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Monday, March 15, 2004

Mon, 15 Mar 2004 15:20:59 GMT

Blair's Ashes

Burning Down My Masters' House
Jayson Blair
New Millennium Press

If journalism is a religion, Jayson Blair is surely the Antichrist.

Most journalists have approached Blair’s new memoir, Burning Down My Masters’ House (New Millennium Press), as they might approach a leper whose sins have rendered him beyond redemption. Blair, who plagiarized and fabricated dozens of stories for The New York Times and subsequently upended the world’s most respected newspaper, is undoubtedly the most hated man in journalism.

In advance of the memoir’s release, top Times editors assured staff in a brief memo, “We don’t intend to respond to Jayson or his book.” Elsewhere, visceral contempt for Blair—the sinner and his sins—has clouded most attempts to assess the memoir. And in that sense, Blair’s otherwise-sleazy title rings true. The pain he has inflicted upon journalists is visceral. This heretic has momentarily shattered the house of worship.

For his own part, Blair says he is a “practicing agnostic” and clearly views himself as a throwback to an earlier era of journalism, when reporters seemed to type with one hand and sip brandy with the other, wiping away cigar ash from pages of fresh copy. Blair twice refers to the 1994 classic, The Paper, which is itself a throwback and perhaps the greatest newspaper film ever made. And as he recalls his reporting for the Times metro desk, Blair often assumes an annoyingly theatrical tone to mimic the gritty feel of The Paper. “I soon found myself deep in the woods,” he writes, “cutting a path through American and English elms as I walked toward the area where I saw the most police activity.” The memoir even dares to end where it begins, a rhetorical device which ultimately feels like a shameless ploy for movie licensing rights.

Any celebrity memoir, of course, is liable to allegations of self-promotion, but Blair’s story permits him one legitimate justification for publishing this nearly 300-page treatise: an apology. Blair does apologize, but he couches the mea culpa in so many excuses that he hardly seems repentant. Among his many rationalizations, Blair blames a hostile environment at the Times and an escalating addiction to cocaine. But readers would have more sympathy for Blair’s latter excuse, at least, if he didn’t seem to take pride in his vices. Responding to an editor who asked, “Was Jayson drunk when he wrote that?” Blair writes, “In fact, I was drunk and high.”

And so begins Blair’s descent into unending deceit, occurring simultaneously with his own mental breakdown—or so he tells us—and eventual suicide attempt, which Blair recounts in the book’s most powerful moment. “I looked up at the strong metal hinge in the bathroom and saw nothing but relief,” he writes. “I wrapped the leather around my neck. It felt cold and slightly sticky, but I did not jerk from it. I felt out of my body.” Given the strident title of Blair’s memoir, it’s hard not to view this scene as a potent self-lynching. Indeed, while the veracity of Blair’s account is necessarily dubious, he is still a talented writer: his memoir often succeeds even as fiction.

But while Blair purports to set his narrative in the larger framework of the black experience, as a work of African-American studies, his memoir is largely vapid. Most incredulously, he refers incorrectly to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man three times, adding an article to the title and therefore inadvertently—and inexcusably—alluding to H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man.

When Blair proposes parallels between him and accused D.C.-sniper John Lee Malvo, whose shooting spree he covered—fraudulently—for the Times, Blair’s thesis is intriguing, but his analysis is weak. The only link Blair can muster is their shared slave ancestry, the potential starting point for an argument which requires far more space to unfurl than he allows. And, in a particularly ineffective passage, Blair goes after Gerald Boyd, the black managing editor who was forced to resign, along with Managing Editor Howell Raines, in the wake of Blair’s fabrications.

Instead of launching vague assaults against editors at the Times, Blair could have quite legitimately dealt with the widely-recognized dearth of black reporters in American newsrooms, including the Times. Of the Old Grey Lady’s 25 political reporters, only one, Lynette Clemetson, is black, and she joined the team this January. And while the Times purports to maintain a finger on the pulse of New York, Brent Staples is the sole black person on its 15-member editorial board. These sorts of numbers would have bolstered Blair’s claims. Instead, he resorts to generalities upon which Ralph Ellison—or, hell, even H.G. Wells—would surely frown.

Blair’s more substantial allegations of misdeeds at the Times—including a serious charge of widespread dateline fraud—are not likely to raise the right eyebrows, given the source. But Blair’s memoir, though doomed from the start, is a surfeit of fascinating concepts and compelling narrative which displays the talent that once served him so well at the Times. Too bad, then, that the author is unemployed—and unbelievable.

[This review originally appeared Friday, March 12, 2004 in The Arts section of The Harvard Crimson.]

Monday, March 01, 2004

Mon, 01 Mar 2004 06:30:54 GMT

Media Anarchy

Sunday's Democratic presidential debate was absolutely atrocious, and the blame lies with moderators Dan Rather of CBS News, Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times, and Andrew Kirtzman of WCBS-TV. Robin Toner, writing the Times' in-house, postmodern coverage, called it "the most contentious Democratic debate in months," but the bulk of contention was clearly manufactured by the three questioners, whose reckless interrogation did little to help voters "make an informed decision," as Rather said they were attempting to do.

Bumiller, the Times White House correspondent, proved the most egregious offender. She effectively represented the recently-launched Bush campaign's phantom presence, inappropriately defending the president at various points in the debate. And her rude treatment of the candidates, most notably Al Sharpton, sparked much of the contention over the hour. Worst of all, while she tried repeatedly, Bumiller failed to maintain control over the proceedings. The candidates surely felt Bumiller's bullying justified their own unruliness.

Once Rather said at the outset, "There are no set rules," all bets were off. CBS and the Times chose a free-wielding format and could therefore only expect a free-wielding debate. In essence, the Times wrote the Monday political coverage for all of its competitors. The Washington Post called it "agressive," "snappish," and "sometimes chaotic." The Associated Press said John Edwards "shed his nice-guy approach." But it was Bumiller and her two colleagues who really shed their nice-guy approaches and came out aggressive and snappish to form a sometimes chaotic debate. Their "moderation" created the storyline of the debate.

The chief ailment in Bumiller's comportment Sunday appeared to be a question of medium. As a newspaper reporter, Bumiller is accustomed to private, off-camera interviews in which she controls the flow. But television is a quite different scene, one where the subject must star and the questioner must take a back seat. That by no means precludes tough questions in a televised debate, but Bumiller gets us nowhere by airing her own frustration with the candidates' answers and egaging in protracted arguments with them on live television. Bumiller even fought with her fellow moderators for airtime.

Bumiller's "contentious" style must have stemmed chiefly from her own reporting for the Times, where she has been a sometimes excellent but often too-friendly reporter in the White House press corps. Her most ridiculous line of questioning Sunday came when she turned the age-old "Are you a Communist?" query into "Are you a liberal?" Bumiller asked, "How can you hope to win with this kind of characterization in this climate?" You mean, this media climate?

Bumiller often felt like a Bush surrogate in Sunday's debate, turning each of the candidates against the president rather than each other. That's a dubious strategy unless Bumiller is convinced John Kerry has the locked up the nomination.

But, indeed, press presumptions played a strong role in the debate, with Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich effectively sidelined but for their own objections. After a discussion of Haiti which completely neglected the only man in the room who had spoken with President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Sharpton stepped in with an astute observation:

What you're trying to do is trying to decide for the voters how we go forward. The voters need to hear this morning from four candidates—or say the media is now going to select the candidates.

The Times has repeatedly editorialized against including candidates like Sharpton and Kucinich in the presidential debates, and editorial editor Gail Collins recently weighed in with her own scathing rebuke of unsuccessful—or "marginal"—candidates. In a presumptuous dismissal of Sharpton, Collins wrote:

What we have here, then, is a candidate who is not serious, who cannot afford to be serious, but whose career depends on frightening people who know he's not serious into pretending they think he is.

Taking their cue from the Times editorial board, the three moderators cut out Sharpton and Kucinich, a decision which served in part to turn the debate into a raucus affair, with the trailing candidates clamoring for a voice. And while the devolution of the debate extended far beyond the issue of allowing Sharpton and Kucinich to speak, the decision to limit their time underscored the moderators' failure. You have to read the entire transcript or a watch a recording of the debate to get a true feel for the failure, but consider this particularly revealing excerpt:

BUMILLER: Senator Kerry—

KERRY: No, I insist on being able to finish.

BUMILLER: I want to ask a really important question here—

KERRY: This is important.

BUMILLER: We're all arguing—

SHARPTON: Wait a minute, if we're going to have a discussion just between two, in your arrogance you can try that. But that's one of the reasons we're running. We're going to have delegates so that you can't just limit the discussion. And I think that your attempts to do this is blatant and I'm going to call you out on it because I'm not going to sit here and be—

BUMILLER: Well I'm not going to be addressed like this.

SHARPTON: Well then let all of us speak. You said that I could state next. What I wanted to say on this issue—

KERRY: Al, I wasn't finished.

SHARPTON: I'm going to let him finish. But I want to be, I want us to be able to respond. Or then tell us you want a two-way debate.

RATHER: Here's the way we're playing this. Certainly want to hear. I think you will agree the voters have spoken.

SHARPTON: No, the voters have not spoken. We've only had— He's won one primary. He's come in fourth seven times—

BUMILLER: How many delegates—

SHARPTON: What you're trying to do is decide for the voters how we go forward. The voters need to hear this morning from four candidates. Or say the media now is going to select candidates.

RATHER: Reverend, we've heard from you and we're going to hear from you. I don't understand what the argument is.

SHARPTON: I had to fight to speak on Haiti. I had to fight to speak on trade. You've got a guy with one primary that you're pretending he's Gary Hart. Gary Hart won more primaries than Mondale. Let's have an open debate in going to Super Tuesday. Or say that you guys want to decide the nominee.

RATHER: Reverend, debate them, not me.

If Rather doesn't want the candidates to debate the media, then a debate is exactly what he's going to get.

