The Hartford Courant’s Jon Lender, who writes investigative stories on politics and government, got a shout-out from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. In an oped for the Washington Post, Maddow criticized the Christie administration in New Jersey for targeting reporters, and she looked at instances of this happening in other states:
When Connecticut Gov. John Rowland was still denying the allegations of corruption that would ultimately force him out of office, his wife read a poem (to the meter of “The Night Before Christmas”) mocking Hartford Courant reporter Jon Lender at a local Chamber of Commerce meeting:
“When out on the yard there rose such a hub-bub,
I thought maybe Jon Lender had jumped in the hot tub.
Now surely that man needs to go soak his head,
but there on the lawn stood Santa instead.”
Lender didn’t jump into anything, but he did stay on the story, and the aforementioned hot tub turned out to be one of the illegal gifts that would send the governor to prison.
