BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
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For information on Dan Kennedy's book, Little People: Learning to
See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Thursday, December 11, 2003
Koppel's disgraceful
performance. Ted Koppel decided that Tuesday night's Democratic
presidential debate was about him and his fellow members of the elite
media. I've got a piece
in today's Boston Phoenix about Koppel's sneering, dismissive
focus on the Al Gore endorsement, polls, and fundraising.
Koppel bloviated for a half-hour
asking every candidate but Howard Dean questions that were variations
on the same theme: Why don't you get out of the race right
now?
You should read William Saletan's
analysis
in Slate. Here's his best line:
These were the last 90
debating minutes of the year - a crucial opportunity for every
candidate other than Dean - and Koppel wasted 30 of those minutes
on questions barely worthy of aides in bars.
Bob Somerby at the Daily
Howler promises to weigh in
on Koppel's disgraceful performance later today.
Incredibly, there is at least one
reporter out there who thinks the real problem was that the
candidates were rude to Koppel. You can't make this stuff up. Sam
Pfeifle, the managing editor of the Portland Phoenix, directed
me to this exchange
at yesterday's White House press briefing, conducted by press
secretary Scott McClellan:
Q: Do you remember any
incident where the President has ever treated any member of the
media as insultingly as those Democrat presidential candidates did
to Ted Koppel last night?
McClellan: Didn't see the
debate, Les, so -
Q: You didn't see the debate?
You read about it. You certainly saw what those people did to Ted
Koppel. Now, has the President ever done anything -
McClellan: I'm focused on our
business here at the White House at the direction of the
President.
Dear Les: Koppel is seriously lucky
that none of the candidates walked over and pinched off his inflated
head.
Other than Dennis Kucinich's
excellent eruption (read the Phoenix piece for details),
perhaps the most telling exchange
was between Koppel and John Kerry. Remember, I'm not making this
up.
Koppel: Senator Kerry, at
the risk of exposing myself to yet another lecture - not from you,
from Congressman Kucinich and the others down here ...
(LAUGHTER)
... what is it that Governor
Dean has done right? Whether or not people want to
acknowledge it, he does have more money than anybody else in this
campaign; he is doing better in the polls than any of the rest of
you. He's got to be doing something right. Is there
anything to be learned from his campaign?
Kerry: Well, Ted, I'll tell
you, there's something to be learned from your question. And
if I were an impolite person, I'd tell you where you could take
your polls.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
You know, this has got to stop.
Kerry then went on to talk about a
New Hampshire family whose water supply has been ruined by corporate
polluters.
Afterward, as the C-SPAN camera
panned the spin room, it caught Kerry schmoozing up CNN's Tucker
Carlson and another guy. Kerry was telling them that the most
important difference between him and Dean is that Dean wants to
repeal the middle-class tax cuts of the Bush years.
Why didn't you talk about
that? chirped Carlson.
"We spent all our time talking
about polls," Kerry responded with a weary smile. He gave the other
guy a playful pat on the cheek and walked away.
And now we learn that ABC News -
Koppel's network, if you'd forgotten - has decided to stop having
producers (off-camera reporters) travel with Kucinich, Al Sharpton,
and Carol Moseley Braun.
Kucinich is outraged,
of course. I'm put off more by the timing than by the decision
itself. The media have a right to make some judgments; they
are not obligated to spend money to cover every candidate. And the
next president is not going to be Kucinich, Moseley Braun, or
Sharpton.
But for ABC to do this the day
after Kucinich's one shining moment in the campaign shows a sickening
disregard for appearances and propriety. Besides, having covered the
three for this long, why not just keep doing it for a few more weeks,
until the New Hampshire primary is over and a few actual people have
had a chance to vote?
This has been a depressing week for
anyone who worries about the media's willingness to play their
crucial role in a democratic society.
New in this week's
Phoenix. In addition to the debate piece, I take a look at
the prospects for a liberal
radio network to compete
with the likes of Rush Limbaugh.
posted at 10:28 AM |
comment or permalink
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Driving to work with Christopher
Lydon. Howard Dean has showed how technology can change the way
we choose a president -- or at least a Democratic presidential
nominee.
Christopher Lydon may be changing
how we learn about such things.
I've been aware of Lydon's
weblog
for a few months. Last week, while I was talking with him about
something else, he mentioned an interview he'd done with Dean's
campaign manager, Joe Trippi, as something he was particularly proud
of.
Lydon has written up the
highlights, but I wanted to hear the whole thing. The
interview
consists of three MP3 files, totaling about an hour -- just about the
length of his old Connection show on WBUR Radio (90.9 FM). I
saved them on my hard drive, burned them onto a CD, and popped it
into my car stereo.
It was a terrific interview, with
Lydon prodding Trippi to talk about this odd marriage between the
Dean campaign and the Internet. I don't have any direct quotes --
hey, I was driving! -- but Trippi offered considerable insight,
comparing the Dean online campaign to Linux, which is an open-source
alternative to Windows and the Mac OS to which anyone can
contribute.
