Shabby, mendacious typing from the Todd Purdum word processor splashed above the fold on A1 today ("In '71 Antiwar Words, a Complex View of Kerry"). (Purdum, it may be worth remembering, was recently seen in full feather rhapsodizing gauleiterishly over Dear Leader on the occasion of his SOTU speech.)

"Complex" is an interesting word: in the body of the article, Purdum uses it to mean, roughly, "not reducible to simple critique"—having introduced the subject of right-wing criticism of Kerry's antiwar work in the early '70s, Purdum follows with a demurrer to the effect that "the full picture is complex." Even here, though, the usage is suspect reporter-ese; the burden of what follows is that Kerry was a moderate in the antiwar context, and while charting a moderate course in a movement dominated by radicals may well have been a challenge, moderation isn't a "complex" phenomenon unless you've decided that the only operative political categories are left and right. But the headline usage really gives it away: "complex" is about Kerry, and about his character, not just about his thirty-years-ago political activity; it gravitates into the orbit of "slippery" and "untrustworthy," part of the Gore-ish meme the Republicans are disseminating as their chief line against Kerry. (Do you really want somebody that complex to be President? I just can't trust somebody who's not straightforward, you know, like good-ol' Flight-Suit Boy.)

Purdum is either so lazy, or has so little commitment to today's bullshit assignment, that he can't even be bothered to maintain his own rationalization for his article's existence. Kerry's activity against the war, Purdum tells us, "arouse[d] intense passions, then and now," and offers that it's an "open question" whether this past will hurt Kerry politically: then just a few grafs later, at the bottom of the piece, remarks how

a recent poll by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey found that Mr. Kerry's antiwar activity was mostly a concern to people who had already made up their minds against him, just as Mr. Bush's wartime service in the Texas Air National Guard was mostly a concern of those who already opposed him.

So I guess the passion is really just on one side of the fence, then, eh Todd? And the question isn't all that open after all? [By the way, how's that for a phony equivalence: Kerry has a wartime record of opposition to the war, and Bush has a wartime record of National Guard service. Never mind that the former record has been completely open for thirty years, and fully explored, while the former has remained to this day in the murk of coverup and partial disclosure—they're both Vietnam-related political footballs, what more do you need to know? Acknowledging any distinction between them, gosh, that'd be a sin against objectivity, wouldn't it?]

So why is this stale crap stinking up A1 today? Well, wingers are saying bad things about John Kerry's antiwar record! And if the Conservative Command Center is making a controversy about it, then it must be controversial, right? And in that sham logic the Times cedes, without even a whimper, its independent news judgement.

As both a veteran and anguished opponent of the Vietnam War, Mr. Kerry has spent years working to square the circle of a conflict that divided his generation, and the nation. Now, his old words have come back to haunt his presidential campaign, as conservative backers of President Bush question whether Mr. Kerry is "a proud war hero or angry antiwar protester," as National Review Online recently asked.

Let's take careful note of this graf. There was a point at which I thought that the Times might have reasons not to go a-Goreing on Kerry. Mea culpa. It's just the end of February, and A1 has already sunk so low as to admit, to the world and everybody, that it's taking its marching orders from National Review Online.

posted by michael  1:08:37 PM  
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