[The above transcription of the debate is based on the Times' transcription with my own corrections for accuracy and style.]

Blair's Witch Project

The New York Times' postmodern scribe, Jacques Steinberg, reported excerpts from Jayson Blair's forthcoming memoir Friday. (Thanks for bloggonit for the heads up.) Now, will the Times Book Review step up to the plate? The New York Daily News, erroneously claiming an exclusive, also revealed portions of the book Friday. Editor & Publisher compares the two accounts, but here's my favorite passage from Blair's Burning Down My Masters' House, referring to Zuza Glowaka, his girlfriend:

Zuza took pictures of me prancing around the newsroom wearing a Persian head wrap that covered my face, Kermit the Frog on my shoulders and a giant fake fur coat. I did a full tour de newsroom in this peculiar uniform. It is hard to know what I was feeling, other than it was exhilarating to shock everyone. Perhaps I was crying out for attention.

Perhaps.

Update: The Times Book Review will, indeed, take measure of Blair's memoir in the March 14 edition, Editor & Publisher reports. On television, Katie Couric will do the honors with a Dateline NBC interview taped in January. [6:19 PM]

The Passion of the Readers

As a student of film criticism who recently saw The Passion of the Christ and a journalist who has received my fair share of hate mail of late, I was interested to read Jami Bernard's response to her detractors in the Daily News. Bernard panned The Passion in a gutsy review which was sure to draw the ire of some fanatics. But the extent of vituperative crap she received is disturbing, if not surprising. As Bernard recounts:

A few of them referred to my weight, because I've been chronicling my effort to shed pounds in another section of the newspaper. "Eat a donut!" read the printable part of one missive.
Other critics who reviewed "The Passion" received similar hate mail, although Gene Seymour of Newsday told me he has yet to be called a "ho."

I was recently called "dirty, sleazy and disgusting" by one reader and accused of "lowering journalistic standards" by another. Still another called my writing "worthy of the paper my hamster shits on." All of these insults came over e-mail in response to the Kerry article. Michael Wolff dealt with this phenomenon in New York magazine in January 2002:

The themes of the e-mails are surprisingly consistent. Anything liberal is bad—"you are a LIBERAL fuck!" is a sufficient accusation. People in the media ("quasi-intellectual, elitist snobs"), or what's thought of as the liberal media, are bad—"Little pee-ons like YOU are who make ME sick!!!!!!!" says one correspondent, adding "FU clymer," which I assume refers to the Times political reporter Adam Clymer (another e-mail adds, "please give dad clymer my best regards"; another says, J'accuse-like, "You are Maureen Dowd!"). Bill ("President Buttface, to many of us") and Hillary Clinton are bad; indeed, the presidency of Bill Clinton ("the perverted/treasonist that preceded President Bush") is one of the most grievous political calamities of the twentieth century.

But I suppose angry e-mails beat spam or yet another virus attachment.

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 07:48:31 GMT

Blair's Witch Project

Jayson Blair's memoir will hit bookstores March 6, whereupon Jay Leno will deliver the requesite joke about Blair's new novel, a handful of columnists will vent in 750 words or less, and the whole matter will be forgotten by April Fool's Day. But will The New York Times Book Review acknowledge their former colleague's work? Book Review editor Charles McGrath mulls the question for Editor & Publisher:

You are damned if you do and damned if you don't. If you don't review it, it looks like the Times is dodging criticism of itself and if you do review it, it looks like you are giving attention to something that looks like it doesn't deserve it.

For a publication which reviewed the memoir of Montgomery police chief Charles A. Moose, the standard of deserving attention seems fairly low. And regardless of precedent, the Blair tell-all—even if it tells far from all—is an important work. All the evidence one needs is contained within Monday's memo to Times employees (via L.A. Observed) from executive editor Bill Keller and managing editors Jill Abramson and John M. Geddes, which claims, "We don't intend to respond to Jayson or his book," but then does exactly that:

But after reviewing an advance copy we did want to convey something to the staff. Some of you may find the smears hurtful, even if they are utterly lacking in credibility. It pains us that, after all we have done together to put this newspaper right, any of you should be subjected to this.

My appetite is certainly wet. And note as well the memoir's title, Burning Down My Masters' House, which Maureen Dowd has already dismissed as "the most risibly tacky title in publishing history." With Times folk running scared left and right, how could the Book Review not review it?

Even from the standpoint of media studies, Blair's memoir is a significant work, both as an historical document and a current appraisal of American journalism. The Blair "debacle," as it is best known, raises some of today's most pressing media issues, including the "risibly tacky" topic raised in Blair's title. No, the rise and fall of Jayson Blair is not a case study in affirmative action, as so many chroniclers of the affair seem compelled to suggest. But the disgraced journalist is a significant reminder of the peculiar aversion to journalism felt by so many talented African Americans.

Blair appears to suggest Black journalists are fighting a losing battle in American newsrooms. That's a reasonable assertion. Some figures:

♦ Of the Times' top 25 political reporters, 23 are White. The only Black reporter, Lynette Clemetson, joined the political team in January and has written just four articles over the past two months. (Moreover, the top five Times political reporters are White males.)

♦ At The Washington Post, the political team has been described by Washingtonian as "an archaic male bastion." And yes, that would be an all-White, archaic male bastion.

♦ The Times editorial board, which purports to maintain a finger on the pulse of its city, boasts just one African American on its team of 15 writers. (Thanks to Eric Benson for this observation.)

African Americans tend to want nothing to do with journalism, and inspecting this trend ought be a top priority. Too bad, then, that the only journalist raising the issue at the moment is unemployed—and unbelievable.

Update: Chris Callahan, associate dean of University of Maryland's journalism college, is giving Blair the silent treatment, according the student newspaper, the Diamondback:

I received an e-mail on Friday that said it was from him, but I didn't open it. I saw the name, and I deleted it.

That sort of petty moralizing doesn't help anyone. And for a journalism professor, isn't deleting one's e-mail before reading it a grave journalistic faux pas? [9:48 AM]

Black Friday

Dana Milbank in The Washington Post reports:

The White House is moving swiftly to establish the administration's place in history as the Friday Night Presidency.

Last Friday afternoon, President Bush announced that he was circumventing the Senate confirmation process and appointing controversial judicial nominee William H. Pryor Jr. to the federal bench. It was the second such recess appointment to be made late on a Friday, following last month's appointment of Charles W. Pickering Sr. [...]

Indeed, Friday has become a Bush favorite both for dropping bad news and for making announcements that appeal to the president's conservative base, not necessarily the general public.

This could turn into a fun game. What will the White House unveil this Friday afternoon?

Errata

The Wall Street Journal ran this monstrous correction Friday:

CHAPMAN CAPITAL LLC didn't state in a 13D filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had earned $1.4 million from trading in Footstar stock. The $1.4 million estimate in a Jan. 28 Money & Investing article actually was taken from an article on TheStreet.com and should have been attributed properly. Chapman Capital hasn't specified the correct number. The offices of Robert Chapman, head of the firm, aren't decorated with sharks teeth and he doesn't liken himself to the fictional characters Darth Vader and the Terminator, as incorrectly stated in the Jan. 28 article. The article incorrectly attributed certain comments to a representative of the firm who had been identified as Robert Lewis; after publication, Mr. Chapman said he had made those comments himself.

How does that happen? Has Jayson Blair been writing more than memoirs?

Friday, February 20, 2004

Fri, 20 Feb 2004 20:48:33 GMT

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.

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:21:33 GMT

Just finished watching the residents of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire vote in their traditional first-in-the-nation primary. Wesley Clark was the proud victor with eight votes. Watching the hooplah from home, I wish I were still there. My twenty-four hour stint in the Granite State was tremendous. Two Monday Crimson articles came of my efforts, one dispatch surveying the whole primary scene and the other focusing on student canvassers for John Edwards. (I suppose I should subject myself to same critical commentary to which I have subjected the major political journalists, but I guess that's really a job for someone else. Comments? I've already heard objections to my use of polling.) In any event, what follows is a diary from the campaign trail, written from my notes at the end of my 700-mile journey.

6:58 a.m.—Route 3, Entering New Hampshire
One would venture to describe the entire state of New Hampshire as bucolic if the description wouldn't so assuredly offend the residents here. Vermont is bucolic. New Hampshire is . . . independent. Indeed, while this state is home to more Republicans than Democrats, independents outnumber them both.

And while the political world focuses so much attention here in the week leading up to the primary, this is not a particularly political state. The staffers and volunteers who have occupied abandoned storefronts in New Hampshire's major cities appear to have landed here rather than arrived. Even the ubiquitous signage—the lawn signs, the banners, the buttons—bears a real temporary quality to it. And, you know, the signage isn't even that ubiquitous. On the tertiary roads here, a spattering of houses will declare their allegiance to Joe Lieberman or John Kerry or whomever, but most do not participate. The television cameras shoot images of Elm Street in Manchester, where campaign headquarters butt up against one another. (CNN has a particularly good vantage point from its offices across the river.) But Elm Street—and Main Street in Nashua—are anomalies.

To the vast majority of residents here, the biggest news story of the past twelve months was the collapse of the Old Man in the Mountain, not this primary. And while Clark advocates a "new American patriotism," most people are more focused on the New England Patriots. (One Edwards volunteer in Nashua, though, told me the New Hampshire primary season is "the Super Bowl of politics.") But on Route 3, the main thoroughfare between Nashua, Manchester, and Concord, I'm listening to Underworld's "Born Slippy" off the Trainspotting soundtrack and shuttling towards my assignment—to cover this whole phenomenon. The sun is up now (it wasn't when I left my aunt's house in Sterling, Massachusetts), and the temperature is rising to the low single digits.

