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6 Recent Changes as of Fri, Aug 29 at 06:01 PM
 
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Daily Howler: This must stop, Obama said, describing the past twenty years
THE SCIENCE OF DISTRACTION! This must stop, Obama said, describing the past twenty years: // link // print // previous //next //
FRIDAY, AUGUST 29, 2008

THE ART OF NOVELIZATION: We were surprised by Jonathan Weisman’s short novel in this morning’s Washington Post. Here’s how he started his top-of-the-front-page news report in the Post’s early edition:

WEISMAN (8/29/08): Sen. Barack Obama arrived at Invesco Field on Thursday night to accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, praising the black leaders who paved his way and asking the American people to seize “a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil and the American promise has been threatened once more, and embrace his vision of change.
We were surprised by that highlighted passage. We’d just spent four nights discussing the ways Obama has dealt with issues of race in this campaign. In the wake of those discussions, we were surprised to read that he arrived at Invesco “praising the black leaders who paved his way.” And sure enough! When we read Weisman’s full report, it looked like he’d pretty much made that part up! There was such no quotation from Obama. In fact, there was no real explanation of what that passage meant.

It’s the science of novelization! Presumably, it sounded good to Weisman (or to some editor)–as it sounds good at cocktail parties attended by a certain class. So Weisman (or an editor) threw it in. No, it doesn’t seem to have occurred. But readers, we ask you: So what?

Last night, we enjoyed, for the second night, the chance to discuss such matters with (young) Loyola College assistant professor Eric Durham. (A 30-year-old Texas Aggie.) Our take: Sounds to us like this energetic guy is puzzling out the frontiers of race in America. And, of course, it sounds to us like Weisman made something up.

Technically accurate: Here’s the sub-headline on Weisman’s piece, running across the top of page one: “Historic Moment Is Called a Testament to Martin Luther King’s Vision/As Democrats Close Convention With a Sense of Unity and Celebration.” That headline, which runs across page one, has the advantage of being technically accurate–though we’d say it’s grossly misleading. (Principal headline: “80,000 Pack Stadium to Hear Obama Accept Nomination.”) In our view, by the way, Dr. King was the great moral giant of the last century.

In its own early edition, the New York Times did a better job of sticking to things which actually happened, and presenting those things in an accurate perspective. Their headline, across the top of page one: “Scorning Bush Years, Obama Takes Aim at McCain.” Each report worked from the pre-released text of Obama’s speech.

THE SCIENCE OF DISTRACTION: We haven’t yet seen Obama’s speech; finishing our four-night stint at Morgan State’s WEAA-FM, we only heard the speech last night. And among the things we learned this week, we’d include this: Listening to a speech can be quite different from actually getting to see it. That said, we awoke this morning to hear Pat Buchanan praising it as the greatest convention speech ever given. (We exaggerate a bit, but only slightly.) But then, despite a few stumbles, Buchanan has been a fair, savvy pundit throughout this White House campaign.

Let’s start with something we didn’t like, then consider Obama’s challenge to the science of distraction.

Listening to Obama, we didn’t like this. To be honest, this just isn’t accurate:

OBAMA (8/28/08): Now, I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans; I just think he doesn't know.

(LAUGHTER)

Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under $5 million a year?
Please. In fact, McCain didn’t “define middle-class as someone making under $5 million a year.” In the past decade, we’ve seen many people misinform average voters; we don’t think Big Dems should follow that lead.A few other parts of Obama’s critique of McCain were less than wonderfully accurate. Our view: At this point, if we have to massage the facts to make our case, there’s something bad wrong about us.

So that would be what we didn’t like. But then, we heard Obama say this, as part of a much longer passage in which he threw down the gauntlet to McCain, saying, in effect, Bring it on:

OBAMA: These are the policies I will pursue. And in the weeks ahead, I look forward to debating them with John McCain.

But what I will not do is suggest that the senator takes his positions for political purposes, because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and each other's patriotism.

(APPLAUSE)

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan play-book. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain.

The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and independents, but they have fought together, and bled together, and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a red America or a blue America; they have served the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

So I've got news for you, John McCain: We all put our country first.
Returning to the “United States” framework which drove his speech at the 2004 convention, Obama rejected the science of distraction. This science has driven assaults on Big Dems for the past twenty years.

It has made a joke of our discourse.

Obama spoke of patriotism, because that’s the form the assault has been taking as it gets marshaled against him. But this science has taken various forms in those past twenty years. For the most part, Democratic Party officials and “career liberal” “leaders” have responded by looking away.

Do you care to remember this science? Let’s go there:

In 1988, the attack against Dukakis involved issues of patriotism–and even alleged mental illness. Good grief! In September 1988, Charles Krauthammer wrote this in the Post: “George Bush's Pledge of Allegiance shtick, designed to impugn Michael Dukakis' patriotism, is a model of campaign cynicism.” Yes, that was written by Krauthammer! (In August 1988, President Reagan jokingly helped drive the rumor that Dukakis had a mental health problem.)

From 1992 on, the attacks against the Clintons would be endless, inexcusable, ugly–and widely ignored by our cowering “leaders.” Good God! By August 1999, two major cable programs would actually bring Gennifer Flowers on the air to discuss–first for a half-hour, then for an hour–the long list of troubling murders in which both Clintons had played a part. We complained about that–and no one else did. To this day, we have never found evidence that any mainstream journalist said a single word about this astounding misconduct–astounding misconduct on the part of Chris Matthews and Sean Hannity.

By that thing, the law was clear: You could say any g*ddamn thing you pleased–as long as you aimed it at Dems.

In 1999, they started on Gore, reinventing him as the world’s biggest liar. They lied in the public’s face for two years–and Bush ended up in the White House. As all this happened, the cowering children at your “liberal journals” piddled in their pants; averted their gaze; and let the endless deceptions roll on. Again this week, Jonathan Alter told us that Gore never said he invented the Internet. He forgot to tell us why he said different in real time, back when it actually mattered.

In 2004, they came for Kerry. After the Swift boat attacks began, Michael Kinsley managed to write one column on the topic–and that piece was whimsical, tongue-in-cheek. (Headline: “The Stiff Drink Vets break their silence.” August 29. 2004. Darlings! So amusing!) We’ll discuss this column in more detail when we continue our current series next week. For the first two parts of the series, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/26/08.

This has been a quick history of a science, a science which has been endlessly tolerated by the pseudo-liberal world. As we all know (but still won’t say), we’re in Iraq because “liberal leaders” agreed to avoid confronting this science. Last night, in his own remarks, Gore discussed this sordid history, in which our side agreed to pretend that it didn’t much matter who won the White House. Last night, at Invesco:

GORE (8/28/08): Eight years ago, some said there was not much difference between the nominees of the two major parties and it didn't really matter who became president...But here we all are in 2008, and I doubt anyone would argue now that election didn't matter. Take it from me. If it had ended differently, we would not be bogged down in Iraq.
That’s what happens when the career liberal world agrees to ignore this grim science.

So last night, Obama threw down the gauntlet. Before the fall campaign began, he offered the public a framework for viewing the campaign’s contents. Some distractions concerning Obama have involved issues that smack of patriotism; last night, he said “the times are too serious” to allow such distractions to prosper. And trust us: Obama had to do this himself. If we had all waited a thousand years, the career liberal world and the Dem Party “leadership” would never have managed to do this. They would never have offered the public this helpful framework Powerful players will try to distract you from things that actually matter.

Essentially, that’s what Obama said. And he said it has to stop.

It doesn’t have to stop, of course, just because we’ve been handed this framework. But now that Obama himself has said this, fiery fellows at your “liberal journals” may decide to repeat what he said. You see, these are the types of fiery players who wait until it’s safe before speaking. They like repeating what others have said–preferably, somebody famous.

What Hawthorne said: When we think of the harm that’s been done by this science, we think of Rappaccini’s Daughter. Mr. Price made us read it in high school. Here’s the way it ends:

HAWTHORNE (1844): Just at that moment, Professor Pietro Baglioni looked forth from the window, and called loudly, in a tone of triumph mixed with horror, to the thunder-stricken man of science: "Rappaccini! Rappaccini! And is this the upshot of your experiment?"
Through the years, that ending has stuck in our heads. Last night, Gore described the upshot of another experiment, in another vile science.

The fruit of poisonous plants: Where was Wikipedia when we needed it? From the site’s very helpful “plot summary:”

WIKIPEDIA: Set in Padua "very long ago," this is the story of a "mad scientist" working in isolation on a completely unethical...experiment involving poisonous plants. A young student of medicine observes from his quarters the scientist's beautiful daughter who is confined to the lush and locked gardens in which the experiment is taking place. Having fallen in love with the lovely Beatrice, Giovanni ignores the warning of his mentor, Professor Baglioni, that Rappaccini is up to no good and he and his work should be shunned...
An unethical experiment? With poisonous plants? Ignoring the call that the work must be shunned? Readers, when have you seen a more accurate portrait of the politics of the past twenty years?

 

 
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Thu, Aug 28 at 07:48 PM
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Daily Howler: Now that the Clintons have given their speeches, let's review Maureen Dowd's prophecies
FACT-CHECKING THE GODS OF THE CARPET! Now that the Clintons have given their speeches, let’s review Maureen Dowd’s prophecies: // link // print // previous //next //
THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 2008

YES, WE WILL: Return to Kinsley, that is. But today, we take ourselves elsewhere.

