so you try to explain how, you see,
the ocean & the sky are in fact both colorless
but gasses in the air render the sky a faux blue
and the ocean reflects the ruse

Politics of the Absurd

Sometimes John Kerry has a hard time sticking to his talking points. Unlike his Skull and Bones compatriot in the White House, who has mastered the art of wash, rinse, and repeat, Kerry tends to go on forever in his public remarks like some elite, New England liberal. It's almost as if the man has something important to say. But, really, who has the time? Certainly not CBS News. The Boston Globe reports:

"Just a couple of days ago, the administration promised America several million jobs over the course of the next months, and I immediately said that those predictions would fall short based on the promises they made with respect to the tax cut, which was supposed to give a million jobs -- it lost a million -- and the next tax cut was supposed to produce a million jobs, and it lost a million," Kerry told reporters, going on to cite more statistics and insist that his plan is better than Bush's.

Kerry's remarks lasted three minutes, yet it left TV reporters without a soundbite until one CBS News producer asked the Massachusetts senator to try again.

"They don't know what they're talking about in their own economic policy," Kerry said of the Bush team. "Today it's one thing, tomorrow it's the next."

And with one polite request, CBS News turned a nüanced critique of White House fiscal policy into just another generic Bush barb. This will likely emerge as a perpetual problem with press coverage of the Kerry campaign, which has begun to unveil its general election strategy against the president.

The senator's positions on a number of key issues are particularly nüanced. He approved the war, just not this war. He voted for No Child Left Behind, but expected funding for the initiative. He voted for NAFTA, not outsourcing. But the frenetic press will only permit Kerry half of a position. And if the quote doesn't rhyme or at least employ crafty parallel structure, it won't make the front page. No wonder Kerry has boiled down his campaign to one crotch-grabbing taunt, "Bring it on."

The net effect of impatient media coverage is a peculiar void. Consider the socioligist Doc Searls, who writes, "There is no demand for messages." As he explains:

Let me see a show of hands: who here wants a message? Right: none. And who wants to shield themselves from messages they don't want? Exactly: everybody.

Searls' immediate reference is to television advertising, pro-messages with negative demand, but the statement also applies to political journalism, anti-messages with zero demand. That is, the Kerry campaign is forced to transmit one focused message on par with cavemen vernacular: No Bush. The Bush campaign is required to do the same: No Kerry. And so the media reports two anti-messages for which the voting public has no demand. Anyone, of course, could guess that each candidate is opposed to his opponent.

But here's the greatest absurdity of the whole situation: While kudos are in order for Patrick Healy at the Globe for noting the CBS News prompt, shouldn't he have given a heads up to his colleague Wayne Washington, also at the Globe, whose article of the same day quoted the fabricated Kerry soundbite? Hook, line, and sinker.

Press Corps Bites Man

The oft-mocked, oft-dormant White House press corps is getting feisty. John Marshall has been following recent exchanges between the press corps and press secretary Scott McClellan, and it's pretty intense. Of course, that's just good journalism, but you rarely see much of that in D.C. Here's some of the back-and-forth from Feb. 13 over allegations the president was forced to perform punitive community service while in the National Guard. The multiple questions are from different reporters:

Scott McClellan: Helen, if you'll let me finish, I want to back up and talk about this—

Q: Don't dance around, just give us—

Q: It's a straightforward question.

Q: Let's not put too fine a point on it. If I'm not mistaken, you're implying that he had to do community service for criminal action, as a punishment for some crime?

Q: There are rumors around, and I didn't put it in that way. I just—

Q: Could you take that question?

And here's an exhange from Wednesday over the prediction of 2.6 million new jobs:

Scott McClellan: It's an annual report, David. It goes through the usual—it goes through the usual—

Q: That's not the question. Was it or was it not vetted by the entire economic team?

McClellan: It's an annual report. It goes through the usual—

Q: So you don't know, or it was, or it wasn't?

McClellan: Can I get—can I finish that sentence?

Q: When you answer the question. Let's hear it. What's the answer?

McClellan: The answer was, it is an annual economic report and it goes through the normal vetting process. And if you would let me get to that, I would answer your question.

Q: —the full economic team vetted the prediction—

McClellan: It's an annual economic report. It's the President's Economic Report. But again, the President—

Q: Just say yes or no—

McClellan: —it goes through the normal—it goes through the normal vetting process.

Q: So the answer is, yes. I'm not done yet, I've got another one.

And then the press gaggle yesterday on the same subject:

Scott McClellan: John, I'm giving you the facts. It is what it is.

Q: And the meaning of the word "is" is?

Next week, Scott McClellan announces, You can't handle the truth!

Good for the White House press corps. The National Guard bit has really inspired them. But there's a risk here. An adversarial media is prone to those same old illegitimate, yet effective, claims of liberal bias. The Bush campaign could easily deflect some of its attacks towards the American media and depict the press as a conniving advocate for Kerry. Certainly, we've heard some of this already from Bush in reference to coverage of the war in Iraq:

There's a sense that people in America aren't getting the truth. I'm mindful of the filter through which some news travels, and sometimes you just have to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people.

Now, of course, this is just the nature of the business. The media must be agressive, far more agressive than they currently are, and I'm not suggesting journalists alter their coverage to avoid attacks from the White House. But when those inevitable attacks are leveled, a sympathetic American electorate could buy the liberal media argument and defend their beseiged president at the polls. What a sorrowful thought, but I think it's a realistic concern.

The Following Section is On the Record

The silly Drudge-fueled rumor of Kerry's alleged infidelity appears to have devolved into a non-story, but I was struck by a tangential report in Drudge's "world exclusive":

In an off-the-record conversation with a dozen reporters earlier this week, General Wesley Clark plainly stated: "Kerry will implode over an intern issue." [Three reporters in attendance confirm Clark made the startling comments.]

Ryan Lizza at The New Republic says she heard differently:

Since it was off the record (sort of), I can't get into what Clark actually said (let's just say it was not his finest moment on the campaign trail), but I can report that the quote Drudge attributes to him—"Kerry will implode over an intern issue"—is not accurate. He never said that.

Fine, Clark may or may not have said what the media can't say he said, but it's still ridiculous. As a rule, I think there are at least two types of people who should never be allowed to go off the record with the press: the sitting president of the United States and candidates for elected office. A new Washington Post memo on anonymous sourcing doesn't go there, but I still think the press shouldn't protect candidates or the nation's highest leader.

Since We Last Spoke

So it's been quite some time since I last updated. A lot of stuff has been keeping me busy, but I think I'll be able to update weekly and sporadically (as the site's header now reflects). Since we last spoke, I've written a bit for The Crimson. The target of the MyDoom e-mail virus spoke at the Law School; the Massachusetts Supreme Court affirmed its support of gay marriage; a donor criticized the Harvard Management Company; John Kerry said something radical in 1970 (Howard Kurtz makes mention again today); Wesley Clark withdrew from the race while the Kerry campaign responded; Jesse Jackson spoke at the Kennedy School.

And my classes for the second semester:

Introduction to Afro-American Studies
Professors Michael Dawson and Evelynn Hammonds

Slavery in Western Political Thought
Professor Richard Tuck

American Film Criticism
Elvis Mitchell

Individual, Community and Nation in Vietnam
Professor Hue-Tam Ho Tai

Off to the Brattle. Bohemian. Solid.