7:19 a.m.—Fire and Police Station, Auburn, New Hampshire
As I pull up to the newly-renovated fire and police station here, I'm wondering what it takes to get a New Hampshire resident up and out of the house at seven in the morning on a Saturday. (The Kerry rally I planned to attend after Clark was pushed from 8:30 to 9:00, and I figured they were hoping to attract a larger crowd with a later start time. Turns out Kerry is the Clinton of this primary race, always arriving late to his engagements, so his staffers were probably just giving the senator some cushion time in moving the event back thirty minutes.) At this early hour, you have primarily the hardcore supporters. An Oldsmobile which parked right in front of me bore the New Hampshire vanity license plates, "WES WING." The driver, a veteran, told me Clark is "a good man, an honest man, a military man." And, as I found, that's about all anyone can say about the candidate.

Other people were surely there for the food, although the pancaked left something to be desired in the middle. This was no fine-dining experience. Half-gallon jugs of Aunt Jemima's, styrofoam cups, orange juice, coffee, non-dairy creamer. The focus of this sort of event is not the on-site entertainment, but the image for those viewers at home who stayed out of the cold on their Saturday morning. For them, Clark campaign volunteers brought "homemade" signs to be distributed among the attendees. "See these cameras?" one volunteer said to another. "We got to get these signs in front of them." When Clark's wife, Gert, began introducing her husband, a camerman yelled out and interrupted her so that she could be positioned more visibly for the folks at home.

As for the print journalists, I noticed Adam Nagourney standing in the back and wondered why he had made the trip to Auburn for a run-of-the-mill Clark event. Turns out he was writing a lead story on independent voters for Sunday's New York Times, but his Clark quote came straight from the former general's stump speech, so it's still not entirely clear to me why he was there. Other print journalists—and even more so this guy from NPR who I didn't recognize—have a nasty habit of interviewing "regular people" at these kind of campaign events. The ley quotes add color to their stories, I suppose, but they are of little service to readers. (One acknowledgement of the futility of this practice by reporters who engage in it is their tendency to shove such quotes at the end of their story, where journalists love to leave interesting or funny—but ultimately useless—nuggets.)

And I got this sense over the course of the day that some people at these rallies hang around a little longer after the candidate is finished, hoping they will be interviewed by a reporter in search of "the pulse of the street" or whatever. One man wearing an Edwards sticker at this breakfast was mobbed by three members of the press before Clark arrived. I must admit to interviewing and quoting a former Howard Dean supporter at the Kerry rally of later that morning. My defense: he was a Harvard graduate who recalled his college days campaigning for McCarthy in 1968, which made for a terrific—if unfair—parallel to Dean. (My dad, however, has already objected to my description in The Crimson of McCarthy's campaign as "doomed." That's a fair point, considering his arguable effect on the national sentiment towards the war, and I would say that certainly applies to Dean's seemingly "doomed" campaign this year. More than a few liberal pundits have given due credit to Dean for inspiring his opponents to fiercely challenge President Bush on the trail.)

When Clark arrived at the large firehouse garage here, the place was packed shoulder-to-shoulder. The fire marshal told me he was worried the event was in violation of his own capacity regulations. They had already moved out the town's only fire truck to accomodate all the people. I wondered what they would do if a fire broke out in town. The fire marshal assured me they were prepared. I breathed a sigh of relief for the residents of Auburn, although it appeared as though they were all here.

Clark, for his part, was either well-off his game or he doesn't have much of a game at all. His pancake-flipping skills were nonexistent. Truly poor skills. I know Clark says he's not a politician, but you have to know how to flip a fucking pancake. That's just a prerequisite for the campaign trail. So, in my view, the former general (although his staffers refer to him as "the general") began the event with a disappointing performance. Clark's stump speech was equally disappointing. He has an effective bit about family values, which he uses to turn on Republican failures on healthcare, education, and the like, but the speech is noticably lacking substance. This is true, for the most part, of all the Democrats and the incumbent president, but Clark's words ring particularly hollow.

I should have expected as much from a candidate whose events are adorned with signs which simply say, "Patriot." This is the Clark platform: a "new American patriotism" and a "higher standard of leadership." When I heard the same stump speech again at a fundraising dinner that night, I was viscerally perturbed. The man's campaign is exceptionally thin. No wonder Clark's only response to a questioner at the breakfast who asked him the difference between him and Kerry was that same bullshit about Kerry only having been a lieutenant.

Clark's chief speech writer, Josh Gottheimer, explained to me over the phone that his candidate's stump speech is based on Clark's most recent tour of the South. Hopefully, the other Democrats will not stoop so low in South Carolina. In New Hampshire, at least, the crowd appeared to only be partially buying the whole routine. And this was a group mostly of supporters. They seemed listless at times and certainly weren't into the whole cheering deal, which Clark's young volunteers tried to inspire on a few occasions. A husband and wife wearing matching yellow fleece jackets stood stonefaced throughout the entire speech.

10:16 a.m.—New Hampshire Technical College, Concord, New Hampshire
I don't spot any stone faces at the Kerry rally here, to which I arrive as the senator is just finishing his question-and-answer session. His supporters have less reason for gloom, certainly, and his advance team has done a superb job arranging the event. Compared to the Clark breakfast from which I have just left, the atmosphere is, in many ways, sunnier. Having missed his stump speech, I can't say how Kerry looked as he began, but he appeared comfortable answering questions and moved through the crowd well afterwards.

The people I overheard and to whom I spoke were confident in Kerry's electability. Why? I understand the Newsweek poll has him defeating Bush in a hypothetical election, but Kerry seems like an otherwise poor choice for the Democratic nomination if one is considering electability. Out of touch? Northeasterner? French-looking? And what worries me most is the lack of any attack materials on Kerry via Matt Drudge, the favorite outlet for Bush-Cheney '04.

As Kerry starts drifting towards a back door through which it appears he will leave, I dart around the outside of the building to catch him as he leaves. While I'm hustling over there, I consider what I might ask the senator if I have the opportunity. On one hand, I'm there to cover the primary, and I should ask a substantial question, but what? What does one ask with one such question? And on the other hand, I'm there to cover the primary for The Crimson, and I should ask a Harvard-related question, not particularly relevant to national politics but interesting to readers. Doing so, however, just reinforces the perception of collegiate journalism as not particularly serious, or less serious than professional journalism.

"Mr. Senator, Zach Seward, Harvard Crimson. What would you say to Harvard students considering a vote for a Yale graduate like yourself?"

"We should focus on what unites us," Kerry said, chuckling. Solid answer. Troubling question.

As he leaves, Kerry hops onto the ABC News bus for an interview. The ABC bus pulls out of the parking lot and onto the highway, while the Kerry campaign bus follows in tow. This is a moderately disturbing scene, the candidate darting away under the wings of the major media.

11:51 a.m.—Dean Campaign Headquarters, Manchester, New Hampshire
Immediately upon entering the central Dean headquarters here, my criticisms of Dean's apparent derth of Black support are put to shame. The place is packed with African-Americans, all of them officials of the Service Employees International Union, which has endorsed the former governor. No one, mind you, is wearing a nose ring—as the stereotype goes—or looking particularly Internet-savvy. Indeed, I was often struck by the disconnect between the public perception of the Dean campaign as exceedingly modern and young and the reality of the Dean campaign as dependent on traditional techniques and older voters for success.

12:17 p.m.—Elm Street, Manchester, New Hampshire
I'm looking for Clark campaign headquarters. They've given me directions over the phone. Some street off Elm. And then another left, I think. Why isn't the Clark campaign on Elm Street like everyone else? Dennis Kucinich, Lieberman, Dean, and the former offices of Dick Gephardt are all within three blocks of each other on Elm. But the Clark campaign, is aloof, as always. Somewhere else. Somewhere I can't find. Fuck this. I'm going to Nashua.

12:42 p.m.—Edwards Campaign Headquarters, Nashua, New Hampshire
Edwards intrigues me. If you want to talk about electability, this is your man. And no one does a better job than Edwards in outlining the reality of Bush's "two Americas." Very engaging speaker. And his supporters can't stop raving about the guy. Here in Nashua, I'm following some Harvard students who have come to help out the Edwards campaign. Really, I want to answer the question of what could inspire someone to endure this brutal cold for any candidate. But the Edwards people seem particularly inspired.

The Clinton references are pervasive. Bill Barry, Edwards' Nashua chairman, reminds everyone how Clinton came through Nashua to great success on his way to securing the nomination. This is another way of saying Edwards isn't going to win New Hampshire, but it doesn't matter. Still, they want a good showing here on their way down South, and a calendar on the wall predicts boldly in the box for January 27, "JRE wins NH primary!" At lunch, Barry tries to inspire the troops of volunteers:

This is a war of ideas. And you are on the front lines right now. And in this battle, there is only victory or death.

This is said with a bit of irony, and some people laugh nervously when they see me transcribing Barry's speech. After lunch, the volunteers are high in spirits but not exactly acting like fierce warriors "on the front lines." (Look to my Crimson color story for more details on the Edwards volunteers.)

Before leaving Nashua, I stop at a pizzeria across the street for a slice and some time to type up some copy on my laptop and make a few calls. The chef is a Republican, and he "can't fucking stand" the Lyndon Larouche van which keeps rolling down Main Street blaring his propaganda. Otherwise, he doesn't much mind all the political hubbub. "I'm voting for Bush anyway," he says.

4:24 p.m.—Kerry Campaign Headquarters, Manchester, New Hampshire
"The students? Oh, they went to the field office. . ."

4:36 p.m.—Kerry Field Office, Manchester, New Hampshire
"No, they're at the volunteer office. . ."

4:47 p.m.—Kerry Volunteer Office, Manchester, New Hampshire
"Students? What students? From where did you say?"

6:10 p.m.—Sheraton Tara, Nashua, New Hampshire
The press is relegated to three viewing rooms via closed-circuit for television for the evening's fundraising dinner, where six of the seven candidates—sans Al Sharpton, sadly—are scheduled to speak. Journalists who have been on the campaign trail for a while now greet each other with a nice fraternity. The reporters near whom I sit are quite cynical about the whole political scene, and understandably so. The candidates stick to their stump speeches tonight, for the most part.

