Keith Olbermann

I have been putting off this post for a couple of weeks. It's about Mike Bordick's performance on MASN as an analyst on Orioles games. It started with a colleague, who is usually a keen observer of sports media, casually stopping me in the newsroom to say, "Z, you gotta write about Bordick. " As he said it, he shook his head side to side, winced and gestured with two thumbs down. So, I started watching and listening to the likable former Orioles shortstop. Instead of jumping into print with what I saw after a couple of games though, I also started asking other media types who watch a lot of Orioles baseball about their impressions of him. Representative of what I mainly heard was this: "Geez, Z, you're not going to rip Bordick, are you?

Good Lord! You use e-mail?" This is what the popular and good-looking Elizabeth Saltzman of Vanity Fair was overheard saying to the queen of England at a recent garden party in honor of the Household Cavalry. Elizabeth II had just said to Ms. S. "We must keep in touch; let me give you my e-mail address." The queen had added as an aside that she does use e-mail. "But I don't write them myself. I dictate them." The queen is surprisingly agile when it comes to the 21st century. She is known to use a mobile phone given to her by Prince Andrew, and she also has an iPod.

HOMO POLITICUS -- By Dana Milbank Doubleday / 288 pages / $26 Deep within the forbidding land encircled by the Washington Beltway lives the tribe known as Homo politicus. Their ways are strange, even repulsive, to civilized human beings; their arcane rites often impenetrable; their language coded and obscure. Violating their complex taboos can lead to sudden, harsh and irrevocable punishment. Normal Americans have long feared Homo politicus, with good reason. But fearless anthropologist Dana Milbank has spent many years immersed in the dark heart of Washington, and has produced this indispensable portrait of a bizarre culture whose tribal ways are as hilarious as they are outrageous.

Channel 11 yesterday introduced the latest of its "Celebrity Sportscasters," City Council President and mayoral hopeful Mary Pat Clarke, who will sit in with Gerry Sandusky on tomorrow night's 11 p.m. newscast.Clarke, who officially kicked off her campaign recently to wrest the Democratic nomination from incumbent Kurt L. Schmoke in September's primary, was invited to read scores and narrate highlights just as Schmoke was earlier this month."After she announced her candidacy for mayor, it's more than fair to have her take her shot at it. It will be a lot of fun," said Channel 11 news director David Roberts.

The recent disclosure that Tommy Morrison tested HIV-positive opens the latest chapter in the debate over when the public's interest in knowing details about the private lives of athletes runs smack-dab into the rights of those athletes to keep those things private.Though Morrison has spoken courageously about his conduct since the story was first published in the Los Angeles Times more than a week ago, the heavyweight boxer did not voluntarily come forward, and spoke only after the story had reached the public.

I am not a media critic!" said TV commentator Chris Matthews when I asked if he had any thoughts on the Bill O'Reilly-Keith Olbermann "feud," which rages almost nightly on the Fox and MSNBC networks. Chris added: "You can never win criticizing someone in your own business." Although Chris works for MSNBC, he has high praise in person and in his new book for Fox tycoon Roger Ailes, who did so much for MSNBC before he went to the Rupert Murdoch empire. In fact, when we discussed ABC's late genius, Roone Arledge, Chris said that Roger is the only person in television who comes up to Roone, creatively.

Taking a spin around the sports media block while thinking about how much I'll miss all those Frank TV promos: With the World Series beginning next week, expect to hear the wails of protest about how Fox's Tim McCarver overanalyzes a game, stating and restating the obvious. Not to deny that point, but John Madden has accentuated the obvious in each of his network NFL gigs, yet he hasn't been subject to the same widespread criticism. Maybe McCarver would fare better if he had a best-selling video game named after him. A quick difference noted between the look of TBS' postseason baseball coverage and that of Fox: TBS doesn't go quite so heavily into the extreme close-ups of faces on the field, in the dugout and in the stands, meant to convey the high tension and intensity of certain moments.

So you're hunkered down at a bar, watching this game or that on one of the 20 televisions. Lo and behold, one of the national or local sportscasters you're accustomed to watching plops down on the stool right next to you. Here's how it might go: Chris Berman: He shouts out a nickname for every other player who appears in close-up on a TV. Watching a guy chatting up a woman at the end of the bar, he intones: "He ... could ... go ... all ... the ... way."...

Siriano, Conrad to create gowns for Emmy night Project Runway winner Christian Siriano and The Hills star Lauren Conrad are creating gowns for the Emmy Awards on Sept. 21. Siriano's selection as designer for one of the so-called "trophy girls" who hand over Emmy statues to presenters was announced yesterday. The TV academy previously said that Conrad, who's started her own clothing line, will be dressing a trophy bearer. Siriano will have Project Runway company, with the show's Heidi Klum serving as one of five reality show hosts who are to emcee the awards.