COME LET US EMBELLISH TOGETHER: This is such classic “New York Timesism” that we thought we should give it a whirl.

In this morning’s Times, Sewell Chan offers a seven-paragraph piece concerning Hillary Clinton’s convention address. Specifically, Chan discusses Clinton’s citation of Harriet Tubman. Because the Times is defiantly inept, the actual text of Chan’s report can’t be found on-line. But today, when we opened our hard-copy Times, we found Chan discussing the possibility that Clinton had offered an “embellishment” of what Tubman said. Here are the first three paragraphs of the report which appeared in our hard-copy paper:

CHAN (8/28/08): About Those Words...

In her speech Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton quoted the abolitionist Harriett Tubman as offering this advice: “If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there’s shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.”

But in interviews on Wednesday, two scholars say there is no evidence that Tubman, right, the organizer of the Underground Railroad, who died in Auburn, N.Y., in 1913, ever said such words. Instead, the passage appears to be a paraphrase of—and perhaps an embellishment upon—a popular expression that has been attributed to Tubman for decades, perhaps starting with children’s books in the mid-20th century.

And neither scholar could recall ever seeing references to “dogs” or “torches” in any of the previous versions of the “keep going” passage.
Poor Chan! Deeply troubled by the matter, he quoted one of the scholars. Once again, this is the version of Chan’s report which appears in our hard-copy Times:

CHAN (continuing directly): Milton C. Sernett, a retired professor of history at Syracuse University, and an authority on African-American history, said he found it “a bit odd” when he heard Mrs. Clinton’s Tubman citation in her speech.

“If she meant it as a paraphrase of something that has been attributed to Harriet Tubman, that might be understandable,” he said. “But if she was meaning to quote Harriet Tubman directly, that puzzled me.”
Sernett was puzzled—but then, before long, the Times had us puzzled too! As we continued with Chan’s report, we wondered why he had quoted Sernett. Chan now quoted a second scholar, who seemed to know the quotation:

CHAN (continuing directly): Kate Clifford Larsen, who teaches history at Simmons College and Wheelock College in Boston, said in an e-mail message that her research determined that the quotation “came from a juvenile account of Tubman’s life sometime in the 1950s.”
From that, you might think the quotation in Clinton’s speech came from a 1950s children’s book. But that may not be what Larsen meant in her e-mail, to judge from this longer report by Chan which the Times posted on-line. As best we can tell, the account which appears in the hard-copy Times may misstate what Larsen meant—but the matter is unclear even in Chan’s longer, on-line post. But then, when’s the last time the New York Times explained anything, no matter how painfully simple?

Long story short: For at least fifty years, a statement, which is perhaps apocryphal, has been attributed to Tubman. In it, Tubman exhorts brave people escaping bondage to “keep going” in various circumstances. Sernett has never seen a version of this (perhaps apocryphal) statement in which Tubman mentions torches or dogs. As best we can tell, Larsen hasn’t seen any such version either—although this matter remains unclear in Chan’s two presentations.

We don’t mention this because of the bungling and lack of clarity, which are assumed at the Times. We mention this because the Times, like other news orgs, has driven this “embellishment” theme for a very long time—as long as Big Dems are involved. (You might say they just “keep going.”) During the twenty months of Campaign 2000, for example, Candidate Gore was endlessly accused of “embellishing,” in a long string of matters the corps had invented. (Al Gore said he invented the Internet!) But in fact, has anyone ever “embellished” more statements—created a longer string of bogus “quotations”—than the Times itself?

Campaign 04: In 2004, Maureen Dowd somehow invented a statement by Kerry—that non-statement statement about “loving NASCAR.” No, Kerry hadn’t actually said it—but Dowd somehow decided he had. In the Times, Kerry was mocked five times for the “statement” he hadn’t made. So who was “embellishing” then?

Campaign 2000: In November 1999, Katherine “Kit” Seelye “accidentally” “misquoted” Gore, vastly affecting Campaign 2000. Completely accidentally, Seelye thought she heard Gore say the following, about the investigation of Love Canal: “I was the one that started it all.” We know, we know—the statement she “heard” wasn’t even grammatical! And in fact, as became clear, it wasn’t what Gore had said. But so what? Although Seelye’s error was immediately obvious, the Times refused to correct for nine days—and the hapless scribe kept insisting that her error hadn’t changed Gore’s meaning. Meanwhile, the paper’s completely accidental misquotation made its way around the world. It started the month-long “Love Canal” flap—a devastating blow to Gore’s candidacy. So who wasembellishing then?

Campaign 2000: In December 1997, Melinda Henneberger accidentally buried what she’d been told by Love Story’s Eric Segal—and her editor accidentally wrote a headline which misrepresented what Segal had said. Presto! Toss in two inane columns by Dowd and one by Frank Rich and you had the ludicrous Love Story flap—a punishing episode used throughout Campaign 2000 to savage Gore’s character. Yup! The Times created that episode too! Who was embellishing then?

Campaign 92: In early 1992, William Safire and Maureen Dowd somehow dreamed a colorful version of something President Bush had supposedly said, thus creating the “splash of coffee” flap. (This was back in the days when such things were still done to Republicans.) For the record, the famous “supermarket scanner” flap also may have been bogus. And wouldn’t you know it? That got started at the New York Times too!

In short, no one embellishes more than the Times. But so what? In the past decade, the Time has just luvved the “embellishment” narrative—as long as it applies to Big Dems. Here are some headlines from Campaign 2000, concerning Big Fat Liar Gore:

October 15, 2000: Tall Tales: Is What We’ve Got Here a Compulsion to Exaggerate? (Melinda Henneberger)

October 11, 2000: His Lyin’, Sighin’ Heart (Maureen Dowd)

October 8, 2000: Gore Admits Being Mistaken But Denies He Exaggerates (Kevin Sack)

October 6, 2000: Tendency to Embellish Fact Snags Gore (Richard Berke)

February 17, 2000: Questions of Veracity Have Long Dogged Gore (Katherine Seelye)
The October pounding sent Bush to the White House. But you have to admire the shamelessness of that February report. Two months earlier, Seelye herself had created a monster flap through her misquotation of Gore—a misquotation she wouldn’t acknowledge. But so what? Two months later, she wrote her latest fact-challenged piece, asking if Gore tells the truth! “The concern about Mr. Gore's truthfulness dates back to the earliest days of his political career,” she thoughtfully mused. (Prepare to groan: “Some are familiar and fairly trivial examples, like Mr. Gore's taking credit for inventing the Internet or being the model for Erich Segal's ‘Love Story.’”) But then, brand-new errors abounded this day—errors committed by Seelye, not Gore. And uh-oh! In the course of all this embellishment by the Times, the key to this treasured narrative appeared: “Questions about Mr. Gore's veracity are compounded by his service to a president whose own honesty has been assailed.” That’s what this narrative has always been about, through all its inane permutations.

Today, the Times nit-picks its way through an historical matter, reviving a familiar old theme in the process. But then, this mighty paper tends to pick-and-choose when it comes to “embellishments.” Gigantic errors of fact get ignored—if they deal with serious policy matters. (Have you seen the Times call scholars to fact-check claims about off-shore drilling?) By way of contrast, writers like Chan are asked to expound when it comes to trivial matters like this—matters involving vile Clinton. Darlings! It was Seelye who started the Cubs-Yankees bull-roar, back in June 1999! Apparently, Seelye was deeply disturbed by the apparent embellishment!

It’s hard to tell from Chan’s report(s) what Tubman did and didn’t say. But you can pretty much count on one thing: The Times will worry about embellishments—as long as the subject is relatively trivial, and as long as the alleged embellishment involves someone named Clinton or Gore.

FACT-CHECKING THE GODS OF THE CARPET: Now that Bill Clinton has given his speech, we thought you might want to recall Maureen Dowd’s prophesies about it. The prophesies were offered two weeks ago. Dowd, a face-down-on-the-living-room-carpet nut, was spreading her standard brand of hysteria about what this wild man would say.

The column in question was called, “Yes, She Can.” Two weeks after it appeared, it still bears this synopsis:

NEW YORK TIMES SYNOPSIS (8/13/08): Hillary Clinton feels no guilt about encouraging her supporters to mess up Barack Obama’s big moment.
Now that Hillary Clinton has spoken, you can see how clairvoyant Dowd was.

What would happen when the Clintons gave their convention addresses? Below, we recall what the voices-in-the-carpet told Dowd about that. Needless to say, she mentioned Hamlet, giving her column a touch of real class. And Obama, of course, was “Barry” again. When Dowd is face-down on the floor, she just can’t stop doing that:

DOWD (8/13/08): Yes, She Can

While Obama was spending three hours watching “The Dark Knight” five time zones away, and going to a fund-raiser featuring “Aloha attire” and Hawaiian pupus, Hillary was busy planning her convention.

You can almost hear her mind whirring: She’s amazed at how easy it was to snatch Denver away from the Obama saps. Like taking candy from a baby, except Beanpole Guy doesn’t eat candy. In just a couple of weeks, Bill and Hill were able to drag No Drama Obama into a swamp of Clinton drama.

Now they’ve made Barry’s convention all about them—their dissatisfaction and revisionism and barely disguised desire to see him fail. Whatever insincere words of support the Clintons muster, their primal scream gets louder: He can’t win! He can’t close the deal! We told you so!

Hillary’s orchestrating a play within the play in Denver. Just as Hamlet used the device to show that his stepfather murdered his father, Hillary will try to show the Democrats they chose the wrong savior.