Dean begins, "I am so excited to be here that I could just scream." Poor Howard.

Clark reminds us, "We can't forget about the 35 Americans in poverty." Only 35? No wonder we've forgotten about them.

Edwards receives the only standing ovation of the night, but he ends with a Clitnonesque line which borders on complete-and-utter insincerity: "I believe in you, and you deserve a president who actually believes in you."

Kerry fumbles his signature line with a few too many adjectives: "It's not mission accomplished. It's mission not-even-legitimately-attempted. It's mission abandoned." It's mission thesaurus.

Lieberman extols the virtues of the late Captain Kangaroo—with a straight face.

And Kucinich enters and exits to a Dennis for President rap song: "Department of Peace instead of war / Will open up more international doors." Does anything rhyme with Kucinich?

9:36 p.m.—Merrimack 10-Pin Bowling Alley, Merrimack, New Hampshire
Edward's can't bowl very well, but his point—wanting to spend time with people who couldn't buy a $120 ticket to tonight's fundraising dinner—is well-taken. The management of the bowling alley is pissed, though:

Once again, folks, we apologize for all the delays tonight. We were not aware there would be so many people at this event. We didn't realize this would be an event. We were told there would only be a handful of people with Mr. Edwards to take pictures for a few minutes. We had no idea there would be this many people. We apologize to those who have been waiting for hours and hours. This is no way reflects upon Merrimack 10-Pin.

You win some votes, you lose some votes.

8:10 a.m., Sunday—Crimson Newsroom, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Writing up my stories, I am struck by the value of being there. In most respects, the primary campaign is reduced to abstract discussion in insulated studios with Washington pundits focused on words ending in "ity" and "ism." Being there, one discovers the situation is less reducible. People vote, not "isms." And when people discuss the election in terms of masses (Whom do the masses think is electable? e.g.), they are often merely creating a smoke screen for an issue which can not be simplified beyond its reality based in individuality. Who will win today? The candidate for whom the most people vote.

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Wed, 21 Jan 2004 08:48:29 GMT

Allowing for the perils of indecency.

The Virtues of Anger

As analysts scramble to provide context for Howard Dean's apparent collapse in the Iowa Caucus Monday night, one explanation is particularly troubling: Dean is too angry.

The former governor's oft-replayed speech to his supporters in Iowa—a "frenetic, shouting appearance," according to The Washington Post and a "guttural concession-speech battle cry," according to The New York Times—has been identified as yet another example of Dean's hot-headed campaign built on a deep-rooted anger at President Bush and his policies. This, apparently, is objectionable.

So objectionable, in fact, that Katie Couric—the voice of America's mainstream consciousness—felt compelled to pose this question to Dean on the Today Show this morning:

Do you think things got a little out of control and you got a little over the top? Can you explain that?

Dean's answer was scripted nonsense about having "a little bit of fun," just like previous debate responses in which he has claimed his campaign "is about hope, not anger." That sentiment is likely the correct political tact, but why? And, more to the point, how sad is that?

I need only rattle off the three-year Bush record—from foreign policy to civil liberties to the environment—or provide a script of tonight's State of the Union address to provoke the appropriate ire from the left wing of American politics. When the president announces, "Our nation must protect the sanctity of marriage," anger is not only expected but, quite frankly, required of all Americans with a conscience. In his quest to unseat President Bush, it is hard to imagine a speech by Dean that could be legitimately labeled "over the top," as Couric so dutifully put it.

Worse yet is the emerging consensus that John Edward's climb to second place in Iowa was a result of his "positive message" and "upbeat campaign style," the latter a description by Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post of later this morning. Edwards is an appealing candidate, to be sure, and character analysis is—on a limited level—a legitimate consideration for voters, but the affirmation of the Happy Express by the public and media alike is a distressing signal that, if the 2004 election is to be won, it will have to be won on the president's terms. As the incumbent, Bush's campaign must necessarily strike a positive tone. As the challengers, the remaining seven Democrats should not feel required to water-down the painful reality of this administration or risk being seen as "over the top."

The G.O.P. salivates over the opportunity to paint Dean—or, for that matter, whomever the Democratic nominee may be—as disproportionately and ineffectively angry. James Taranto refers to the "Angry Left" each day in his irritating Best of the Web Today blog, and Bryan York of The National Review yesterday questioned Dean's ability to handle the presidency in light of "the emotional difficulties he has sometimes had dealing with stressful situations." The conservative Tucker Carlson said on CNN, "Howard Dean scared a lot of children last night." As "liberal" was the Achilles heel buzzword in 2000, so will "angry" serve as the political lightning bolt of the right in 2004 (to mix mythological metaphors). Whichever candidate emerges as the nominee, he will likely be pigeonholed by conservatives as tragically "angry."

And while this is the unavoidable reality of facing an imbecilic opponent, the media should take care not to play into discussions of positive and negative messages. (Already, after York transcribed Dean's now-famous yelp as "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!" in his online column and Matt Drudge plastered the quote on his widely-read site, print journalists appeared emboldened to use their own creative versions of the Dean scream—a modest "Yaaaaaaaaaah!" in the Post and a more nuanced "YAAAA-EEEEEEEEE-AAAHH!" in the Daily News, among other futile efforts. But transliteration is a form of mockery in this instance, so credit Jim Ruttenberg in the Times for utilizing sharp description over abuse of repeated vowels.) And when the matters are more serious, focusing on the respective tones of the presidential candidates—whether it be "upbeat" Edwards or "angry" Dean—is a disservice to readers and a service to President Bush's reelection campaign. Challengers, goddammit, ought to be angry. They ought to be furious.

And, you know, this is not an endorsement of Dean's policies, but any candidate whose actions are described by Katie Couric as "a little over the top," is a candidate I can respect.

Found: "Weapons-of-Mass-Destruction-Related Program Activities"

They've been found! according to President Bush in his State of the Union address. It's not quite uranium from Niger, but "weapons-of-mass-destruction-related program activities" will have to do.

As for the president's proposals to advocate abstinence-only education in the nation's public schools and increase drug testing of students, how about a compromise? Students could choose whether they want sex—or else a supply of narcotics to hold them over until they're free from the government's grasp. Either way, get ready for another baby boom. You know, with that and all those heterosexuals getting married at the encouragement of the White House.

And note Bush's failure to mention the environment even once in his speech, as picked up by Timothy Noah in Slate:

The word "conservation" appeared once in a plea to pass the energy bill, which takes various steps to encourage more oil drilling. This in a speech where Bush found time to call for an end to steroid abuse in professional sports, an issue completely outside the realm of government at the federal, state, or local level. Apparently Karl Rove has decided that the environment isn't even worth paying lip service anymore.

Most chillingly tonight, President Bush had some words for his critics. And his critics are named "some." That's the president's favorite buzzword for those who disagree with his positions. Bush used the word "some" four times in relation to his detractors tonight:

♦ I know that some people question if America is really in a war at all.

♦ Some in this chamber, and in our country, did not support the liberation of Iraq.

♦ Some critics have said our duties in Iraq must be internationalized.

♦ Some want to undermine the No Child Left Behind Act by weakening standards and accountability.

Whoever this "some" is, he or she appears to be our best shot at defeating the president. So if Mr. or Mrs. Some could please step forward—not too angrily!—we would be much obliged.

Hindsight Is, Indeed, 20/20

Howard Kurtz in the Post has the best round-up of errant pundit opinions on the Iowa Caucus, including this gem in his lede:

Back in the distant past — okay, it was 25 days ago — Dallas Morning News columnist Ruben Navarrette wrote that John Kerry "must accept the fact that the game is over. . . . The last time John Kerry was engaged in this hopeless a mission, he was dressed in fatigues and running around Southeast Asia."

But as bloggonit comments on my last post, "anyone can criticize a game after it's played." This is true, and, anyway, I was wrong in inflating the influence of the media over the Iowa electorate. There is merit to reading the Times with a watchful eye, but that eye will often end up perceiving reality under a distorted lens. In this case, I should have recognized that most Iowans don't read the Times—or any other national paper—for their political news. In print, they read The Des Moines Register, and mostly they watch the local news. (And, yes, more and more of them are also logging onto the Internet, but they're reading CNN and the like, not blogs.)

That said, the Times remains important for the influence it exercises over other media outlets, including the Register and your local news. As for New Hampshire, the best way to size-up the situation is to head to the scene of the crime. John Marshall has done exactly that, and his posts from the campaign trail have been wonderful. But in the absence of on-site reporting, one just needs to keep a sufficiently broad perspective on the race. That way, you can see the entire blurry picture.

Update: Speak of the devil, I'm headed to Manchester. I'll be covering the weekend festivities for The Crimson in advance of Tuesday's primary. The article will run in Monday's paper, and I'll throw up some observations here when I get a chance, probably no earlier than Sunday night. [10:54 PM]

Put Money In...Knob Won't Turn...Machine Broke

[I excerpted the first bit of my completed autobiography in yesterday's post, and today I pick up in another spot, where I confusingly explain the title and slip into the second person.]

In the early years, perhaps instinctively, we would ride our bikes as far as we were allowed and farther, crossing the border of Scarsdale and neighboring Eastchester with a certain passion we only vaguely understood then. Years later, our bicycle trips gave way to those train rides into Manhattan, and jazz clubs hid our escaping bodies and nurtured our escaping souls. One spring, like hack Kerouacs, we took a car west as far as we could manage. Now, considerable mileage separates my self from Scarsdale, and I’m still escaping.

We are all supposed to run from home, I suppose, although the notion that escape might actually be possible is chiefly a suburban one. They say reinvention is an American concept, and I buy that, but it takes a particularly suburban arrogance to leave the past behind—or try, at least. I’ve been trying since day one, but Scarsdale is not easily disposed of. The aura—the chilling ego of the place—persists and pervades, even so many miles away.

