Full Gore II. After writing yesterday about David Halbfinger's latest campaign-trail atrocity, I felt like I hadn't really hit the ball out of the park. In fact, I felt like I'd erred in taking the piece to some extent on its own terms—as a kind of hazing exercise, utterly inappropriate but meant to be jocular, in a hamhanded way—and the more I thought about what was really going on the more my blood boiled. Fortunately, Brian Montopoli at CJR said much of what I'd have wanted to say in his post on the article: and the rest of it, the blood-boiling part, I can follow on with here.

Let's start with the central incident that Halbfinger reports, a small tumble Kerry took on the slopes of Mount Baldy:

The image-conscious candidate and his aides prevailed upon reporters and photographers to let him have a first run down the mountain solo, except for two agents and Marvin Nicholson, his omnipresent right-hand man.

His next trip down, a reporter and a camera crew were allowed to follow along on skis — just in time to see Mr. Kerry taken out by one of the Secret Service men, who had inadvertently moved into his path, sending him into the snow.

When asked about the mishap a moment later, he said sharply, "I don't fall down," then used an expletive to describe the agent who "knocked me over."

The incident occurred near the summit. No one was hurt, and Mr. Kerry came careering down the mountain moments later, a look of intensity on his face, his lanky frame bent low to the ground.

Let's add to this the piece's secondary incident, which finds Kerry "beating a retreat" from a ski-line heckler "to an upstairs, out-of-the-way dining area where he would be sure to draw even less attention"—illustration, says Halbfinger, that the candidate "could not entirely escape the hazards of the arena he had left behind." Let's further remember the piece's gratuitously needling lead: "John Kerry was in the air, approaching the Continental Divide, and the candidate often ridiculed as straddling both sides of political divides was wrestling with the big matter at hand"—a sentence that creates an incongruous, ungainly afterimage of John Kerry somehow aloft in a wrestler's pose over the Rockies.

Seeing a pattern? Halbfinger's writing rigorously, not to say programmatically, makes Kerry the butt of physical mockery. Every image Halbfinger offers of the candidate is meant to suggest retreat, cowardice, contortion, ineptitude. The article creates an almost subliminal satire on the notion of vacation, using it at every turn as an opportunity to impute physical and by extension moral weakness to Kerry. The undercurrent of the whole piece: John Kerry is a big, stupid dork who's trying to hide, stupid hiding dork! Halbfinger's like the school bully taunting the kid with a limp. (If Times articles came with sound effects, I'd expect to hear Nelson Muntz's "Ha ha!" more than once here.)

Given Kerry's record of physical bravery in his Vietnam service, it's possible that this sort of mockery is in fact programmatic—a subtle way of negating the force of that record. In which case, Halbfinger is carrying Republican water about as contemptibly as any journalist could. On the other hand, maybe it's just pathological. Maybe Kerry just really makes Halbfinger's skin crawl, somehow, and he can't resist the urge to let it show. Either way, the piece begs the question: is this the Times' assignment policy for Democratic Presidential candidates? Is it a job requirement that you have to actually loathe a Dem candidate to be allowed to cover his campaign?

posted by michael  6:11:58 PM  
tell me about it []  

 

What we need here is a little stragedy. For the second time in the last four days, A1 brings us the big big story from the Bush campaign: There's a plan! That's right, the Republicans have a new innovation in Presidential politics, something they call ... what's that term they use? ... Oh yeah, a media strategy:

President Bush's campaign is following an aggressive and precise 90-day media strategy to define Senator John Kerry as indecisive and lacking conviction, with a coordinated blitz of advertisements, speeches and sound bites, senior campaign advisers said this week.

The goal, several campaign aides said, is to first strip Mr. Kerry of the positive image that he carried away from the Democratic primary contests and then to define him issue by issue in their own terms before the summer vacation season. The central thrusts will be national security and taxes, they said.

"90-Day Media Strategy by Bush's Aides to Define Kerry"

I predict this newfangled stragedy ... sorry, strategy thing is gonna revolutionize the whole game!

Do you think John Kerry's camp has got themselves a strategy, too? Guess not—otherwise, they'd have trumpeted it to the skies just like Bush's guys have done, and intrepid Times typist Jim Rutenberg would have subjected the Dem announcement to the same probing glare he's turned on the Reepubs today. Among the fascinating insights Rutenberg has uncovered through his fearless willingness to parrot whatever Republicans tell him: you know how the Bush campaign seemed completely out of touch and directionless just a week or so ago? All an illusion:

Aides said the strategy was planned weeks ago in coordination with Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political aide, while Mr. Kerry was battling for his party's nomination. ...

The Bush aides pronounce their efforts a success so far, and point to polls showing that Mr. Kerry's ratings are dropping while Mr. Bush's are rising, a huge relief to a campaign that just a couple of weeks ago was criticized even by some Republicans as appearing flat-footed.

[Doesn't "Bush aides pronounce their efforts a success" just encapsulate the whole article for you?] The captain's hand has never been off the tiller! We never said Saddam was an imminent threat! The chocolate ration has just been increased again! We love you, Dear Leader!

Looks like this strategy news is almost too hot to touch, because despite a couple of attributed quotes, the aforementioned "Bush aides," along with "White House and campaign officials" and "a Bush adviser" are quoted directly and indirectly throughout Rutenberg's piece under the cloak of anonymity. Demonstrating again—as if we needed confirmation—that the Times' policy on anonymous sourcing is strictly for entertaining the rubes.

And while we're at it, the Times' intrepid assault on Kerry's "foreign leaders" pseudo-gaffe continues here, fourth day in a row. Rutenberg silently corrects the quote to what Kerry actually said, but—as always with this one—simply dishes it up from the RNC trough, without explanation or context or even an attempt at coherence:

The Republican National Committee, which works closely with the campaign on its message, fanned the flames with e-mail messages to reporters and supporters with the heading "John Kerry International Man of Mystery," making fun of his statement that "I've met more leaders" who wanted him to win, and followed with an Internet advertisement on the same theme.

Like David Halbfinger two weeks ago, Rutenberg seems to think that those RNC oppo guys are just so clever and cheeky—how can he resist giving you a look at one of their funny funny stunts?

Robin at Fact-esque (doing my Reading A1 job better and more succinctly than me today, thanks Robin!) thinks the BushCo stroking today is prophylactic: A1's repentance for fronting the news (in what Robin calls a "pro forma rundown of the skeleton of the story") that Clinton aides plan to tell the Sept. 11 commission how Bush ignored their warnings about Al Qaeda in 2001. Seems probable, but the recent pattern into which Rutenberg's piece fits goes further. It's as if the Times national political desk is desperately afraid that Bush will win, and will do anything to show that it's playing by Rove's rules. Look what good boys we are! Please, please Karl, be nice to us next term!

posted by michael  4:45:27 PM  
tell me about it []