[...]

Some Democrats wish that Obama had told the Clintons to “get in the box” or get lost if they can’t show more loyalty, rather than giving them back-to-back, prime-time speaking gigs at the convention on Tuesday and Wednesday. Al Gore clipped their wings in 2000, triggering their wrath by squeezing both the president and New York Senate candidate into speaking slots the first night and then ushering them out of L.A.

Wednesday will be all Bill. The networks will rerun his churlish comments from Africa about Obama’s readiness to lead and his South Carolina meltdowns. TV will have more interest in a volcanic ex-president than a genteel veep choice.
In fact, Wednesday night was not “all Bill.” Indeed, as we suggested when this column appeared, Bill Clinton didn’t even speak in the “prime-time” hour last night. But go ahead: Consider what you saw and heard from Clinton and Clinton the past two nights. Ask yourself how reliable Dowd’s sources were—the voices she heard in the carpet.In particular: Did Hillary Clinton “try to show the Democrats they chose the wrong savior?” Second question: Did Dowd call her shot about Bill Clinton’s speech in yesterday’s lunatic column? Of course, she mentioned Beowulf—it adds a touch of class:

DOWD (8/27/08): Bill Clinton is brooding in his hotel suite at Brown Palace Hotel, like the outcast Grendel lurking on the outskirts of the town where young Beowulf lived.

Bill’s pals said he was still gnawing at his many grievances against the younger version of himself he has to praise Wednesday night; the latest one being that the Obama folks, like all winners, wanted control over Bill’s speech, so that he did not give a paean to himself and his economic record, which is what he wanted to do, because he was insane that Obama said a couple critical things about his administration during a heated campaign.

Finally, Obama had to give in on Monday and say he would allow the ex-president to do exactly as he likes, which is what he usually does anyhow.

Obama’s pacification of Bill made his supporters depressed and anxious that he was going to be a weaker candidate than they had hoped and fearful that, as in Obama’s favorite movie, “The Godfather,” every time Democrats try to get away, the Clintons pull them back in.

“People just constantly underestimate the narcissism of beyond narcissism of the Clintons,” said one top Democrat. “They keep thinking they can manage them. I wish Obama would tell them, ‘Shut up. You guys have only cared about yourself for much too long. Get over it.’”
So what do you think? Did Bill Clinton’s speech last night leave Obama “a weaker candidate?” And here’s a question about that last paragraph: Do you think that “top Democrat” really exists? Or was that another voice from the carpet?

Let’s summarize: Dowd has been a screaming nut-case for very long time. Her Clinton-hatred has been all-surpassing—but she also spent lots of time bashing “the Breck Girl” and bashing Gore, who was “so feminized he’s practically lactating.” She started the trashing of Michelle Obama last year, and she has endlessly denigrated her “debutante” husband, the “starlet” who is “legally blonde.” But so what? The Times doesn’t care! Dowd is face-down on the carpet today, listening again to the voices.

Dowd has been a visible nut a long time—and her screaming has endlessly shaped our broken-souled national discourse. Now that you’ve seen the two Clintons speak, we thought it might be worth your time to revisit the lady’s predictions—to appreciate the clairvoyance she gained from her time with the gods of the carpet.

More of this columnist’s visions: Here’s how Dowd finished yesterday’s column. (We’re quoting from our hard-copy Times.) Good lord! This scribe’s never wrong!

DOWD: And Democrats have begun internalizing the criticisms of Hillary and John McCain about Obama’s rock-star prowess, worrying that the Invesco Field extravaganza Thursday, with Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi, will just add to the celebrity cachet that Democrats have somehow been shamed into seeing as a negative.

So that added to the weird mood at the convention, with some Democrats nitpicking Obama’s appearance, after Michelle’s knock-out speech and the fabulously cute girls, with a reassuring white family in a town he couldn’t remember at one point. They wondered why he wasn’t wearing a tie, fearing he looked too young, and second-guessed Michelle’s green dress, wondering if it clashed with the blue stage, and fretted that there wasn’t a speaker Monday night attacking McCain and yelling about gas prices.

“I’m telling you, man,” said one top Democrat, “it’s something about our party, the shtetl mentality.”
There’s that “top Democrat” again! The one who might not quite exist!

In fact, the claim that Springsteen would appear never got past the rumor stage (though it could be true, of course). The idea was dismissed as an “urban legend” in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times. (Delegates had “excitedly gossiped” about it, Tina Daunt wrote. No wonder Dowd took it for fact!) But as usual, Dowd had been talking to “some Democrats” who went unnamed—perhaps because, if they exist, they’re the dumbest Democrats ever. In Dowd’s world, people are constantly fretting about the color of somebody’s dress. Do you think those were real “Democrats?” Or was Dowd just hearing those voices again—the ones that rise up from the carpet?

Final note: Ignore that pandering to Michelle Obama. Last year, when it seemed Obama couldn’t win, Dowd just pounded away at her.

 

 
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Wed, Aug 27 at 06:31 PM
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Daily Howler: Patrick ''Kit'' Healy and his feline liege, Dowd, imagine a better convention
MANHATTAN MEOW MIX! Patrick “Kit” Healy and his feline liege, Dowd, imagine a better convention: // link // print // previous //next //
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2008

TOMORROW: “Taking the Kinsley challenge,” part 3. For parts 1 and 2, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/26/08.

MANHATTAN MEOW MIX: Patrick “Kit” Healy was hiss-spitting hard—at the top of page one, in the great New York Times. If you read deep into his piece, you even got a rough idea of what Hillary Clinton was actually doing at the actual Denver convention—the real convention, the one that doesn’t exist inside Healy’s head. (In paragraph 10, on page A15, for example, Healy reported that Clinton “reaffirm[ed] her support for Mr. Obama in soaring and unconditional language” at a Tuesday luncheon.) But it’s the law! Before Healy can give you mere facts, he must perform his newspaper’s famous meowing. This is how his “news report” started, at the top of today’s page one. In this passage, a simpering tribune to Maureen Dowd penned inane Dowdian musings:

HEALY (8/27/08): With her husband looking on tightly and her supporters watching with tears in their eyes, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton deferred her own dreams on Tuesday night and delivered an emphatic plea at the Democratic National Convention, no matter what ill will lingered.

Mrs. Clinton, who was once certain that she would win the Democratic nomination this year, also took steps on Tuesday—deliberate steps, aides said—to keep the door open to a future bid for the presidency. She rallied supporters in her speech, and, at an earlier event with 3,000 women, described her passion about her own campaign. And her aides limited input on the speech from Obama advisers, while seeking advice from her former strategist, Mark Penn, a loathed figure in the Obama camp.

But the main task for Mrs. Clinton at the convention—reaffirming her support for Mr. Obama in soaring and unconditional language—dominated her 23-minute speech, and she betrayed none of the anger and disappointment that she still feels, friends say, and that has especially haunted her husband.

He crammed “ill will” into paragraph 1, though it’s hard to parse the paragraph’s logic. (He apparently meant this: “no matter what ill will may have lingered in Clinton’s mind.”) But in paragraph two, Healy’s hiss-spitting simply ran wild. As it so often does.

According to Healy—in paragraph 2, at the top of page one— Clinton “took deliberate steps” on Tuesday “to keep the door open to a future bid for the presidency.” But go ahead—reread that utterly ludicrous paragraph! See if you can figure out what those “deliberate steps” might have been! Clinton “rallied supporters in her speech,” Healy obliquely claimed—and she “described her passion about her own campaign” in that earlier luncheon appearance! You’re right! Healy offers no quotations; any attempt to quote Clinton’s statements would have called attention to the sheer absurdity of his framework. And of course, most important of all: Healy worked the “loathed” Mark Penn into paragraph 2 of his copy, although the reference is absurdly gratuitous. What sorts of “deliberate steps” did Clinton take “to keep the door open to a future bid for the presidency?” Of course! She let Penn help her with her speech—a speech in which she “reaffirm[ed] her support for Mr. Obama in soaring and unconditional language.”

You’re right—that makes no sense at all. Unless you’re familiar with the hiss-spitting ways of this pitiful, upper-class newspaper.

In fact, the Times has been a wreck for years, as creeps like Healy keep channeling Dowd, the simpering queen of our upper-class scribblers. Today, Dowd’s own column admirably captures the favor of her paper’s inanity. For years, Dowd has defined this sad, stupid culture. Her own hiss-spitting starts like this, with a small true confession:

DOWD (8/27/08): I’ve been to a lot of conventions, and there’s always something gratifyingly weird that happens.
True confessions! When Dowd attends a convention, she can’t get no “gratification” unless something weird has occurred. And of course, something weird will always occur, as she dumbly notes in that passage. Tens of thousands of people attend these events; there is always some poor soul a creep like Dowd can seize upon. At Denver, she finally found her nut—a nut not unlike her late mother.

On the web, it’s called “nut-picking.” Here’s how it works at the Times:

DOWD: At a meeting of the Democratic women’s caucus Tuesday, 74-year-old Carol Anderson of Vancouver, Wash., a former Hillary volunteer, stood in the back of the room in a Hillary T-shirt and hat signed by Hillary and “Nobama” button and booed every time any of the women speakers mentioned Obama’s name.

She’s voting for McCain and thinks the Democrats put up a minority to stop another minority so that the boys’ club would not be breached. She had nothing nice to say about the Obamas.

What about the kids, I asked her.