“Put money in, but machine broke,” read the scrawled note on the windshield of a new black Mercedes parked along Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, where my latest futile attempt to escape has brought me. On a side street that same day, a green Jaguar with vanity license plates proclaiming the value of LASZFARE noted of another parking meter: “Knob won’t turn.”

And all I can hear is the Scarsdale School District Board of Education president announcing at an emergency PTA meeting in 2002, “We as a community must send a message to these children that there is nothing missing in their lives.” The audience erupts in applause, some even rising to their feet in profound approval.

Imagine. A community of children with nothing missing in their lives.

The notes on the broken parking meters shouldn’t irk me as they do, but when you have lived in Scarsdale—when you have emerged from the belly of the beast—you see a Mercedes and a Jaguar begging for mercy in the eyes of a greater power and the scene takes on a certain significance.

They ask, “Will you raise your children in Scarsdale?” A terse response will betray your convictions. So pause before answering, mull the question over. Weigh the pros and cons. Invent the pros if you must. Better, even, to say you can’t be sure than to answer negatively with any discernable confidence. Avoid the heresy.

They ask, “Will you raise your children in Scarsdale?” No.

The question is a bit of an obsession among residents of Scarsdale, no doubt in search of some validation. But living in Scarsdale, a Westchester County suburb just north of New York City, is an exercise in leaving the place. And returning—to raise one’s children, no less—is the moral equivalent of recidivism.

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Tue, 20 Jan 2004 06:11:27 GMT

We exhaled as seriously as we inhaled.

The smoke, pouring from our nostrils with a certain conviction, would loiter above the tight circle we formed in the far corner of an open field, leaving a hazy canopy over our evening. From below the smoke, the Maine night sky appeared closer and solemn, and after the first hit, no one could quite discern when the wonder of the miasma gave way to the high of the cannabis.

In the daylight, campers played soccer here. They squealed.

We spent much of our time after hours, after putting the children to bed, smoking on the field or else taking shots of cheap vodka from plastic water bottles. Sufficiently high or inebriated or both, we would sojourn—to our cabins or the lake or the fire—and let the sky fill in for feeling.

Feels Like Crap

The ungodly cold spell which descended upon the Northeast last week and produced inhumane temperatures in Cambridge and elsewhere has mercifully come to an end. I say "mercifully" because, sure, it's nice to be out of the cold, but also because it means an end to those mind-boggling and asinine wind-chill estimations. As in, the temperature is eight degrees, but with the wind chill, it feels like negative four.

Feels like? The weather constantly measured in terms not of the actual temperature, but of what the temperature feels like. Sounds very postmodern to me.

Wind chill is a tremendous crock devised by meteoroligists to add excitement to the weather. Eight degrees isn't cold enough? Must we really formulate some artificially-deflated temperature to infuse the cold snap with a little more pizzazz? Just give me the raw figures, and I'll let you know what it feels like.

Adam Nagourney, Colleagues Lose Iowa Caucus

The biggest loser in tonight's Iowa Caucus is not Dick Gephardt or Howard Dean, but the national media, which has seen its predetermined route to the Democratic nomination turned on its side in one tumultuous week.

Dean's fall from "first" in the media's analysis to third in the actual Iowa voting tonight has flabbergasted the journalistic heavyweights, who have yet to put forth an explanation—real or imagined—for the ascension of John Kerry and John Edwards.

Stumbling into tonight's event, Adam Nagourney issued this concession of defeat in the headline of his Sunday Times dispatch: "As Iowa Caucuses Near, Crystal Ball Gets Cloudy." Really? I had no idea Nagourney had access to a crystal ball. But considering his December 9 labeling of Dean as "the overwhelming favorite to win his party's nomination," maybe Nagourney's crystal ball was never really all that clear?

But don't ask the old favorite R.W. Apple, Jr. to stick his foot in his mouth and reneg on this lede sentence in the Times of the very same day:

Al Gore's endorsement confirms the status of Howard Dean as that rarest of animals in the jungle of presidential nominating politics: an insurgent front-runner.

Over the blogosphere, as I noted back then, Dean was similarly coronated as the inevitable Democratic nominee. Writing on the day of Gore's endorsement, American Prospect writing fellow Matthew Yglesias made this pronouncement in his personal blog, echoing many of his colleagues:

Do note that, much as Dean's nomination is inevitable, it is also inevitable that at some point in the not-too-distant future, his nomination will cease to look inevitable. Nevertheless, it will still be inevitable as has been clear for some time.

So is this that moment? Or was the entire field of political journalism just too quick to jump on Dean as the "inevitable" nominee? Tonight, on the American Prospect blog, Yglesisas isn't answering those questions, but he's still trying to explain how Dean could "cruise to the nomination." Cruising certainly sounds more comfy than "wrapping up the nomination" [Noam Scheiber, Dec. 8], "shedding the last vestiges of insurgency" [Ryan Lizza, Nov. 13], or conducting "a takeover of the Democratic Party" [Everett Ehrlich, Dec. 14]. But, in the end, the pundits and analysts seem as far off-base as their broadsheet companions.

Update: Yglesias this morning: "Howard Dean is still inevitable. [...] Unless I'm wrong." [2:38 PM]

But there's still a job to be done, and Adam Nagourney is still one of the men doing it. So take a look at the second graph in his Iowa write-up for tomorrow's Times:

Senator John Edwards of North Carolina came in second, catapulting him into the first tier of contenders in a showing that ended up pushing Dr. Dean into third place.

This is by no means a surprising characterization, but I object to the wording on principle. Indeed, something else was resposible for "catapulting [Edwards] into the first tier of contenders," and that something else lead to his second-place finish tonight. To lay Edwards' rise on the back of the Iowa Caucus is lazy journalism; the senator has been rising all week. Nagourney's job is to figure out why, not lean back on self-perpetuating discussions of momentum.

And as journalists begin to do their job, electability will likely emerge as the media's choice for key political factor. This trend has certainly begun. Nagourney hinted at it in his "crystal ball" piece, and The Washington Post, Des Moines Register, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune have all weighed in on the issue, according to a nice analysis by Thomas Lang at the Columbia Journalism Review's new—and insightful—Campaign Desk blog, an ongoing critique of political media coverage.

Harping on electability, though, is a risky venture, although not an altogether objectionable one. Dean fans will surely begrudge any movement towards painting the election in terms of ability to defeat President Bush. They have complained about this already, Daniel Okrent reports in his Times public editor column Sunday. (Incidentally, though I advocated for Okrent to address the Times political coverage, his analysis—while seemingly correct in the scope it covers—ultimately lets the Washington desk off the hook for some seriously problematic reporting.)

In any event, I would point once again to the quite remarkable piece by Jay Rosen at PressThink on the "horse race" and "inside baseball" coverage of the Democratic primary. As Rosen observes, many of the ills of campaign reporting are a result of journalists too-far embedded in the campaign. The best insights often results when one is willing to take a step back.

Casual Observations on the Democratic Primary

♦ From the don't-count-Dean-out department, John Nichols wrote-up "Dean's Fifty-State Strategy" in the latest Nation (before the Kerry/Edwards upsurge), and I think it's still an important read on two counts. First, Nichols gives the Dean camp a lot of credit for their broad organization outside of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, where the delegates are more numerous and, therefore, perhaps more important. Second, even if Dean's campaign is fatally stumbling now, the fifty-state perspective—an example, I think, of taking a step back—could be key for any of the other Democratic contenders.

♦ William Saletan, who blogged the Caucus tonight and has been providing excellent pieces for Slate in advance of today's event, has a great taste-of-your-own-medicine bit on Dean's poor performance. Here's the paradoxical paragraph of analysis from tonight:

The establishment failed. Dean went around all year attacking the Washington Democratic establishment. He said it was impotent and had to be thrown aside. I couldn't figure out who the establishment was, till it started lining up behind Dean: Gore, Bill Bradley, Tom Harkin, Jimmy Carter … Dean even ended up with more congressional endorsements than Gephardt, who led the House Democrats for more than a decade. Dean's answer to every gaffe or unpleasant revelation was to trot out another endorsement from the establishment. But he was right: The establishment proved impotent, and tonight it was thrown aside.

♦ For whatever reason, tradition was high on the mind of some journalists, especially at the Times, in advance of the Iowa Caucus. Yesterday, we had Todd S. Purdum on the history of the event since Jimmy Carter put it on the map. Tomorrow, Purdum chimes in again with a piece titled, "Shattering Iowa Myths." Look for phrases like "tradition holds," "since 1972," and "famously independent-minded," in reference to both Iowa and New Hampshire. But Joshua Micah Marshall, writing at his Talking Points Memo last year, put it quite well with this comment:

And as far as analogies to previous election cycles, I'm reminded of a line from the great historian Edmund Morgan who once wrote: (and I'm roughly paraphrasing here) History never repeats itself. It only seems like it does to those who don't know the details.

♦ And I would be remiss not to mention that before Dick Gephardt officially drops out of the race, he really ought to remind us all how winning the Iowa Caucus—as he did in 1988—does not guarantee the nomination by any means. And perhaps John McCain could offer similarly cautionary words in advance of the New Hampshire primary.

The Report on Drudge

As a long-time fan of Matt Drudge (in some respects), I am loathe to criticize his work, but Drudge's importance in the 2004 campaign has grown to a point where his sham tactics deserve rebuke.

Drudge's work, in leaking select excerpts of the script, was largely responsible for the cancellation of The Reagans on CBS. (Although CBS has recently shown that its commitment to the right is plenty strong without Drudge's help.) In any event, since the Reagan episode, Drudge has emerged as the leading disseminator of political slime material, essentially rendering him the go-to guy for releasing attacks on your opponents. (This isn't new, surely, but it's more important considering the upcoming election.)