Trippi also disdained the "command
and control" orientation of traditional candidates, including Wesley
Clark, who smothered the Internet enthusiasm that had originally
fueled his entry into the race by seeking to replace it with a
top-down hierarchy.
Trippi was especially good on
fundraising, observing that if the Dean campaign can achieve its goal
of getting two million supporters to contribute $100 each, it will
have managed the unthinkable feat of matching George W. Bush's $200
million campaign stash. Dean has taken a lot of grief for opting out
of the voluntary public-financing system. But it strikes me that what
he's trying to accomplish is actually a much more profound reform
than sticking to an outmoded patchwork of special-interest
contributions, Byzantine spending limits, and matching federal
funds.
As you will see, there's a lot of
good stuff on Lydon's blog. Lydon -- whose daytime home these days is
the Berkman
Center for Internet & Society,
at Harvard Law School -- sounds just as sharp as he did on the
radio.
Of course, Internet audio is
nothing new. But I wouldn't have listened to the Trippi interview if
I'd had to be chained to my computer. What's great about what Lydon
is doing is that he's taking advantage of the fact that technology
has continued to improve.
When Lydon
left WBUR in 2001 in the
midst of an incredibly nasty contract dispute, most Internet users
were still stuck with dial-up connections, and CD burners were rare.
These days, broadband is widely available, and many users can easily
transfer audio files to CDs or to portable MP3 players.
The fundamental problem with the
Internet, of course, is that no one knows how to make any money from
it. Money's not the key to everything, but people have to eat.
Lydon's online interviews are generating no money -- they're free,
and there are no ads. That's great for you and me, but not so good
for anyone looking to follow his path.
If you miss hearing Chris Lydon --
and you know you do -- check this out.
The Queen of Sheba smears Howard
Dean. I'm a day late, but I didn't want to pass up the chance to
comment on New York Times columnist David Brooks's
deeply
stupid piece. Here's his
Tuesday lead:
My moment of illumination
about Howard Dean came one day in Iowa when I saw him lean into a
crowd and begin a sentence with, "Us rural people...."
Dean grew up on Park Avenue and
in East Hampton. If he's a rural person, I'm the Queen of Sheba.
Yet he said it with conviction. He said it uninhibited by any fear
that someone might laugh at or contradict him.
It was then that I saw how Dean
had liberated himself from his past, liberated himself from his
record and liberated himself from the restraints that bind
conventional politicians. He has freed himself to say anything, to
be anybody.
Well, my moment of
illumination about how the right is going to try to destroy Dean came
yesterday, when I read this tripe by someone who normally comes off
as a conservative of the sensible, non-mouth-foaming
variety.
Dean moved to Vermont -- one of the
most rural states in the country, if you don't count the big empty
ones out West -- in the late 1970s, shortly after graduating from
medical school. He served as a Vermont legislator and lieutenant
governor for most of the '80s, and became governor in
1991.
If any candidate has the right to
describe himself as a "rural person" in this race, it is Howard Dean.
Brooks's outburst is so plainly, obviously wrong that I can't believe
he wrote it.
posted at 9:35 AM |
comment or permalink
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
"F" is for "fundamentally
flawed." The profoundly silly reaction to John Kerry's use of the
F-word has done a quick fade, thanks to Al Gore's endorsement of
Howard Dean.
But Kerry's invoking one of George
W. Bush's favorite words shouldn't obscure the best quote he gave to
Rolling
Stone, in answer to a
question about Bush's trustworthiness before the congressional vote
on Iraq. Kerry said:
It seems to me that we had
a right to expect the president of the United States to live up to
his word. It was disgraceful, one of the most egregious,
fundamentally flawed moments of foreign policy that I can think of
in my lifetime.
Dean couldn't have put it any
better.
posted at 7:50 AM |
comment or permalink
Monday, December 08, 2003
Gore's revenge. As John
Kerry might say, Al Gore's surprise
endorsement of Howard Dean
could be seen as a big F-you to Bill Clinton. Here's why: Kerry,
sadly, has fizzled. Dean has all but wrapped it up.
Though it's possible to concoct a
scenario by which Dick Gephardt might possibly win, the only
plausible person standing between Dean and the Democratic nomination
is the Clintons' candidate, Wesley Clark.
Endorsements don't mean much, but
the fact that Dean's renegade campaign has been embraced by the
ultimate Establishment Democrat surely counts for
something.
Josh
Marshall says it's an
F-you, too: to Joe Lieberman. Well, yes, it's that too, but Lieberman
wasn't going anywhere.
Kaus:
"Maybe Democratic primary voters would like to, you know, vote. New
Hampshirites, in particular, don't like to take orders." Mickey also
wonders whether Clinton might weigh in.
Read TNR's Ryan
Lizza on the split between
the Clinton and Gore wings of the party.