“Adorable,” she agreed. Well, I said, Michelle raised them.

“I think her mother does,” Anderson shot back, adding: “I wonder if Michelle would give the Queen one of her little knuckle punches?”
At any convention, you can find some poor soul who will say the things you’re longing to type. Indeed, Dowd played this same sad game in June, when Obama met Clinton in Unity (New Hampshire). Dowd can locate the nut every time. It’s not unlike checking the mirror:

DOWD (6/29/08): Carmella Lewis, with her Hillary T-shirt and Hillary placard, came all the way from Denver to make sure there would be plenty of ambiguity, duality and ferocity in Unity.

Just as Hillary was testing out the unfamiliar familiarity “Barack and me” Friday and talking about “his grace and his grit,” Carmella began loudly booing and waving her sign.

“We want Hillary!” screamed the 57-year-old retired ad saleswoman and Clinton delegate.
Same damn thing! Dowd can find the nut every time—thus getting her gratification. In Unity, she continued her work:

DOWD: Standing between the Sharks and the Jets, David Axelrod took pity on an older friend of Carmella’s who was suffering from aridity in the Unity humidity. The chief Obama strategist fetched a glass of water and brought it to the woman, who was wearing five Hillary buttons.

This amenity did not stop the disunity. Carmella and her friends continued to cry, “Nobama!” “We love you, Hillary!” and “We need Hillary!” as Barack Obama sat onstage on a stool behind his former rival, his finger studiously at his lips.

Carmella was not impressed with all the kissing, laughing and whispering that Hill and Bam were diligently doing for the cameras, so that the moment could produce, as Obama press aide Robert Gibbs put it on “Larry King Live,” “a great picture.”

When it was Obama’s turn to speak, Carmella announced loudly, “I wish I had ear plugs.” Then, as Obama tried to ingratiate himself with the Hillary partisans in the crowd by saying that because of the New York senator, his daughters “can take for granted that women can do anything that the boys can do and do it better and do it in heels,” Carmella put her fingers in her ears.
Carmella Lewis “put her fingers in her ears”—and captured the bulk of Dowd’s column. Lewis may not be wholly well. But that made her perfect for Dowd:

DOWD: As Obama tried to curry favor with Hillary, looking over at her sensible, sturdy shoes and marveling, “I still don’t know how she does it in heels,” Carmella tore up a tissue and stuffed it in her ears.

When Obama pandered with a line about how he wouldn’t “perpetuate a system in which women are paid less for the same work as men,” she put her hands over her tissue-stuffed ears.
As in June, so again this morning. That’s what comprises your national discourse at the fatuous, upper-class Times.

Readers, the inanity of this upper-class cohort can’t be stressed enough. Dowd is wealthy—and deeply inane. And when you have a wealthy, upper-class press corps, inanity will strike them as genius. Let’s recall the unfortunate day when a major Timesman first spotted Dowd’s unfolding brilliance.

Way back in 1999, Gay Jervey embarrassed herself—but provided an insight—when she profiled Dowd for Brill’s Content. Sadly, Gervey is quoting former Timesman Bill Kovach in the passage which follows. Kovach was a Times editor when this event occurred, at the 1984 Dem convention:

JERVEY (6/99): Even as a young reporter Dowd had an eye for telling detail and nuance... “We were on deadline,” Kovach explains. “Mondale and Ferraro had just been nominated...As the candidates stood on the platform, Maureen jumped up and grabbed me and said, ‘Look! Look! There is the story. Mondale doesn’t know whether to hug his wife or Ferraro. He doesn’t know what to do.’ She saw that signaled a new era, with women playing a whole new role in politics and men not quite knowing what to do.” That keen observation...crystallized for Kovach just how clairvoyant a reporter she was.
In the past, we’ve tried to capture the sad stupidity of that story. Mondale didn’t know who to hug—and Dowd was sure that that was “the story.” Inside a fatuous upper-class world, her inanity seemed like clairvoyance.

Amazing, isn’t it? It has now been twenty-four years since Dowd began to bring in the chaff. By now, her acolytes—her litter-bearers—meow, in her manner, at the top of page one. Sadly, she takes her gratification from furtive couplings with random nut-cases. And of course, she’s always ready to say how things “looked” and “seemed:”

DOWD (9/27/08): At a press conference with New York reporters on Monday, Hillary looked as if she were straining at the bit to announce her 2012 exploratory committee.
Trust us: By the dictates of High Pundit Law, Clinton will always “look” that way, as long as this nutcase draws breath.

One sentence Healy won’t type: Patrick Healy plays his readers in much the way other kitty-cats breathe. We’d have to call this “vintage scripting:”

HEALY: Mrs. Clinton remains a divisive figure in American politics, with voters nearly evenly divided over whether they view her favorably or unfavorably. In a New York Times/CBS News poll taken before the convention, 45 percent of all voters said they had a favorable view of Mrs. Clinton and 43 percent held an unfavorable view—among the highest negative ratings for Mrs. Clinton since The Times and CBS News began asking about her in 1992.
We’re not sure what “all voters” means. Presumably, Healy refers to this NYT/CBS poll from July; in the data the Times has posted, Clinton’s numbers are 44 percent favorable, 36 percent unfavorable (question 48, page 18). Are those numbers especially bad for Clinton? As these same data show, Clinton’s numbers in January 1996 were 33 percent favorable, 41 percent unfavorable. In July of that year, her breakdown was 30 percent favorable, 40 percent unfavorable. In July 2000, her numbers were 36-40. In July 2006, her numbers were 32-39. But Healy deceives you as other cats breathe. Wherever he is getting his numbers, he has chosen his language quite carefully here. But then, he’s a dishonest cat.

By the way: Clinton remains a divisive figure is a treasured theme of upper-class pseudo-journalism. But uh-oh! Here are the corresponding figures for the saint, John McCain, in that same New York Times poll from July (question 3, page 4):

John McCain: 31 percent favorable, 32 percent unfavorable
Weird! McCain’s numbers were worse than Clinton’s! But here’s a sentence you’ll never see from the pen of this hiss-spitting huckster:

HEALY WILL NEVER WRITE THIS: John McCain remains a divisive figure in American politics, with voters nearly evenly divided over whether they view him favorably or unfavorably.
You’ll never see that because Healy’s a hack—a huckster who lives to deceive.

In pursuit of high art: Routinely, Dowd works in a reference to the classics. In this way, she obscures the fact that she has just massively wasted your time quoting some random nutcase. From today’s hard-copy column:

DOWD: Bill Clinton is brooding in his hotel suite at Brown Palace Hotel, like the outcast Grendel lurking on the outskirts of the town where young Beowulf lived.
In this way, the Times disguises its simpering madness as a form of quite brilliant High Art.

Rapid transits: All our quotes come from the pieces by Healy and Dowd which appear in our actual hard-copy Times. Some of their brilliant work was changed before it was posted on-line.

 

 
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Daily Howler: We helped defeat Kerry, Kinsley cries. But boo hoo hoo--we couldn't help it
PUNDIT’S LAMENT! We helped defeat Kerry, Kinsley cries. But boo hoo hoo–we couldn’t help it: // link // print // previous //next //
TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2008

ONE PUNDIT’S VAST MORAL GRANDEUR: In the past, we’ve rarely been bored when we chase (our old friend) Marc Steiner’s media ventures around. Last night, our three hours at Morgan State’s WEAA-FM provided no change in that pattern. Our view? You rarely hear discussions of race as frank and varied as last night’s discussions. The equipment in Denver wasn’t working real well. But we thought the discussions were lively.

We’re back tonight at 8 PM, in case your TV set isn’t working. To listen in live, just click here.

Last night, here’s what we heard from that Denver hall:

Ted Kennedy “pledged” that he would live to see Obama become president. He told the hall that Obama represents the next generation of Americans—just as his own brother had. Michelle Obama, riding this wave, said her family was just like yours—and then, she said her husband’s family was just like hers. (“What struck me when I first met Barack was that, even though he had this funny name, and even though he had grown up all the way across the continent in Hawaii, his family was so much like mine.”) His story—his family—might seem somewhat different. But my husband’s world is much like yours.

By the way: We love it when Dems know enough to mention people who work on “the day shift” and “the night shift”—and “military families, who say grace each night with n empty seat at the table.” (On Saturday, Biden specifically cited the “cops” and the “firefighters.”) We love it when Dems know enough to say: We know what real people really do.

But let’s get back to those families. Forget Obama’s Kenyan father; even on his mother’s side, his personal story is very unusual in the American presidential context. No one has ever run for president talking about a decent, lovely, sweet-natured mother who spent years doing doctoral work in anthropology in Indonesian villages. Many American voters have never known anyone remotely like that; this makes it harder for them to connect with the person who tells them this story. In part, that’s why Ted Kennedy said what he said: You remember my brother—and Obama is like him. It’s why Michelle Obama said what she said: You can picture my hard-working parents. My husband is like them too.

How many voters will this draw to Obama? We have no idea. But we thought we might drop a word about Jacob Weisberg’s recent musings on race, offered in this unfortunate post at Slate.

How many votes might Obama lose because of racial voting? There’s no way to answer that question with anything like precision. We plan to finish our ongoing series on the Charles Blow column, though we won’t do so this week (for parts 1-4, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/18/08). But in our view, Weisberg’s attempt to ponder this question is a classic example of High Pseudo-Liberalism, in which a self-impressed pundit goes out of his way to express his own vast moral greatness.