Drudge "uncovered" widely-available (on the Internet) but previously-unreported testimony by Wesley Clark to the House Armed Services Committee that allegedly included an endorsement of the war in Iraq by the former general. According to a summarial report on Campaign Desk, the Associated Press, Reuters, and The Washington Times all picked up Drudge's quotes without question. And it took some debunking by Knight Ridder and Joshua Micah Marshall to reveal that, among other things, Drudge had strung together quotes with ellipses which replaced 11,500 words and took material out-of-order. A full reading of the testimony reveals that Clark did not endorse the war in Iraq, but that didn't stop the Lieberman campaign from jumping on Clark in a press release following Drudge's "world exclusive."

He has since gone after John Kerry for allegedly advocating to gut the Agriculture Department, without providing context—or a transcript, for that matter—for the remarks. The Dean camp jumped on that one and immediately criticized Kerry without any verification.

Drudge does not run corrections.

Closing a 30-Page Chapter on My Life

The autobiography is finished. The passage with which I begin this entry is the first bit of the whole work, which I eventually deemed a memoir. The title is Put Money In...Knob Won't Turn...Machine Broke. The rest of the memoir is as incomprehensible. But it's done, and I am done with the first semester (albeit tardily compared to my peers). I am heading home on Wednesday and won't return to school until February 3.

As for my sleeping, it is relatively back to normal. But I am happy to report that I attended breakfast five mornings in a row over the past hellish week. What a meal, breakfast, especially on no sleep. The eggs take on some purpose, I think, beyond nurishment. And the waffles are particularly divine.

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Wed, 14 Jan 2004 05:38:50 GMT

Weigh the pros and cons. Invent the pros if you must.

Politics of the Absurd

Dean Goes on Offensive in Iowa [The Washington Post, Jan. 13]

Surges by Rivals Put Dean on the Defensive in Iowa [The New York Times, Jan. 13]

Howard Dean is playing offense and defense at the same time! And the NFL conference championship games aren't until the weekend. I thought Joe Trippi's title was campaign manager, not offensive coördinator. Who's the special teams coach? (Article links via James Taranto.)

Notwithstanding Dean's political strategies in Iowa (especially considering he spent today in Vermont), The New York Times has unveiled another piece of sham political journalism indicting the former governor for his staid wardrobe:

Criticized for his imbalances of opinion — reversing his view on free trade, evincing support for the Iraq war resolution while maintaining an antiwar platform — Dr. Dean has remained consistent in his dress, while his opponents have made greater use of the politician's closet.

I alluded earlier to Paul Krugman's new year's resolution column at the end of 2003, which foremost urged political reporters: "Don't talk about clothes." As Krugman explained:

I don't know why some journalists seem so concerned about politicians' clothes as opposed to, say, their policy proposals. But unless you're a fashion reporter, obsessing about clothes is an insult to your readers' intelligence.

Well, to be fair, Ginia Bellafante, who penned this latest stingy dispatch for the Times, is a fashion reporter. But her obsession over the candidates' clothes is still an insult to readers and a waste of precious space in the newspaper. Or is the lesson that political journalism is too shallow a genre to justify the resources devoted to it? Surely, discussing which candidate is "angrier" (as The Boston Globe did this morning) is just as worthless as discussing which candidate looks better in plaid.

In the most self-evidently ridiculous element of the Times clothing story, the caption for a picture of John Kerry dressed in his leather air force jacket reads, "Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts casually deemphasizes his wealth." And the failure of Joe Lieberman's campaign to gain steam is attributed succinctly to the senator's orthodox wardrobe:

"Middle America" is not the message instantly conveyed by the V-neck sweaters favored by Joseph I. Lieberman, who has been concentrating his campaign efforts in New Hampshire. Senator Lieberman has appeared in the sort with necklines high up to the collarbone. It is disconcertingly fashion-forward for a man of his devout faith and seriousness — a look more befitting a candidate who might do his best stump work at an East Hampton fund-raiser.

One can only hope Daniel Okrent will take the Times Washington desk to task in his public editor column this Sunday. (That, or the terribly posed photograph in the Metro Section's atrocious Jan. 11 article on teenagers in the New Jersey suburbs spending their evenings in Manhattan. Do they always spend their time staring at the lights?)

But if Okrent is to tackle the Times political team, he would have to start near the top with senior political reporter Adam Nagourney, who has the best sources in D.C. and the most disappointing articles in the newspaper. His latest piece, the "defense" version of Dean's Iowa strategy, ledes with this thesis:

In the closing days before the Iowa caucuses here, Howard Dean has slipped into turbulent territory, facing challenges in both Iowa and New Hampshire, the two states where he is looking to nail down the nomination with early victories.

Okay, but what evidence does Nagourney put forth? First, Dean's "faltering performance in a televised debate Sunday" and, second, The Des Moines Register's page-one article describing Dean as "on the defensive." His two major pieces of evidence are media coverage! And, once again, media analysis stems from other media analysis. Political journalism, especially at the Times, perpetuates itself and falls flat upon closer examination. But how long until a writer at The Des Moines Register reports that Dean's campaign has been to said to have "slipped into turbulent territory"?

The Political Race

Much has been made of Al Sharpton's criticism on Sunday of Howard Dean's all-white, all-the-time cabinet while governor of Vermont. First, it should be noted that the storyline coming out of the Iowa Brown and Black Presidential Forum was what journalists described as a veritable spat over racial issues. I didn't see that. I saw a debate over a number of issues, with some of the most abrasive exchanges focusing on immigration and tort reform. Sharpton's challenge was important, but it didn't rise to the level portrayed in the media. (The Times version of Sharpton saying "No, your cabinet" includes a telling—and completely arbitrary—exclamation point: "No, your cabinet!")

That said, I agree with Sharpton's admonition that Dean ought give some indication that his position on racial issues extends beyond rhetoric. "I will take a back seat to no one in my commitment to civil rights in America," Dean said, without explaining further what his commitment would entail. Aside from eliciting Sharpton's scorn, Dean's comment must have upset President Bush, who, according to Lloyd Grove in the Daily News, is quoted in the upcoming New Yorker as claiming, "No President has ever done more for human rights than I have." Certainly, Dean can not be accused of that level of dishonesty.

But Dean—and, to be fair, at least five of his fellow candidates—can be accused of a less-than-full commitment to civil rights. Consider the insightful comment by Sharpton at Sunday's debate:

We still have institutional discrimination in this country, which is worse than blatant discrimination. What is hurting us is that 50 years ago, we had to watch out for people with white sheets. Now they have on pinstripe suits.

Let's not get mired in a discussion of whether present-day racism is necessarily worse than the racism of 50 years ago. Sharpton's real point is that today's racism is different. An unjust penal regime—and particularly biased drug laws—have fashioned American prisons into a modern version of slavery. Free-market capitalism has waged all-out war upon the nation's poor, and institutional disregard for social welfare programs has produced the most wretched rural ghettos in American history.

If the Democratic candidates can't approach these issues—and, Kucinich, Moseley Braun, and Sharpton excluded, they won't—then they can't claim any true commitment to civil rights. Foreign policy and taxes may be the key issues of this campaign, but they are not the key issues of this nation.

Time Warp

I have completely inverted my sleeping pattern. Last night, I wrote through the evening and into the morning, went to breakfast, handed in a paper, and returned to my room to sleep from 9:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. Now, I'm sort of stuck in this schedule, so I will likely repeat today's arrangement until further notice. The autobiography is due on Friday, and my last paper is due on Saturday, the day of my one and only final exam. So Sunday shall truly be the day of rest.

Sunday, January 11, 2004

Sun, 11 Jan 2004 07:43:24 GMT

The tones of observation impede reflection, but concession is most critical.

Politics of the Absurd

Is postmodernism just modernism in drag? [Michael Eric Dyson]

The New York Times seemed almost to be mocking itself Friday morning when its lead political dispatch began, "Gen. Wesley K. Clark has begun to show a softer side." The entire article, "Seeking Women's Votes, Clark Changes His Style," is a prime example of sham political journalism. By the second paragraph, reporter Edward Wyatt had already violated Times columnist Paul Krugman's first new year's resolution on Washington reporting: "Don't talk about clothes." But Wyatt couldn't help it:

Gone are his navy blue suit, red tie and loafers, replaced by argyle sweaters, corduroys and duck boots.

So, general, tell me, who are you wearing? The real farce of Wyatt's report, however, was its unrelenting conceit that the Times was merely reporting on a trend, not starting one on its own. Yet until Clark's "softer side" was splashed across the front page of the Times, the candidate could very well have been courting the votes of tropical sea turtles for all the significance it would have had on the primary campaign. Only until the Times—or one of its competitors—reports on an angle of the campaign does it become a viable storyline. If The Washington Post decides Howard Dean is "angry," then the storyline sticks, and Dean is the angry candidate.

But the Times, seeking to play the role of detached observer, maintains a certain amusing charade. "The efforts are intended to lessen the potential vulnerability for the general," writes Wyatt in Friday's article. But, come on, what are "the efforts" to which Wyatt refers? Could those "efforts" be getting the Times to report on the general's new love for women? The Times plays an irreparable role in its political coverage of this nature but refuses to acknowledge as much.

Professor Jay Rosen at NYU delves into the fallacies of political journalism in an excellent piece on his blog, Pressthink. Writing with his deft sense of sarcasm, Rosen observes:

In a horse race world; polls are a baseline reality. They can tell you who's ahead but not why. And they are mute on a favorite horse race question: how things are going to "play out from here," as reporters and pundits say. For that we need savvy analysis, and this especially means the view of insiders, the savviest of all.

Right there is the connection between the horse race—a master narrative—and "inside baseball," which is a reporting method. The insiders know the horse race best, they understand how Things Play Out. In his sources, statements, and overall style, Adam Nagourney of the Times Washington bureau—well respected among peers for his experience and knowledge of the game—is as inside as they get.

