Gene Lyons: One Of America's Very Best Journalists Has His Weekly Say!
Let mud bath begin
Gene Lyons
Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004
With the 2004 presidential election already turning nasty, let’s get one thing straight. Before it’s anything else, an American presidential campaign is a TV show. As such, it’s governed by the same immutable laws of bad taste and shameless pandering that have given us Jerry Springer, professional wrestling, "The 700 Club," " The McLaughlin Group" and the "Bill & Monica Show." Hey, if there were no other reasons to love the
U.S. A., it must be the funniest country on Earth. A generation after Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders started bumping and grinding like Las Vegas hookers, five years since the "Starr Report’s" bureaucratic porn, and half the country gets the vapors over a Super Bowl hoochie-coochie show?
Please.
But back to the presidential campaign. Like the Super Bowl, the quadrennial contest to select the "leader of the free world" offers vicarious excitement and melodrama to millions who couldn’t find Iraq on a world map or identify their U.S. senators at gunpoint. As such, it’s conducted in crudely symbolic terms: good guys vs. bad guys, heroes vs. hypocrites.
Although most voters aren’t tuned in yet, the Democrats are getting the better of the symbolic contest so far. Last week, three well-choreographed efforts to smear presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry fell apart while the White House was still struggling to prove that President Bush showed up for National Guard duty 30 years ago instead of taking a playboy’s leave of absence.
Internet gossipmonger Matt Drudge began the best-publicized smear on Thursday, Feb. 12. According to Drudge, whose fact-free "reporting" gets cited by journalists who ought to know better, Kerry had an "intern" problem like Bill Clinton’s.
Supposedly, retired Gen. Wesley Clark said so in off-the-record remarks to reporters, although that part seems as phony as the rest to me. Drudge named several big-time news organizations as busy tracking down a 27-year old woman who’d allegedly
"fled" to Africa as part of an attempted coverup by the Massachusetts senator.
Nobody Drudge named ran the story, but right-wing radio talk stars Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity went nuts over it. So did the Web sites of the National Review and The Wall Street Journal editorial page. British newspapers owned by FOX News mogul Rupert Murdoch contributed spellbinding accounts of the fugitive intern hiding inside a walled compound in Kenya.
Internet rivals Slate and Salon weighed in on opposite sides of the rumor: Slate ran a satirical piece pretending to deplore the "scandal" while wallowing in its seamy details, and a bizarre column by Mickey Kaus dredging up a tabloid article about a "shapely, 22-year-old blonde" dropping off her resume at Kerry’s Boston home. In Salon, Joe Conason criticized the conservative media’s propensity for bed-sheet sniffing and keyhole peeking "whenever Republican poll numbers sink into the red
zone."
By Friday morning, Kerry assured radio host Don Imus that the rumor was categorically false, which gave the New York tabloids, ABC News, CNN, the wire services and The New York Times an excuse to report exactly what it was the Democratic front-runner was denying.
On Monday, however, it all went up in smoke. The supposed intern, actually a one-time Associated Press reporter, gave her former employers a statement from her fiance's former home in Kenya. "For the last several days, I have seen Internet and tabloid rumors relating to me and Senator John Kerry," Alexandra Polier said. "Because these stories were false, I assumed the media would ignore them. It seems that efforts to peddle these lies continue, so I feel compelled to address
them. I have never had a relationship with Senator Kerry, and the rumors in the press are completely false. Whoever is spreading these rumors and allegations does not know me, but should know the pain they have caused me and my family."
From their home in Pennsylvania, her parents added that they appreciated Kerry’s handling of the incident and supported him for president. Shameless as ever, Drudge posted a churlish item blaming the victim: "Polier’s flippant remarks and flirtatious manner, according to friends, fueled the intrigue."
Elsewhere, a faked photograph of Kerry and Jane Fonda sharing the podium
at an anti-Vietnam war rally was circulating on the Internet, while a Republican National Committee ad calling Kerry a hypocrite for accepting "special-interest" money got short-circuited by news stories showing that the Bush campaign has taken in between five and 28 times as much dough, depending on the special interest in question. Meanwhile, the White House’s efforts to prove that President Playboy showed up for National Guard duty during 1972-73 had taken on the quality of Elvis sightings. "Witness" stories conflicted with the scant documentary evidence, and the press corps showed signs of turning surly. Whether Bush went AWOL is a purely symbolic issue after 30 years. But during an election campaign, that’s precisely the point.
• Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient
of the National Magazine Award.