In our view, Weisberg bungles a bunch of data in the course of his high-minded musings. But just imagine the other-worldliness of someone who would say this:

WEISBERG (8/23/08): Many have discoursed on what an Obama victory could mean for America. We would finally be able to see our legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism in the rearview mirror. Our kids would grow up thinking of prejudice as a nonfactor in their lives. The rest of the world would embrace a less fearful and more open post-post-9/11 America. But does it not follow that an Obama defeat would signify the opposite? If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to. In this event, the world's judgment will be severe and inescapable: The United States had its day but, in the end, couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race.
Who on earth could believe such things—that we will “finally be able to see our legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism in the rearview mirror” if Obama wins in November? We’re not sure, but we’d suggest that this person’s views about race were forged on the heights of a pseudo-Olympus, not out of real-world experience. Not out of real-world concerns.

For the most part, Jake Weisberg’s musings help us see the moral greatness of Jake Weisberg. How many votes might Obama lose due to racial voting this fall? That is a very important question. What a shame that high-minded fellows want to pretend to explore it.

Bai reacts:In this New York Times op-ed, Matt Bai goes out of his way to understate the possibility that Obama could lose due to racial voting. In Weisberg’s headline, this campaign is all about race; in Bai’s headline, it isn’t about race at all. Overstatement begets overstatement inside the world of our press.

Georgians and Russians together/next year in Tbilisi: Around the world, decent people try to find their way beyond group thinking—and beyond deeply punishing history. Can Russians and Georgians just get along? We thought this piece in today’s Washington Post was fascinating—profoundly worth reading.

In cosmopolitan Tbilisi, “residents are proud of the city's multiethnic composition,” Tara Bahrampour reports. At one point, she quotes an eloquent, 68-year-old ethnic Russian:

BAHRAMPOUR (8/25/08): "In this mutual fighting and these mutual victims, we feel like we are losing something, and of course we feel sad about that. In Tbilisi, we were always saying, 'I have no nationality—I feel I am a resident of Tbilisi.’”
Elsewhere in Georgia, people do feel they have a nationality; they’re prepared to act on it, sometimes quite badly. Reading Bahrampour’s piece, we thought this: The efforts last night in that Denver hall are played out all over the world.

Special report: Taking the Kinsley challenge!

READ EACH THRILLING INSTALLMENT: Michael Kinsley typed an old saw: Republicans simply play the game better. In part 1 of our current report, we expressed a sardonic reaction to this extremely tired old trope (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/25/08). Today, in part 2, we review Kinsley’s tired old take on the press:

PART 2—PUNDIT’S LAMENT: Michael Kinsley penned a familiar old saw: Republicans play the game better. (For Kinsley’s column, click here.) These tired old tales pretty much type themselves. But here’s the way Kinsley put it:

KINSLEY (8/23/08): With so much going their way in this election, the biggest challenge the Democrats face is simple: The Republicans just play the game of presidential politics so much better. They play it with genius, courage, creativity and utter ruthlessness.
Kinsley forgot to include an obvious fact: It’s remarkably easy to “play the game well” when the press corps is willing to play on your team—for example, when major pundits like Jonathan Alter were willing to type “invented the Internet” and act like such “genius” claims made sense (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/25/08). Today, Alter tells us that Gore never said it. But uh-oh! Back when it actually mattered, he said something quite different.

It’s amazingly easy to play the game well—when mainstream journalists help you that way. Kinsley, in his upper-class aerie, is of course unaware of this part of the game. Although, in fact, he does blame the press. Or at least, he pretends to do so.

Why do Republicans “play the game better?” For his first example, Kinsley cites their work in Campaign 04, in which those courageous, creative players went after John Kerry’s “biggest strength.” Kinsley couldn’t have imagined such a thing, he now sadly confesses:

KINSLEY: Most amazing among the principles of the Republican Way of War is: Don't waste much time and energy probing the enemy's weaknesses. Go directly to his biggest strength. Four years ago, it was easy to imagine any number of ways the GOP might go after John Kerry. You would not have guessed—or at least I would not have guessed—that they could successfully attack his service in Vietnam. Especially when the Republican candidate, George W. Bush, not only had avoided Vietnam by joining the National Guard but had avoided much of the National Guard by skipping the meetings and then had grown up to start an unpopular war that even four years ago seemed to have been going on forever.

Kinsley’s tale is entertaining—but his facts have been massaged. In Campaign 2000, the mainstream press had largely avoided discussing the way Bush avoided that service; four years later, that made it easier to attack Kerry’s record. (It also explains why Dan Rather was still bungling this topic so badly in September 2004.) Beyond that, Kinsley overstates the degree to which the war in Iraq had become unpopular—and he forgets to note the way the press corps had lionized their commander in chief in the wake of 9/11 and Iraq. He fails to say that the Swift boat attacks played into established themes of Democratic fecklessness—themes that hardened further during Campaign 2000, as major players like Alter typed “liar,” “lies” and “lying” about that year’s Dem nominee. (Gore was a big liar, Alter explained, because his mother had been a big liar too. Garbage like that just makes it easier to paint the next Dem the same way.) And Kinsley forgets that there had always been political problems with Kerry’s Vietnam record—problems involving his anti-war protests, problems which had floated around all through Kerry’s career. Michael Kinsley “couldn’t have guessed” that Kerry’s war record could be successfully attacked? When “liberal” scribes are so proudly clueless, is it surprising that Republican strategists have great success at the game?

But Kinsley is a big enough man to place some of the blame on his cohort. To be sure, Republicans play the game with genius and courage—but then too, the media help! In the following murky paragraphs, Kinsley sketches his view of this problem. Here too, he offers a hackneyed view—a very familiar confession:

KINSLEY (continuing directly): A lesser party might have said, "You know what? Let's just leave the whole military-record thing alone." But not the Republicans. They conjured up the Swift boat campaign and managed to turn Kerry's military service into a negative. As is usually the case, the media helped.

They didn't intend to. But journalistic convention makes it hard for reporters to deal with a big, complicated lie. They can't call it a lie, so they end up giving the impression to all but the most obsessive followers of politics that, well, it's complicated, and the Republicans are probably exaggerating, but there must be something there.
According to Kinsley, “the media helped” in the Swift boat attacks—although “they didn’t intend to.” They only helped because their journalistic conventions “ma[de] it hard for reporters to deal with a big, complicated lie.” This is lazy, sloppy work—the kind of work that gets tossed to the rubes from a window high up in Versailles. It’s also a very familiar claim—a lazy claim these slumbering lords could pretty much type in their sleep.

For starters, let’s state the obvious: Clearly, some in the media did intend to “help” the attacks against Kerry. (There’s nothing obviously wrong with that.) For example, some in the media shared the views of those attacking his anti-war conduct; others simply wanted Bush to win, and rolled over for Swift boat claims, even where such claims were most improbable. No one in the American media intended to help the attacks against Kerry? Inside Versailles, Kinsley lets you eat cake when he makes such a silly statement.

But at last, we get to the tired old portrait Kinsley’s class tends to present. Poor scribes! Their very complex “journalistic conventions”made it hard for them to proceed in 2004—made it hard for them to deal with the “complicated lie” aimed at Candidate Kerry. In truth, this is a silly old tale—but Antoinettes never tire of telling it. Tomorrow, we’ll recall what’s wrong with this claim—and we’ll see what Kinsley specifically did in the face of that “lie” he deplores.

Four years earlier, Alter knew how to name-call a liar. Why, he even felt free to tell the world that the candidate’s mother was a big liar too! But isn’t it weird! Something kept Kinsley from doing the same when the “big lie” was now aimed at Kerry! Readers, we’ll pose our question again: Are you surprised that Republicans “play the game well” when nobles of this particular type are charged with defending your interests?

TOMORROW—PART 3: Fops won’t fight

THURSDAY—PART 4: When Kinsley attacked

 

 
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Daily Howler: The GOP plays the game better, he said. Reviewing his work, we saw why
TAKING THE KINSLEY CHALLENGE! The GOP plays the game better, he said. Reviewing his work, we saw why: // link // print // previous //next //
MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2008

THE EXCITEMENT STARTS TONIGHT: Not in Denver—here in Baltimore, where we’ll help broadcast the Democratic convention each night from 8-11 on WEAA, 88.9, “The Voice of the Community”—Morgan State University’s NPR affiliate. Each night, we’ll be in the studio with anchor Anthony McCarthy and other exciting guests. Live from Denver, co-anchoring hearty: Marc Steiner and Lea Gilmore.

Some of you may make the mistake of watching the convention, on TVs. But if you want to listen each night, you know what to do: Just click here. Then hit “Listen live,” right at the top of the page.

Right away, of course, this raises questions about our past connection to one of Morgan’s most famous alumni—Marvin Webster, “The Human Eraser.” Didn’t you play with Webster in the 1971 Baltimore summer league, readers will inevitably ask.

As a matter of fact, we did—and after “Marvelous” conquered his sense of awe at the chance to play with someone of our ability, he settled in for a nice campaign, the inaugural season in the summer program run by hands-on commissioner Wes Unseld. Along with Webster, we featured 6-6 Leon Love, on his way to Tennessee after having set the Baltimore schoolboy single-game rebounding record at Carver. (If memory serves—and we think it does.) How tough was that first summer league? Even with Webster and Love, we finished 8-8. And it certainly wasn’t anything we did that kept us from championship hardware!