And so in Sunday's Times, Nagourney puts forth a page one, column one story on the Iowa Caucus filled with polls, "inside baseball," and horse race terminology. Again, the article fails to acknowledge the newspaper's own role in the primaries:

The competition here has been complicated by spirited bids by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, each of whom has calculated that coming in second, or perhaps third, in Iowa would lift his candidacy going into the New Hampshire primary a week later.

That may be true, but if a candidate's showing in Iowa is going to "lift" any of the campaigns, then it will be soley the media's work. Political journalists are the ones who salivate over the it's-all-about-momentum primaries because they get to decide who has the momentum. Consider another Nagourney article from this week entitled, "In Democratic Pack, the Race Is on for No. 3 and Maybe No. 4." Now, in his Sunday dispatch, Nagourney reports that the candidates are looking for a second- or third-place finish because those spots are so important . . . because he wrote about it on Tuesday.

Now, Gen. Clark—who, by the way, has guaranteed no terrorist attacks during his presidency—is the subject of Times columnist Maureen Dowd's Sunday column:

Is there anything more annoying than argyle? Maybe Lamar Alexander's red plaid shirt. Maybe celebrities sporting red Kabbalah strings.

Dowd, in her fashion critique, makes no mention of Clark's terrorism-free-with-me remarks. But, then again, Dowd is supposed to be the postmodern columnist. But is the Times political desk now also a bastion of postmodernism?

If so, they might as well go ahead and ask the hard-hitting postmodern political questions, like "Which Democratic primary candidate are you . . . in bed?" Nerve poses the query and provides a handy quiz for readers to discover whether they are "missonary-style" Howard Dean or more of a Carol Moseley Braun, "with dreams of simultaneous orgasms and loving caresses."

Bad Trend Alert: Trend Alerts

When The New York Times reported last month on a new trend of parents and children in the same house communicating via instant messages, I was stunned. Well, first, I had to pause the IM conversation I was having with my roommate ten feet away. Then I was stunned.

Just because the Times found a few families who talk over the Internet doesn't make it a trend, I thought to myself. Then I composed an IM with that thought—and a link to the article—and sent it over to my roommate, still ten feet away from me. (In my defense, let me say that there is a very sturdy wall between the two of us.) And still, despite my own transgression, it seemed rather dubious for Times reporter John Schwartz to claim:

And now, as families own more than one computer, the machines spread beyond the den and home networks relying on wireless connections become increasingly popular, instant messaging is taking root within the home itself.

Instant messaging hasn't taken root within my home. It hasn't taken root in your home, either, if you're one of the many people I informally surveyed when the article ran in the Times. And to be honest, it hasn't even taken root in my door room, where my roommates and I are still more inclined to walk the ten feet than transcend the distance digitally. But once the Times declares a trend (as in the above discussion of political trends), is it automatically so?

And is the converse true? Is there no trend until the Times declares its existence? If so, then Emily Nussbaum's New York Times Magazine article in Sunday's paper has propelled teenage blogging from the realm of small-time hobby to full-scale trend. The piece is a rather meager effort to assess the growing world of young diarists on sites like LiveJournal, Xanga, and Blogger. Nussbaum treads on shaky ground when she writes of "angstier-than-though exhibitionalism" and a "high-school Sylvia Plath." Still, she exhibits an admirable grasp over the "trend," even if she doesn't ever mention the particular populartity of such sites among Asian teenagers.

Nussbaum also quotes anonymously from the Xanga site of Scarsdale High School junior Joe Kardon. She writes of the site, "In J.K.'s diary, revelations of insecurity alternate with chest-beating bombast, juvenile jokes and self-mocking claims of sexual prowess." What would your blog be, if it were a sentence?

I don't understand, though, why Nussbaum insists on using initials like J. and M. Kardon's site, for one, identifies himself by his full name. And in any event, these are public weblogs; privacy goes out the door when you click "submit."

Of course, Nussbaum isn't trying to blow the roof off the personal crises of select American teenagers. She's just trying to assess a trend. And she does so such with graceful tact that one must wonder whether Nussbaum may have—in the words of the famous journalism no-no—gotten too close to her subject. It's easy to imagine Nussbaum scouring LiveJournal and Xanga sites late into the night, delving into the illicit affairs of teenagers she knows only by their profile pictures or blog tagline. Still, on the Internet, you can only get so close.

To quibble, the word "angst"—and its variations, "angsty" and "angstier"—appear three times in Nussbaum's article, and that's three times too many. At this point, "angst," inevitably preceded by the adjective "teenage," is a weightless word. Besides, it makes me nervous and self-conscious.

On another subject, The Washington Post is nervous about lesbians running loose in American high schools. An attempt to look at bisexual girls and their motivations, the article is instead an insult to thinking female teenagers everywhere. It takes just five paragraphs for Post reporter Laura Sessions Stepp to mention "Britney and Madonna," and tATu is noted even before that. And here's the befuddling second paragraph:

You can see this new trend on Friday nights outside Union Station, sweethearts from high schools around the Washington area, some locking lips, others hanging out in their tight blue jeans and puffy winter parkas, talking on their cell phones.

I contend this isn't a "new trend," but even the use of the word "trend" seeks to undermine the subject in question. Sure, some people may exploit sexuality for popularity, but Stepp implies that all young bisexual females are looking for attention or merely jaded by heterosexual relationships gone awry. Either that, Stepp says, or it's all a reaction to Kissing Jessica Stein and Karen's "14-second kiss on the straight Grace" on an episode of Will & Grace.

Such analysis is laughable. So is this paragraph late in Stepp's article:

But that was then and this is now, a politically charged, risk-averse time when Americans crave definition in order to contain what they perceive to be chaos. A loose definition of female-female love makes people especially uncomfortable.

Huh? Stepp's unattributed assertion may be The Washington Post line on liberated sexuality. (And even Maureen Dowd plays a similar card on this topic.) But for the females "locking lips" outside Union Station—and anyone interested in forgoing societal directives in this "risk-averse time"—bisexuality is no trend; it's transcendence.

More Politics of the Absurd

Democrats Flood Iowa With Ground Troops;
Unprecedented Numbers Deployed for Caucuses
[The Washington Post, Jan. 11]

So much for standing to the left of Bush on the use of force.

Haven't we already given money to rich people . . . Shouldn't we be giving money to the middle? [President Bush, according to Ron Suskind]

Suskind's new book, The Price of Loyalty, reveals quite a few disturbing anecdotes from the Bush White House, culled largely from access provided by former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill. Among the least surprising but most potentially damaging is O'Neill's assertion that an invasion of Iraq was in the works from the first day of the Bush administration, well before Sept. 11, 2001:

From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go. For me, the notion of preemption—that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do—is a really huge leap.

The Washington Post story gets better from there:

O'Neill is quoted in the book as saying that in early discussions at a National Security Council meeting he attended, no official questioned why Iraq should be invaded.

"It was all about finding a way to do it," O'Neill said. "That was the tone of it. The president saying, 'Go find me a way to do this.'" [...]

Suskind said one Pentagon document discussed contractors in 30 or 40 countries that might be interested in Iraq's oil.

John Marshall offers a good twist on O'Neill's honorable whistleblowing and the subsequent media coverage:

More broadly, though, of course this is true. This is getting a lot of attention and it should. But it is also an example of the common pattern by which open secrets only get discussed by the press once a prominent person states them publicly.

So when is someone prominent going to start making the right comments about the president's plan to inhabit the moon and place a man on Mars? It does not take a rocket scientist to think of what $450 billion—the price tag back when Bush's father first thought about doing this—could do for us back here on Earth. Space exploration is cool, but even scientific research hardly justifies sending so much money out into the universe. It's downright callous.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in protesting the war in Vietnam, spoke of a need to clean up our own home before invading others. "They must see Americans as strange liberators," King said of the Vietnamese. And it was a good argument, one which applies even to the current war in Iraq. But whatever one may think of King's assessment of hypocritical foreign policy, surely his comments apply to space travel. Before we go off to explore the moon again, we really ought to clean up a few things here first.

Of course, this is just election strategy, just like the president's Mexican immigrant reform proposal. Not coincidentally, both election-year initiatives appeal to the pesky state of Florida, where naturalized Hispanic immigrants and workers at Cape Canaveral both vote. Never mind that the immigrant reform proposal is a sham that will never get through Congress in its current form. (Elizabeth Bumiller was incorrect to say the plan "effectively amounts to an amnesty program" in the Times lead story.) And never mind that we won't be blasting off before Election Day. It still never hurts—politcally—to aim for the heavens.

Dispatch From Cambridge

I've been off-and-on reading The Harvard Strike, a chronicle of the 1969 University Hall occupation and subsequent student strike. Compare that atmosphere to the one described by senior Beccah Golubock Watson in her Newsweek report on the campus political climate. (Thanks to Daniel for the link.) Watson writes:

For a brief moment, apathetic Harvard had become activist Harvard again. Today chaos may rule the day in Iraq, but things here have gotten pretty sedate again. Instead of protesting the war, students are dressing up and going to intimate "Evenings With the Candidates" in Harvard houses and swooning for the cameras at tapings of Chris Matthews's "Hardball Goes to Harvard" series. Kids who briefly muddied their feet and chanted against the war are now polishing their shoes and smiling noncommittally at the candidates. [...]

So even as the country faces grave issues of war and peace, Harvard students are more worked up about what's on the dining-hall menu than they are about the White House race. Personally, I'm keeping my hopes up for a revival of passionate political activism. At cynical Harvard, optimism is an act of rebellion in and of itself.

That seems a fair assessment. Still, don't discount the power of cynicism. Optimists may be in the minority here, but they aren't the ones likely to knock down the doors of Massachusetts Hall and overturn the University. If Watson's "revival of passionate political activism" is ever to happen on this campus, it will have to find its roots in the current steadfast mindsets of the student body. As the authors of The Harvard Strike note, "You can always tell a Harvard man—but you can't tell him much."