Andrew
Sullivan conveniently
overlooks the fact that Gore beat Sully's boy Bush by a half-million
votes.
John
Ellis calls the Gore
endorsement "a transformational event" for Dean.
Atrios:
"Looking around the net I see the responses range from 'Brilliant!'
to 'Al Gore has doomed the election!' with nothing in between. Can't
we all just get along."
Should be quite a debate tomorrow
night.
posted at 6:37 PM |
comment or permalink
So what do we do about
Nomar? The whole notion of trading Manny Ramirez for Alex
Rodriguez is predicated on the belief that Nomar Garciaparra doesn't
want to play in Boston. Presumably, even the Red Sox can't afford to
pay both Rodriguez, a shortstop and the best player in baseball, and
Garciaparra, a shortstop and one of the best players in
baseball.
Now Nomar has broken his silence,
making it clear that he wants to stay here and that he's upset the
Sox have been talking with the Rodriguez camp behind his
back.
The Herald's
Tony
Massarotti has Nomar on the
record. The Globe's Shira
Springer has Garciaparra's
agent, Arn Tellem.
This is quite a dilemma, isn't it?
It's unimaginable that the Red Sox would end their pursuit of
Rodriguez just to keep Garciaparra happy. The sad thing is that this
may be more about management's understandable urge to dump Ramirez
than anything to do with Nomar.
Would it be possible to trade
Ramirez for Rodriguez, get Nomar to sign in the $11 million-to-$12
million range, and move him to third? Who knows? And even if
Garciaparra were willing to settle for less money in order to stay
here, the Sox would still be paying more than $30 million for two
players -- nearly $50 million for three if you throw in Pedro
Martínez's $17.5 million.
On the other hand, if the Rodriguez
trade doesn't happen, then Manny stays here -- and his salary next
year will be almost as high as Rodriguez's. And, of course, Nomar
will stay, too.
So maybe there is a way to get
Rodriguez, dump Ramirez, and keep Nomar.
Wouldn't that be
something?
Fat free. Daniel Akst has a
good piece
in the Boston Globe Magazine on the obesity wars.
The ostensible subject -- legal
responsibility and whether lawyers might successfully sue McDonald's,
KFC, et al. -- isn't all that interesting. But the background
information on the changing thinking regarding carbohydrates (once
good, now bad) and fat (once bad, now less bad) is
excellent.
And though I'm unsympathetic to the
idea of some enterprising Clarence Darrow bringing down the fast-food
industry, we nevertheless find ourselves in an unusual societal
dilemma.
People are eating more fast food
than ever before because they don't have time to cook. And fast food
is almost uniformly unhealthy. As Akst notes, drive down a suburban
strip, or walk around the food court at your local mall. Is there
anywhere you can go where you can eat a reasonably healthy
meal?
Subway's sales have rocketed since
it began stressing healthy alternatives to grease and fries. Maybe
some of the other chains will take notice.
More on Okrent's
introduction. A couple of Media Log readers took issue with my
observation that New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent
should have gotten down to business yesterday rather than introducing
himself to readers.
Marjorie Arons-Barron, president of
Barron Associates Worldwide and former editorialist for WCVB-TV
(Channel 5), writes:
Part of the problem with
the public's attitude toward newspapers, and especially toward
newspaper editorialists, is their anonymity. Many wonder "who the
heck is he/she to tell me what to think?" As a broadcast
editorialist, I was a real person for the Greater Boston area for
two decades. People stopped me in the supermarket or at the gas
station to sound off and dispute something I had said. And still
there were those who undoubtedly thought "who the heck is she ...
etc."
Those who don't know Dan Okrent
might legitimately ask the same question. And, while you might say
that writers like Jurkowitz can explain who he is, a column such
as today's is a good opportunity for Okrent to benchmark his
principles and give us standards against which to measure
him. Wouldn't it be nice if the Globe or Herald
editorial board occasionally did that?
Score one for transparency. But I'd
still rather not have to wait until December 21 to find out what
Okrent thinks of his new colleagues' work.
posted at 10:08 AM |
comment or permalink
Sunday, December 07, 2003
NY Times gets two-week
reprieve. All things considered, I think New York Times
readers would have been better served today if the new public editor,
Daniel Okrent, had plunged right in rather than writing a
gaseous
self-introduction.
Mark Jurkowitz had a good
profile
of Okrent in the Boston Globe last Wednesday, noting, among
other things, that Okrent is the father of Rotisserie
Baseball.
"I now know how J. Robert
Oppenheimer felt inventing the atomic bomb," Okrent told Jurkowitz.
"It's not the thing I want to be remembered for, but I will be."
Given Okrent's rueful tone, it's not surprising that he didn't even
mention it in his Times piece.
So fine, now we know all about
Okrent. "See you in two weeks," he concludes. Dan, we'll all look
forward to it if you decide to start telling us about the
Times and stop telling us about yourself.
posted at 8:34 PM |
comment or permalink
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