Morgan State—great then, great today! We’ve never blamed Marvin for those defeats, and we don’t plan to start now.

From the early days: A nice piece from Sports Illustrated, in the early days, about a very decent guy. And another piece, a few decades later.

Special report: Taking the Kinsley challenge!

PART 1—EASY TO PLAY THE GAME HARD: Can the Democratic Party make its way into the White House? To all intents and purposes, that question starts getting answered tonight.

By way of warning, we’ll caution against over-reliance on that “year of the Democrat” theory. In this, the new Washington Post/ABC poll, 36 percent of registered voters self-identified as Democrats, versus only 26 percent who self-identified as Republicans. (With leaners, the Democratic Party’s advantage was 52-41.) But only 23 percent of registered voters self-identified as liberals, versus 33 percent who said they were conservatives; this conveys a bit of an advantage in the other direction—although, presumably, most of those people are in the “Republican” camp. (In July’s survey, the liberal/conservative split was 19-35.) And then too, there’s the ongoing problem Michael Kinsley discussed, or seemed to discuss, in Saturday’s Washington Post.

Kinsley, the brightest man of the 1980s, is still a major American journalist—a major voice of the career liberal world. At one point in Saturday’s column, he offered a familiar old claim about one way our politics works:

KINSLEY (8/25/08): With so much going their way in this election, the biggest challenge the Democrats face is simple: The Republicans just play the game of presidential politics so much better. They play it with genius, courage, creativity and utter ruthlessness.
“Liberal” journalists like Kinsley have peddled this framework roughly forever—even as their own journalistic conduct makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, it isn’t hard to “play the game better” when a lazy, indolent mainstream press corps is willing to peddle your twaddle for you, no matter how foolish your twaddle may be. Have Republicans played the game hard? It’s quite easy to be hard—with journos like Kinsley around.

How easy has it been, in recent elections, for Republicans to “play the game better?” By way of illustration, consider the high-minded observation Jonathan Alter has just made in Newsweek.

Like Kinlsey, Alter is a major “liberal” journalist. In the current edition of Newsweek, he offers the following high-minded insights. He’s discussing recent “name-calling” aimed at McCain and Obama:

ALTER (9/1/08): There's nothing fair about the process. McCain can be excused for not knowing exactly how many rental properties his wife owns. Al Gore never actually said, "I invented the Internet." (He was talking about his role as a legislator in providing the government funding that allowed it to grow.) In 1988, Michael Dukakis took a ride in a tank. It wasn't his fault that the picture made him look like Snoopy. To his dying day, George H.W. Bush will insist that in 1992 he knew perfectly well what a supermarket scanner was; he was just commenting about some new technology. But the image helped sink him.
Al Gore never said it, Alter now says. But back in real time, when it actually mattered, it was easy for Republicans to drive the campaign which sent George Bush to the White House. You see, here’s what Alter was saying back then, back in real time, when it actually mattered. His column appeared on October 9, 2000, six days after Bush and Gore’s first debate. Much of what Alter wrote in this passage is astounding. In the second paragraph, we’ll highlight the point that’s directly relevant to his new column:

ALTER (10/16/00): Which brings us to Velcro Al, whose every misstatement sticks to him. Several of the reports of his lies have themselves been exaggerated. Take last week. After dozens of trips with FEMA chief James Lee Witt to other disaster sites, it's understandable how he might confuse them, and say he had accompanied Witt to the Texas fires. (In fact, Gore was briefed in Texas by one of Witt's deputies.) And the embellished story about the Sarasota, Fla., student who had to stand in class in her overcrowded school was the result of bad staff work; no one double-checked the original story. If these slips had been made by any other politician, they would have caused barely a peep.

The weird thing is that Gore clearly knew he was under extra scrutiny on this score. His rise in the polls stopped in September right around the time he was lambasted for claiming to have heard a union song as a lullaby that was actually written when he was in his 40s, and for making up a story about his mother-in-law and his dog to illustrate a point about prescription-drug prices. He realized that one of the ways he could lose the first debate was to reinforce the media cliches about "Love Story," Love Canal and inventing the Internet. As Mickey Kaus wrote last week on his Web site kausfiles.com: "The question isn't whether Gore is a liar and whether that's worse than Bush being dim; it's whether Gore's lying shows that, in some respects, he's dim, too.”

This form of dimness may be hardwired into Gore's brain. His biographer, NEWSWEEK's Bill Turque, attributes it to the Washington culture of the 1950s and 1960s, when "public figures could frame their images more or less as they wanted." Gore's mother, for instance, has long claimed that she always cooked little Al's dinner and sat with him while he ate, when, in truth, she and Senator Gore Sr. were usually out.

The danger to Gore is that the fibbing will blossom into a full-blown credibility crisis, giving Bush an opening to cast doubt on everything Gore says...
On October 9, when that column appeared, world history hung in the balance. And guess what? It was easy to be a Republican hit-man—when “liberal” journalists were willing to type pure twaddle like that on your behalf.

Much of that passage is simply astounding. Alter used three potent words quite freely—“liar,” “lies” and “lying.” He even descended to the point of saying that Candidate Gore may be such a big liar because his mother was a big liar too. And of course, he cited gong-show examples of Gore’s “fibbing” and “lying.” In fact, Gore’s “union lullaby” statement was an obvious joke, as even Bob Novak had written, weeks earlier. And no, Gore didn’t “mak[e] up a story about his mother-in-law and his dog.” As best anyone ever showed, Gore’s statements were perfectly accurate. (There was no full transcript or tape of what he had actually said.) Gore’s accurate data, about prescription drug prices, had come from a widely-cited House study. And his statements about his mother-in-law and his dog were accurate too. In fact, Gore’s mother-in-law and his pet dog had been prescribed the same arthritis drug—the drug at issue in the House study. Which part of Gore’s statement was “a story?” Alter forgot to say.

By the way: Who was the source of the ballyhooed claim that Gore lied about those doggy pills? As Newsweek’s Evan Thomas reported a few weeks later, the claim had been funneled to the Boston Globe’s Walter Robinson—by Bush campaign hack Dan Bartlett. For Republicans, it was easy to be “good at the game” when mainstream journalists would peddle your bull-roar for you. It was easy playing hard with these guys at your command.

But we especially mention Alter’s eight-year-old column because of that passage from his new piece. “Al Gore never actually said, ‘I invented the Internet,’” Alter writes this week—eight years after he wrote the column which threw that claim into an unholy stew about Gore’s “fibbing” and “lying.” It was easy to be a Republican then, with people like Alter playing that game. Sorry, but Republicans didn’t have to “play the game with genius, courage, creativity,” as Kinsley pretends. They just had to peddle their bull-roar—and then watch the Alters recite.

In Saturday’s column, Kinsley claims that Republicans have played the game better down through the years. We have a sardonic view of that hoary old claim, so we made an instant decision: We decided to take the Kinsley Challenge! We decided to look at Kinsley’s work in the elections he cites in his column. When we did, we saw why it has been easy for Republicans to “play the game well.”

TOMORROW—PART 2: Kinsley discusses the media

Alter’s full-blown crisis: Of course, here’s the most ludicrous sentence from that old Alter column. It was easy being hard—when “journalists” were phoning it in from Mars:

ALTER (10/16/00): The danger to Gore is that the fibbing will blossom into a full-blown credibility crisis, giving Bush an opening to cast doubt on everything Gore says...
In fact, the alleged “fibbing” had “blossom[ed] into a full-blown credibility crisis” for Gore nineteen months earlier, in March 1999. That’s when “invented the Internet” started, becoming an instant point of ridicule all through the mainstream “press.” This very week, writing bravely in Newsweek, a Kinsley type tells us that Gore never said it. We thought you should see what he said in real time—when he and his colleagues made it so easy for GOP types to play hard.

 

 
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Daily Howler: Your journalism just got dumber. In the process, the chimps have switched sides
PLANET OF THE CHIMPS! Your journalism just got dumber. In the process, the chimps have switched sides: // link // print // previous //next //
FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 2008

GEORGE F. WILL, SLOW LEARNER: Is there any other subject where so many know-nothings pose as experts? Yesterday, George F. Will displayed his vast brilliance about the state of elementary ed. In the following part of his column, Will is discussing Benjamin Chavis, who runs a well-known public charter school in Oakland:

WILL (8/21/08): He and other practitioners of the new paternalism—once upon a time, schooling was understood as democracy's permissible, indeed obligatory, paternalism—are proving that cultural pessimists are mistaken: We know how to close the achievement gap that often separates minorities from whites before kindergarten and widens through high school. A growing cohort of people possess the pedagogic skills to make "no excuses" schools flourish.
That highlighted statement is simply astounding. And trust us: Will knows as much about this subject as you know about the space shuttle program. We know how to close the achievement gap! It’s amazingly easy to say—and many hustlers now constantly say it. For all we know, Will may be channeling Wendy Kopp, well-known biggest hack in the land.

Sorry, but no—we don’t “know how to close the achievement gap” at this time. When people parade about saying we do, they commit an unfortunate act. But then, every dumb-ass on earth seems to say this now—often on the flimsiest “evidence.” In large part, Will seems to be basing his uplifting claim on the high test scores at Chavis’ school (the misleadingly-named American Indian Public Charter School, which kids of all races and ethnicities). Many kids have achieved great success at the school. But does that mean we know how to achieve such success as a general matter? Will seems willing to say it does. But right at the start of his column, this “know-nothing know-it-all” dumbly describes one part of this school’s success:

WILL: Seated at a solitary desk in the hall outside a classroom, the slender 13-year-old boy with a smile like a sunrise earnestly does remedial algebra, assisted by a paid tutor. She, too, is 13. Both wear the uniform—white polo shirt, khaki slacks—of a school that has not yet admitted the boy. It will, because he refuses to go away.