Link...
Gene Lyons
Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004
With the 2004 presidential election already turning nasty, let’s get one thing straight. Before it’s anything else, an American presidential campaign is a TV show. As such, it’s governed by the same immutable laws of bad taste and shameless pandering that have given us Jerry Springer, professional wrestling, "The 700 Club," " The McLaughlin Group" and the "Bill & Monica Show." Hey, if there were no other reasons to love the
U.S. A., it must be the funniest country on Earth. A generation after Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders started bumping and grinding like Las Vegas hookers, five years since the "Starr Report’s" bureaucratic porn, and half the country gets the vapors over a Super Bowl hoochie-coochie show?
Please.
But back to the presidential campaign. Like the Super Bowl, the quadrennial contest to select the "leader of the free world" offers vicarious excitement and melodrama to millions who couldn’t find Iraq on a world map or identify their U.S. senators at gunpoint. As such, it’s conducted in crudely symbolic terms: good guys vs. bad guys, heroes vs. hypocrites.
Although most voters aren’t tuned in yet, the Democrats are getting the better of the symbolic contest so far. Last week, three well-choreographed efforts to smear presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry fell apart while the White House was still struggling to prove that President Bush showed up for National Guard duty 30 years ago instead of taking a playboy’s leave of absence.
Internet gossipmonger Matt Drudge began the best-publicized smear on Thursday, Feb. 12. According to Drudge, whose fact-free "reporting" gets cited by journalists who ought to know better, Kerry had an "intern" problem like Bill Clinton’s.
Supposedly, retired Gen. Wesley Clark said so in off-the-record remarks to reporters, although that part seems as phony as the rest to me. Drudge named several big-time news organizations as busy tracking down a 27-year old woman who’d allegedly
"fled" to Africa as part of an attempted coverup by the Massachusetts senator.
Nobody Drudge named ran the story, but right-wing radio talk stars Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity went nuts over it. So did the Web sites of the National Review and The Wall Street Journal editorial page. British newspapers owned by FOX News mogul Rupert Murdoch contributed spellbinding accounts of the fugitive intern hiding inside a walled compound in Kenya.
Internet rivals Slate and Salon weighed in on opposite sides of the rumor: Slate ran a satirical piece pretending to deplore the "scandal" while wallowing in its seamy details, and a bizarre column by Mickey Kaus dredging up a tabloid article about a "shapely, 22-year-old blonde" dropping off her resume at Kerry’s Boston home. In Salon, Joe Conason criticized the conservative media’s propensity for bed-sheet sniffing and keyhole peeking "whenever Republican poll numbers sink into the red
zone."
By Friday morning, Kerry assured radio host Don Imus that the rumor was categorically false, which gave the New York tabloids, ABC News, CNN, the wire services and The New York Times an excuse to report exactly what it was the Democratic front-runner was denying.
On Monday, however, it all went up in smoke. The supposed intern, actually a one-time Associated Press reporter, gave her former employers a statement from her fiance's former home in Kenya. "For the last several days, I have seen Internet and tabloid rumors relating to me and Senator John Kerry," Alexandra Polier said. "Because these stories were false, I assumed the media would ignore them. It seems that efforts to peddle these lies continue, so I feel compelled to address
them. I have never had a relationship with Senator Kerry, and the rumors in the press are completely false. Whoever is spreading these rumors and allegations does not know me, but should know the pain they have caused me and my family."
From their home in Pennsylvania, her parents added that they appreciated Kerry’s handling of the incident and supported him for president. Shameless as ever, Drudge posted a churlish item blaming the victim: "Polier’s flippant remarks and flirtatious manner, according to friends, fueled the intrigue."
Elsewhere, a faked photograph of Kerry and Jane Fonda sharing the podium
at an anti-Vietnam war rally was circulating on the Internet, while a Republican National Committee ad calling Kerry a hypocrite for accepting "special-interest" money got short-circuited by news stories showing that the Bush campaign has taken in between five and 28 times as much dough, depending on the special interest in question. Meanwhile, the White House’s efforts to prove that President Playboy showed up for National Guard duty during 1972-73 had taken on the quality of Elvis sightings. "Witness" stories conflicted with the scant documentary evidence, and the press corps showed signs of turning surly. Whether Bush went AWOL is a purely symbolic issue after 30 years. But during an election campaign, that’s precisely the point.
• Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient
of the National Magazine Award.
Link...
posted by A. J. Franklin @ 13:05
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