On a more banal note, I've been busy writing up the feature story on The Crimson's impending redesign and switch to color publication. The article will appear in Monday's inaugural color issue.

Update: The article appeared this morning. [Mon., 11:24 AM]

And, oh yes, the autobiography continues to eat up my time and frustrate me to no end. Choosing a beginning, for example, takes on much more weight than for any other paper I've written. It's not just an academic question, but a personal one as well.

Monday, January 05, 2004

Mon, 05 Jan 2004 21:24:47 GMT

A terse repsonse will betray your convictions.

Vernacular Knickknacks

Lake Superior State University has released its annual list of banished words, which has unofficially stricken hundreds of phrases expressions and words from the English language since 1976. Past victims include "vast majority" (1995), "in the public interest" (1980), and "weapons of mass destruction" (2003). (A few readers of this space will smile at the thrice-banishment of "basically" (1984, 1986, 1993) and frown upon the 2002 prohibition of "forseeable future.")

This year, "metrosexual," "bling-bling," and "smoking gun" are among the words and phrases cast out of the American vernacular. Good riddance. Matt Haber in Nerve previously attacked "metrosexual" as a meaningless term coöpted by corporate interests, and I'll ditto that. Metrosexuality is a trend created entirely by the glossy media. And while we're banishing "bling-bling," can we get rid of the suffix "izzle" as well? (As in, fo shizzle my nizzle.) It's such manufactured crap—an easy laugh at the expense of honest culture. And since we never found any "smoking gun," I concur with the university's decision to get rid of the term altogether. In the Iraq war category, they've also banished "embedded journalist," "shock and awe," and "captured alive," noting of the last phrase that nobody would ever claim to have captured a corpse. "All words rhyming with Iraq" have also been stricken, although they use the American pronunciation of Iraq (as in, rhymes with "attack"), so I can still use my favorite, caught between Iraq and a hard place.

Speaking of which, I notice the university has never banished one of the language's most upsetting phrases: "bad pun." It's redundant. Every pun is bad, and that's why I love them so much. On a separate note, I'd also like to nominate for banishment the phrase "hastily arranged news conference" and its variations. Journalists use the term every time a press conference is held on short notice, but the wording implies chaos and disorder which rarely exists. Worst of all, the phrase is tired and overused. Next time, let's just have a press conference called on short notice.

Of course, the best part of this annual list is the Pandora's box which it opens. So, anyone have some other nominations for word banishment?

As previously discussed, there are certain words the House of Representatives would like to see banished from the nation's airwaves, including "the words 'shit', 'piss', 'fuck', 'cunt', 'asshole', and the phrases 'cock sucker', 'mother fucker', and 'ass hole.'" Nevertheless, it was a great year for the word "fuck." Joe Lieberman damn near said the fucking word live on television during a political debate in September. "In the Bush administration, the foxes are guarding the foxes and the middle-class hens are getting plucked," Lieberman said. "I want to make clear I said plucked." That was loud and clear, and so was John Kerry's startling and explicit "fuck" uttered during an interview with Rolling Stone in December.

Wesley Clark tried later in the month to follow up with his own rendition of a potty mouth, saying that if anyone ever questions his patriotism or military service, "I'll beat the shit out of them." But the story made a diminutive splash and quickly fell into the dregs of political history along with such items as President Bush's now paltry "major league asshole" aside in 2000. Clearly, only a good "fuck" retains the power to shock American audiences.

Which was precisely the point of the teacher in Chantilly, Va. who told his students last year to go home and say "fuck you" ten thousand times in preparation for their reading of Catcher in the Rye. Indeed, 2003 saw "fuck" crawl further into the foreground of daily life. A Lexis-Nexis search of major papers last year reveals a 25 percent increase in instances of the word "fuck" from 2002. A Google search for "fuck" returns more than 36 million results. As Holden Caufield says, "If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the 'Fuck You' signs in the world. It's impossible."

Politics of the Absurd

World Almanac & Book of Facts? Yeah, right. More like Word Almanac & Terrorist Weapon. That is, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation, which sent out warning to authorities over the holiday season to look out for people carrying almanacs, the Associated Press reports. "I don't think anyone would consider us a harmful entity," the senior editor of The World Almanac told the A.P.

We've got flight cancellations due to overzealous and incorrect intelligence on possible terrorists, and we've got law enforcement officials assigned to protect the homeland looking for people carrying almanacs. And now all this incompetency (or is it cunning electoral strategy?) is being applied to serious violations of civil liberties in the form of fingerprinting and photo-taking at our nation's borders.

But little could be more absurd than the question asked of Dennis Kucinich at yesterday's Democratic presidential debate in Iowa. William Saletan in Slate, gives it his "worst question" award and writes:

Moderator Paul Anger to Kucinich: "Given your personal decision not to consume animal products, how can you assure livestock producers you will be an advocate for them as president?" (Hypothetical follow-up to Lieberman: "Given your personal decision not to accept Jesus as your savior, how can you assure Christians you will be an advocate for them as president?")

But Kucinich deftly deflected that question as well as that pesky electability query which popped up later and led to the best line of the debate:

[Question:] I talked to a lot of Democrats who say they really like what you have to say, but they don't think you're electable.

[Kucinich:] Well, you know, I'm electable if you vote for me.

Kucinich would—hands down—be the winner of yesterday's debate if he didn't . . . uhh . . . stand a chance in hell of winning the nomination. (He's still got my vote in New York, though.) So in the absence of a Kucinich victory yesterday, the honor must go to Howard Dean, who starred as the Democratic punching bag and emerged ever the front-runner. When given the opportunity to question a fellow candidate, four of Dean's six opponents (Clark and Sharpton weren't there) directed their questions at the former Vermont governor. How silly is that? None of the questions were new or otherwise especially tricky, and Dean, who had prepared answers for all of them, ended up with significantly more airtime than his rivals. That's bad strategy. (See John Edwards for good strategy. With a third-place Iowa finish on his mind, he went after Dick Gephardt during the question-your-opponent festivities. And he did it respectably, too. Very vice-presidential, if you ask me.)

But the best lesson from yesterday's debate was extra-political. The format constructed by The Des-Moines Register allowed the candidates to spar on stage unlike previous debates. Two Democrats would often engage back-and-forth for a good minute before moderator Paul Anger would intervene. "We'll ask you take this outside if you need to," Anger told Dean and Lieberman after one of the spats. And what was the result of this "schoolyard rumble," as an account in the Times deemed it? Carol Moseley Braun—the only one who refused to engage in the rumble—was significantly shortchanged in terms of airtime. She was, not coincidentally, the only woman on stage.

And finally, the definition of absurdity:

Pat Robertson: God Says Bush Will Win in 2004 [Associated Press]

Let us pray.

Political Race

Howard Dean is receiving heat for this comment to Derrick Z. Jackson in The Boston Globe: "Dealing with race is about educating white folks." James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal thinks the statement is so ridiculous it speaks for itself, and Mickey Kaus lets Missy Elliott serve as Exhibit A as to why, in fact, Blacks are the ones who need to be educated about race. Both approaches are utterly ignorant. Surely, both races could use a little education on the topic of race, but I like Dean's approach here, especially when you read the whole quote. (Daniel Okrent taught me this.) Dean said:

Dealing with race is about educating white folks. Not because white people are worse than black people about race but because whites are in the majority, and therefore the behavior of whites has a much bigger influence on hiring practices and so forth and so on than the behavior of African-Americans.

That qualifies as intelligent discourse on race, the likes of which Washington hasn't seen since the Clinton administration. I understand the concerns of those like Al Sharpton, who see Dean as an elite Caucasion golden boy. (See the Dean Internet campaign. See all the White faces at your local Dean meet-up.) So, fair or not, Dean will never achieve the same legitimacy as Clinton on issues of race. But if he continues speaking like this, he might be able to do far more for Blacks than Clinton ever did.

And on the topic of Black studies, if this excerpt from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s new book is an indication of the work as a whole, then I'll have to think twice about purchasing it. Although, while Samuel L. Jackson says nothing of use, he does say something. And anything that man touches is gold. (Except for Basic, which was admittedly terrible.)

Year-End Lists

Louis Menand writes eloquently in The New Yorker against the glut of year-end "best-of" lists in which critics of all varieties can not help but indulge. Menand writes:

The publication of multiple ten-best lists is probably a well-intentioned effort to embrace the principle of pluralism, and to make a democratic acknowledgment that taste is, after all, a personal and subjective matter. The effort is mistaken. Pluralism and democracy are fine things, but they have no place in the evaluation and consumption of pop culture, especially today, when, all around us, the sea is rising. The critic is the dolphin who can take us over the waves. The image is from Plato, or, if it wasn’t Plato, one of the other top guys.

Professor Menand's is a classical interpretation, certainly. In a hyper-democratic media, anyone can produce any sort of top-whatever list and disseminate it to an unlimited audience. That is, in part, the splendor—and fallacy—of the blogosphere, for instance. Everyone's a journalist, everyone's a philosopher, and everyone's a critic. But only a small number get to reject it all in the pages of The New Yorker. (Nevertheless, there's also some wonderful banter on this topic in Slate.)

"Contentment Today Is Historically High"

A new Gallup Poll has declared that 55 percent of Americans are "very happy," and 40 percent are "fairly happy." Only 4 percent are "not too happy." Married people are happier than single people. Republicans are happier than Democrats. And everyone, it seems, is happier than me. Now, that's not supposed to be a pity line or anything. (And as for my depressing end-of-year post, I'm "happy" to report that I've been feeling more chipper since.) I'm merely commenting on how 95 percent of Americans could be very or fairly happy. That's absurd and must reflect this society's intolerance for unhappiness. No doubt some of those surveyed by Gallup chose to lie and say they were happy rather than admitting to their unhappiness. Hell, upwards of ten percent of Americans suffer from depression. Maybe they were too depressed to pick up the phone. Or maybe that's it: Of course all the people surveyed by Gallup were happy. They all own phones.