The son of Indian immigrants from Mexico, the boy decided he is going to be a doctor, heard about the American Indian Public Charter School here and started showing up. Ben Chavis, AIPCS's benevolent dictator, told the boy that although he was doing well at school, he was not up to the rigors of AIPCS, which is decorated with photographs of the many students it has sent to the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. So the boy asked, what must I do?
We often deride “slow-learner” students. But could anyone show less capacity for learning than George F. Will, right in this piece?

Why does Chavis’ school send so many students to Hopkins? Duh. In part, because it picks and chooses the kids who attend! The 13-year-old whom Will describes is already “doing well at school,” we seem to be told. Not only that: He’s so motivated that he’s paying another student to tutor him—and he’s already purchased the uniform of a school which won’t let him in! We’ll applaud that student, just as Will does. But if Will would only submit to paid tutoring, even if he could probably see that public schools, as a general matter, don’t select their students this way. The average school must accept all the kids who arrive—not just the brightest, most determined students, the ones who “refuse to go away.”

Friends, for just $5 a month, you can provides books and equipment for Will. Won’t you consider making that small donation to give him the help he deserves?

PLANET OF THE CHIMPS: A massive change in our political journalism can be seen in this morning’s Washington Post. “Houses Add Up to A Snag for McCain,”says the headline on Jonathan Weisman’s report, right at the top of the paper’s front page. In recent weeks, Weisman’s work has been grindingly bad—and it’s bad again today. Instantly, Weisman starts playing the chimp—and displaying that change in our journalism. This is his opening paragraph:

WEISMAN (8/22/08): Sen. John McCain’s inability to recall the number of homes he owns during an interview yesterday jeopardized his campaign's carefully constructed strategy to frame Democratic rival Barack Obama as an out-of-touch elitist and inspired a round of attacks that once again ratcheted up the negative tone of the race for the White House.
Weisman may be right about the jeopardy to McCain’s strategy. But is he right on his most basic facts? With his first breath, Weisman asserts that McCain couldn’t “recall” the number of homes he owns. Yes, that’s the script—and Weisman types it. But for ourselves, we hear nothing in McCain’s interview statement at all which demonstrates that he couldn’t “recall.” (It may be that he didn’t want to discuss such tangential matters with Mike Allen, one of our most useless journalists.) And by the way—McCain’s interview happened on Wednesday, not “yesterday.” That error is trivial, of course—unlike other mistakes in this piece. But the error reminds us of a fact which has been clear for a very long time: Chimps like Weisman can barely gargle without getting the simplest facts wrong.

Beyond that: Scribes like Weisman can barely gargle without repeating Approved Standard Narratives. In today’s report, Weisman has virtually married a narrative—and another part of the new standard narrative gets recited a bit later on. Truly, what follows is gruesome. But as of today, it’s being pimped all over the mainstream press:

WEISMAN: Obama campaign aides and Democratic National Committee researchers had been sitting on film clips, tax records, photos and other information on McCain's real estate holdings for weeks. The now-defunct Progressive Media USA, a liberal activist group, had done polling on the potential line of attack and concluded that it alone would have little impact against McCain, whose "brand" as a maverick Republican has proved difficult to crack.

But Obama aides were collecting documentation of separate incidents they wanted to string together as a narrative: McCain economic adviser Phil Gramm’s comment to the Washington Times that the United States was "a nation of whiners" stuck in a "mental recession" and overstating the current economic woes; a McCain assertion that the economy is fundamentally strong; and the Arizonan's comment Saturday at the Saddleback Civil Forum in California defining the threshold for being rich as an income of $5 million a year.

When McCain made his comment to Politico, Obama communications director Dan Pfeiffer flashed the green light.
Let’s give Weisman a little credit; in this passage, he correctly said that the Saddleback forum happened on “Saturday.” But in this passage, Weisman asserts, without qualification, that McCain made a peculiar statement about “the threshold for being rich”—failing to note, as others have done, that the statement was made as a joke. In today’s Post, even Gene Robinson made himself be semi-truthful:

ROBINSON: I don't begrudge McCain his multiple residences or his $520 Ferragamo shoes. I understand that he was just being flippant and unresponsive when he said at the Saddleback forum last weekend that being rich meant having an income of at least $5 million a year. But it's a stretch, to say the least, for McCain to portray himself as a Regular Joe while painting Barack Obama as some kind of jet-set celebrity.
Robinson couldn’t quite make himself tell the truth—but even he felt required to say that McCain was “just being flippant.” But in Weisman’s prose, a joke becomes a straightforward assertion. And this brings us to a basic rule for those who would understand their press corps: If you want to know who the press corps is hunting, just see which candidate’s jokes they transform into straight assertions.

We know, we know! Some of us are such chimps ourselves that we want to believe that McCain’s wasn’t joking. Olbermann, our side’s uber-chimp, has been flinging this poo this whole week. (Along with so much more. Good God, that man is a chimp!) But at any rate, fairly or not, our longings are being rewarded this week: The press corps has widely acted as if McCain’s joke was a serious statement. It’s as we told you long ago: This is not a campaign in which the press corps will be group-pimping the Republican candidate. And that represents a major change in recent political journalism.

We won’t attempt to capture all the chimp-like work on display today—although if you like seeing poo flung about, we’ll recommend Josh Marshall’s efforts. (Or just go read Olbermann’s transcripts.) Instead, we’ll offer a few basic thoughts about the shape of this major change in the press corps’ conduct:

The power of ridicule: In mainstream press treatment of this story, McCain is being subjected to a type of ridicule which has only been aimed at major Democrats in the Clinton/Gore/Clinton era. (Dan Quayle was the last Big Republican treated this way—and that began in 1988.) This kind of group ridicule, if widely sustained, is very difficult for a candidate to address. Later, press spokesmen like Michelle Cottle—our own era’s “Cokie-in-training”—will announce that this just shows how ineptly the hopeful campaigned. Why couldn’t he make us stop repeating those ludicrous statements?

The reason for the ridicule: As a general matter, the press corps aims this type of ridicule at hopefuls it hopes to defeat.

Previously disappeared: Many voters will be surprised to learn that McCain is very wealthy. They’ll be surprised for an obvious reason: This basic part of McCain’s biography was widely suppressed by the mainstream press in the past dozen years, when they were pimping his vast moral greatness and tearing down Major Dems. (Your “liberal journals” also stared into air. That seems to be why they’re there.) To state the obvious, McCain’s wealth should have been part of the story long ago; by normal standards, it’s a basic part of political bio. This hasn’t been part of the public record because hacks and stooges—let’s mention the gruesome Gene Robinson again—buried this matter in the years when they were destroying Big Dems like Al Gore. (Who grew up in a fancy hotel—at the Ritz!—according to one of their scripted group lies.) Quite routinely, wealth has been used to slime Big Dems—even wealth that didn’t exist. For that reason, McCain’s real wealth had to be disappeared.

Why they’ve flipped: As we’ve told you, major elements of the mainstream press have lost patience with the Endless War Culture. Other elements of the press genuinely favor Obama; almost surely, Chris Matthews wasn’t kidding about that “thrill up the leg.” Under these stresses, the group nervous breakdown of the Clinton/Gore/Clinton era has, in many ways, run its course. And remember: These life-forms are thoroughly chimp-like. They react in one way to those they disfavor—by flinging poo all around. It would be too much for them to discuss McCain’s errors, flips, contradictions.

In our view, it has been a bit embarrassing this week—watching Obama campaign against McCain’s joke. In our view, you suspect a candidate has little to say when he campaigns in that fashion. But as the press corps starts pimping Obama’s new narrative, you see the shape of an important new fact: Major elements of the mainstream press are, at long last, switching sides. It has been a very long time since they flung poo to the right.

“McCain couldn’t remember how many houses he owns!” It isn’t clear that this is accurate, and the narrative it serves is largely inane. But you live on a planet of chimps; it’s driven by people who just can’t get serious. This morning, poo is being flung in a new direction. Your discourse got even dumber this week. And good lord! Some chimps have switched sides!

Spinning bio, Saint McCain style: Candidate bio was endlessly spun during McCain’s first run for the White House. His massive wealth was rarely mentioned; so too, journalists rarely discussed the seamier side of his conduct in the years when he divorced his first wife and married Cindy McCain. Understandably, voters thought the Keating Five was a jazz group McCain had once played in—no doubt during the glory years, when he’d chased all those stripper ex-girl friends around. And something else got disappeared: You almost never heard that McCain grew up as part of insider Washington, the same-name son of a father who was a powerful Washington political player. You almost never heard that he’d gone to an elite Washington prep school. There’s nothing “wrong” with any of that—but you didn’t hear them for an obvious reason. You see, the press corps was using that particular poo to punish the deeply vile Candidate Gore. The fact that the very same script applied to McCain simply couldn’t be mentioned.

POSTSCRIPT—DUMBEST QUESTION: We decided to skip this topic at the start of the week. But now that McCain’s “$5 million” statement has become a key part of the discourse, let’s go back and take a look at the dumbest question Rick Warren asked during the Saddleback summit.

