Bush and Kerry, a Running Gag on Late Night
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 22, 2004; Page C01
George Bush still wears a dunce cap.
And John Kerry is one strange-looking dude.
That, at least, is the way late-night comedians are portraying the presidential rivals.
"President Bush admitted that his prewar intelligence wasn't what it should have been," Jay Leno said. "We knew that when we elected him."
As for Kerry, "his poll numbers are moving, donations are moving, endorsements are moving," Leno said. "The only thing not moving about John Kerry -- his hair. His hair does not move."
Scoff if you must, but the musings of Leno, David Letterman, Jon Stewart and Conan O'Brien may have as much to do with shaping the candidates' public personas as a ton of newspaper stories, magazine features and cable arguments. Plus, not everyone watches Rather, Brokaw, Jennings and Lehrer.
In Washington, of course, everything must be studied and scrutinized. So the Center for Media and Public Affairs has divined that Bush remains the biggest late-night target -- the butt of 213 jokes from Jan. 1 through March 9 -- compared with 53 for Kerry (who barely beat the 43 jibes aimed at Dennis Kucinich). Even in February, when Kerry was surging to the nomination, it was Bush hands down, 121 to 25.
"The president will always be the biggest butt of the jokesters -- he's the political-humor J. Lo," the center's Matthew Felling says.
But this is one contest where winning amounts to losing: 94 percent of the jokes about intelligence, and 89 percent about honesty, involved the president. Kerry drew nearly half the cracks aimed at a candidate's appearance. Leno said that Senate office buildings shut down after the mailing of a white powdery substance: "At first they thought it was another one of John Kerry's Botox deliveries."
Bush's other vulnerabilities at that hour, according to the report: his military service and his credibility on Iraq.
Letterman said of Bush's campaign ads: "In one of the commercials you see George W. Bush for 30 seconds. In another commercial you get to see George W. Bush for 60 seconds. Kind of like his stint in the National Guard."
Leno said that Oscar nominations had gone to Sean Penn, Jude Law "and, of course, George W. Bush for 'Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction.' "
Kerry gets needled on his wealth and reputation for flip-flopping. Letterman: "Senator John Kerry changed his mind and now supports the ban on gay marriages. I'm telling you, this guy has more positions than Paris Hilton." Leno: "Senator John Kerry released his plan to fight the deficit. He said all we have to do is find a rich country, like Switzerland, and have it marry us."
These are, you may have gathered, caricatures. But in a sound-bite world, caricatures matter.
Blair Backtracks
Jayson Blair has made another error.
In his book about his fabrications at the New York Times, the former reporter writes of telling then-Managing Editor Gerald Boyd of his cocaine addiction. He adds that Boyd's "mother died following a long struggle with drugs."
In a piece published by the Detroit Free Press piece yesterday, Boyd wrote that his mother died from sickle-cell anemia at 29 and never used drugs: "It is unconscionable that a journalist would write something so hurtful. . . . My aim is not to critique Blair's book. But if he can write a lie so flagrant and mean-spirited, it has to cast doubt on everything else he writes, whether about former colleagues at the Times, who are some of the most ethical, professional and decent journalists anywhere and who certainly don't deserve this, or about conversations he recounts verbatim from several years ago."
Blair says he had "heard" the tale and that it "was supposed to be fact-checked but didn't get fact-checked." After a letter of complaint from Boyd, Blair says, the reference was corrected in subsequent printings of "Burning Down My Masters' House."
Who's Fair and Balanced?
Is media bias in the eye of the beholder? Pollster Peter Hart surveyed cable news viewers in a poll for C-SPAN and came up with some striking numbers.
Overall, a plurality said the ABC, CBS and NBC nightly newscasts seem "to have a definite political or ideological point of view," and gave higher marks to cable and public television networks as "unbiased and balanced."
But look at the partisan breakdown. By varying pluralities, Democrats give positive grades to CNN (53 percent), network newscasts (49 percent), MSNBC (35 percent) and Jim Lehrer's PBS newscast (31 percent). But by a margin of 47 percent to 31 percent, they say Fox News is biased.
Republicans, however, say Fox is fair by a margin of 50 percent to 32 percent. A plurality see as biased the network newscasts (67 percent), CNN (55 percent), MSNBC (41 percent) and Lehrer (27 percent to 24 percent).
Only bare-bones C-SPAN won pluralities for fairness from both sides -- 46 percent of Democrats and 38 percent of Republicans.
Role Playing
Chris Matthews likened her to a "hooker," the New York Times called her an "actress," and the Cleveland Plain Dealer labeled her a "hired propagandist." But Karen Ryan called the other day to insist she is real -- and a former journalist.
A video news release distributed by the Health and Human Services Department to promote its new prescription drugs program includes this line: "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." Ryan says that such releases are clearly marked (although some local TV stations air them as news) and that, unlike an actress, she has "credentials" in news.
But Ryan wasn't really "reporting"; she was, as she admits, "reading a script" for a client. She says her production company has changed its policy and will no longer use "reporting" for such paid gigs.
Dissed by Dean
Howard Dean is disputing an article by this reporter that said he had told colleagues he didn't care about being president and at one point was worried he might win.
The piece is "not accurate," Dean told Fox's Alan Colmes, and said those comments were based on "unnamed sources." But then he dismissed it as "a gossip column."
Gossip? A 3,800-word article with 10 campaign officials on the record? Just writing gossip would be so much easier.
Perle Passes
One year ago, Richard Perle, then chairman of the Pentagon advisory board, threatened to sue the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh over a critical piece on his business dealings. He said he might sue in Britain, which has stricter libel laws. But the deadline has passed with no lawsuit.
Perle did not respond to a request for comment, but told the New York Sun: "Lies and distortions do not constitute libel unless one can demonstrate the errors, lies and distortions are willful."
Plagiarism Watch
The Iowa State Daily fired staffer Daniel C. Hartman after being alerted to striking similarities between his article "Starsky and Hutch accurately recreates '70s era" and the Minneapolis Star Tribune's review -- among eight instances of heavy borrowing, many from the Minnesota paper.
And the Vancouver Sun has dumped sex-and-dating columnist Angele Yanor for taking much of her last piece from a New York Times story. Yanor apologized on her Web site.
Correction of the Week
The Chicago Tribune, days after the Associated Press had exposed the scam: "The first letter in the 'Dear Abby' column Monday in Tempo was the result of a hoax. The provider of the column, Universal Press Syndicate, sent out a substitution March 4 after it learned the material was lifted from an old episode of 'The Simpsons' TV show."
D'oh!
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