

... A fair reading of "The Bluest State" makes it absolutely clear that Keller has written an amalgam combining some original reporting with a lot of material that, at this point, is essentially in the public domain. I find it hard to believe that anyone would think Keller had personally interviewed everyone he quotes. ...

Even Save WRKO wades in, with Brian Maloney calling the whole thing a kerfluffle, although he then veers off into conspiracy land, accusing Heslam of being the tool of:

[A] Caracas-style campaign to purge political opponents from Massachusetts for good.

Over at Blue Mass. Group, David got an advance copy of Jon Keller's upcoming book (due out next week) on how Massachusetts sucks and begins a 14-part review of it:

... Unfortunately, Keller's anger is unfocused and often misdirected. As a result, the book is an unwieldy amalgam of serious issues (e.g., waste and corruption on the Big Dig), Keller's personal pet peeves (is political correctness really responsible for crime in the cities?), and a smattering of right-wing talking points (remember the welfare queens?), all swirled together with little regard to what's a real problem and what just annoys Jon. Even more peculiar is Keller's willingness to ascribe just about every one of these perceived problems to "liberals" -- even though, as I've already pointed out, many of the people Keller is complaining about are not, in fact, liberal. ...

I hope we never learn that there were ratings considerations behind yesterday's awkward, invasive blog post on the press conference by Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and his wife to discuss her recurring breast cancer. Because as someone who's lost relatives to that awful disease, the notion that some slick commentator on the make might exploit it for ratings gain is way off the scale of acceptability.

How else to explain his unrelentingly bitter outlook on Massachusetts, the one that might make an observer exclaim "So move already!" Latest example: He sees "The Departed" and concludes it's proof the entire state of Massachusetts sucks.