Unsurprisingly, the chimps failed to notice. On Sunday’s This Week, E, J. Dionne emoted about Warren’s vast brilliance. Who won the Battle of Saddleback? This was his odd reply:

DIONNE (8/17/08): Rick Warren wins. That was an extraordinary debate. If you only had two hours of information, that wouldn't be a bad thing to go on if that's all you could cast your vote. And he really dispelled some people's stereotypes about evangelicals.
Is the real Dionne in a holding cell, locked away with the real Josh Marshall? We thought Warren’s performance was reasonably OK; he was completely polite to both candidates, and he seemed sincere. But why gush over someone who asked so many truly bad questions? Many of Warren’s questions were bad—but this question, as it was posed to Obama, was perhaps the worst of the evening:

WARREN (8/16/08): OK. Taxes! This is a real simple question. Define rich. [Laughter ] I mean, give me a number. Is it $50,000, $100,000, 200,000? Everybody keeps talking about who we're going to tax. How can you define that?
Actually, that’s a “real simple minded”question—one that’s utterly foolish. Warren may have been sincere in asking, but it plays to a potent, pseudo-conservative framework: Democrats want to tax the rich—but they can’t even define it! Talk hosts constantly pimp this framework—and many listeners think it makes sense. Warren’s presentation was unique because, perhaps for the first time ever, the question was posed to a Republican as well as a Democrat. This pointless framework is normally reserved for use against Democrats only.

Duh. There is no number an intelligent person can cite which would sensibly define a person as “rich.” There is no cut-off point! Any such designation is arbitrary—and this utterly empty exercise plays no role in the formulation of actual tax policy. Obama knows that, and McCain know it too. (We’ll guess that Warren, an amateur, doesn’t.) But this is a dangerous framework for Dems. As soon as a Democrat answers this silly question, he is left open to a wide array of well-entrenched, familiar charges. Inevitably, this framework takes Dems into the realm of “class warfare.”

At any rate, here’s how Obama responded to this pointless and dangerous framework. Like McCain, he told a joke. It’s a way to be polite as you slip past a moderator’s nonsense:

OBAMA: You know, if you've got book sales of $25 million, then you qualify—

[LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE]

WARREN: No, I'm not asking about me!

OBAMA: Look, the—here's how I think about it. Here's how I think about it. And this is reflected in my tax plan. If you are making $150,000 a year or less, as a family, then you're middle-class—or you may be poor. But $150,000 down, you're basically middle-class, obviously depends on the region where you're living.

WARREN: In this region, you're poor.

OBAMA: Yes, well—

[LAUGHTER]

OBAMA: Depending. I don't know what housing practices are going. I would argue that if you're making more than $250,000, then you're in the top three percent, four percent of this country, you're doing well.Now, these things are all relative. And I'm not suggesting that everybody is making over 250,000 is living on easy street. But the question that I think we have to ask ourselves is, if we believe in good schools, if we believe in good roads, if we want to make sure that kids can go to college, if we don't want to leave a mountain of debt for the next generation, then we've got to pay for these things. They don't come for free, and it is irresponsible—

[APPLAUSE]

I believe it is irresponsible inter-generationally for us to invest, or for us to spend $10 billion a month on a war, and not have a way of paying for it.

[APPLAUSE]

That, I think, is unacceptable. So nobody likes to pay taxes. I haven't sold 25 million books but I've been selling some books lately, and so I write a pretty big check to Uncle Sam. Nobody likes it. What I can say is under the approach I'm taking, if you make $150,000 or less, you will see a tax cut. If you're making $250,000 a year or more, you're going to see a modest increase. What I'm trying to do is create a sense of balance, and fairness in our tax code. One thing I think we can all agree on, is that it should be simpler so that you don't have all these loopholes and big stacks of stuff that you've got to comb through, which wastes a huge amount of money and allows special interests to take advantage of things that ordinary people cannot take advantage of.

WARREN: Right. OK. We'll be right back.
Eventually, Obama discussed his actual tax proposals—while stressing that nobody likes paying taxes. At first, though, he came perilously close to “answering” Warren’s question—so close that some people later claimed, inaccurately, that he’d said that you’re “rich” if you make more than $250,000. You’ll notice that he didn’t say that—but he came (a bit too) close. Please note: Obama didn’t say he wanted to tax “the rich.” He said that somebody had to pay for our schools and our roads, and that he wanted to be fair about it.

Obama started with a joke, then sensibly moved to a discussion of his actual tax proposals. But there is no sensible way to answer Warren’s actual question. Any designation is arbitrary—and any number a pol might offer exposes him to pointless complaints. Most likely, McCain understood this basic fact too. What follows is his full Q-and-A. His answer includes the obvious joke which is now being treated as serious. This morning, Weisman—an endless hack—pretends McCain’s joke was a statement:

WARREN: OK, on taxes, define "rich." Everybody talks about taxing the rich, but not the poor, the middle class. At what point—give me a number, give me a specific number—where do you move from middle class to rich? Is it $100,000, is it $50,000, is it $200,000? How does anybody know if we don't know what the standards are?

MCCAIN: Some of the richest people I've ever known in my life are the most unhappy. I think that rich should be defined by a home, a good job, an education and the ability to hand to our children a more prosperous and safer world than the one that we inherited. I don't want to take any money from the rich—I want everybody to get rich.

(LAUGHTER)

I don't believe in class warfare or re-distribution of the wealth. But I can tell you, for example, there are small businessmen and women who are working 16 hours a day, seven days a week that some people would classify as—quote—"rich," my friends, and want to raise their taxes and want to raise their payroll taxes.

Let's have—keep taxes low. Let's give every family in America a $7,000 tax credit for every child they have. Let's give them a $5,000 refundable tax credit to go out and get the health insurance of their choice. Let's not have the government take over the health care system in America.

(APPLAUSE)

So, I think if you are just talking about income, how about $5 million?
(LAUGHTER)

But seriously, I don't think you can—I don't think seriously that—the point is that I'm trying to make here, seriously—and I'm sure that comment will be distorted. But the point is that we want to keep people's taxes low and increase revenues.

And, my friend, it was not taxes that mattered in America in the last several years. It was spending. Spending got completely out of control. We spent money in way that mortgaged our kids' futures.

(APPLAUSE)

My friends, we spent $3 million of your money to study the DNA of bears in Montana. Now I don't know if that was a paternity issue or a criminal issue—

(LAUGHTER)

But the point is, it was $3 million of your money. It was your money. And, you know, we laugh about it, but we cry—and we should cry because the Congress is supposed to be careful stewards of your tax dollars. So what did they just do in the middle of an energy crisis when in California we are paying $4 a gallon for gas? Went on vacation for five weeks. I guarantee you, two things they never miss—a pay raise and a vacation—and we should stop that and call them back and not raise your taxes. We should not and cannot raise taxes in tough economic times.

So, it doesn't matter really what my definition of "rich" is because I don't want to raise anybody's taxes. I really don't. In fact, I want to give working Americans a better shot at having a better life, and we all know the challenges, my friends, if I could be serious. Americans tonight in California and all over America are sitting at the kitchen table—recently and suddenly lost a job, can't afford to stay in their home, education for their kids, affordable health care. These are tough problems. These are tough problems. You talk to them every day—

WARREN: All the time.

MCCAIN: Every day. My friends, we've got to give them hope and confidence in the future. That's what we need to give them, and I can inspire them. I can lead, and I know that our best days are ahead of us.

(APPLAUSE)

WARREN: All right. Thank you.
Warren’s framing of the question was even dumber this time around. (“Everybody talks about taxing the rich?” No pol ever does, unless he’s accusing opponents.) Like Obama, McCain slid away from Warren’s request for a number, turning to a discussion of his actual tax proposals. And along the way, he told a joke, in which he said that “rich” would be an income of $5 million a year. After a very large laugh from the audience—it’s absurd to claim that this wasn’t a joke—he then said: “But seriously.” And then, he made an accurate prediction: “I’m sure that comment will be distorted.” Perhaps he knew the day when Weisman would clown and cavort.

Warren asked a very dumb question. No skillful pol would ever give a number in response to this query. (Other questions were quite bad too.) But the next morning, E. J. Dionne was praising Warren for his very brilliant questioning. And on Monday, Obama began campaigning hard—against his opponent’s joke.

Campaigning that way can work quite well—if the chimps are on your side. This morning, Weisman’s poo-flinging “news report” signals a change in our journalism.

We are all Sean Hannity now: Good God. What a poo-king Olbermann is! We are all Sean Hannity now as we listen to his screeching and watch him presenting his back-side. We’ll give some examples on Monday.

 

Here's the start of Feedwhip's latest snapshot

taken Fri, Aug 29 at 08:01 PM


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Daily Howler: This must stop, Obama said, describing the past twenty years[image: Daily Howler logo] THE SCIENCE OF DISTRACTION! This must stop, Obama said, describing the past twenty years: // link // print // previous //next // FRIDAY, AUGUST 29, 2008
THE ART OF NOVELIZATION: We were surprised by Jonathan Weisman’s short novel in this morning’s Washington Post. Here’s how he started his top-of-the-front-page news report in the Post’s early edition:
WEISMAN (8/29/08): Sen. Barack Obama arrived at Invesco Field on Thursday night to accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, praising the black leaders who paved his way and asking the American people to seize “a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil and the American promise has been threatened once more, and embrace his vision of change.
We were sur