"Russert, Get your thumb out of your ass and talk to us like grownups..."
Kerry Komfort Do the voters or the corporations need the security blanket?
Big Tim Russert, the wide-faced Sunday-morning spewer of political incredulity, has found a sound bite he likes. As we all know, when TV pundits find sound bites they like, they chew on them like cuds. Big Tim's sound bite du jour is "Americans need a comfort level with John Kerry." Rather than saying anything about Kerry, this bite says loads about Big Tim and the corporate propaganda machine for which he stands. It should also prompt a response from any self-respecting American voter, like "Get your thumb out of your ass, Russert, and talk to us like we're grown-ups."
Let's turn this around for a minute. Why is it up to Kerry to prove himself "comfort"-worthy to assume our nation's highest office? Twenty-one years of service in the U.S. Senate is not sufficient? Medals earned for bravery in combat not enough? Years of work as a no-nonsense prosecuting attorney don't count for anything? Why, then, does it come down to something that can't be defined -- comfort level -- but is reported as if it were hard news by a reporter who inexplicably commands respect in America?
Before examining this any further, let's take time out for a word from our sponsors: the Bloggers of America, the only news media many of us trust anymore, the only one demonstrably interested in the continued existence of our democracy. Without people like Josh Marshall and his Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, and Bill Scher at Liberal Oasis, we'd be sunk. Their fair and balanced coverage of the convention, and pretty much all other political events of the past three years, has trumped the combined efforts of the "professionals" in the Fourth Estate, who sit around pondering comfort levels.
I've curtailed reading American newspapers, stopped watching American news programs. All I need to know about the priorities of the nation's news networks is this: During the Democratic convention last week, Al Jazeera, the Arab world's leading news network, offered five times more live coverage than either ABC, CBS or NBC, and twice the live coverage of all three networks combined. Think about the disgrace in that fact. Arabs are more informed about American democracy than American voters.
Just in case you think this massive press failing is limited to TV, consider the story distributed by the Associated Press to hundreds of newspapers just prior to the convention. In it, AP stated as fact that Bush had a lead in electoral votes over Kerry, and most papers around the country ran this story with headlines like "Can Kerry Catch Him?" One problem. The story was a fraud. The numbers the AP reporter cited were scrutinized by Stephen Crockett and Al Lawrence at Democratic Talk Radio, and all of the figures had been skewed to Bush's advantage. By using the AP's own rule of thumb -- awarding electoral votes only of states solidly behind each candidate or leaning that way -- Crockett and Lawrence demonstrated that, in fact, Kerry had 168 solid votes to Bush's 144 (rather than the 217 to 193 Bush lead that AP reported).
All moot, of course. Since the Democratic Convention, the Kerry-Edwards ticket has enjoyed a 7- to 8-point bump in all the polls. In fact, the generally conservative Zogby Poll, taken even before Kerry's rousing acceptance speech on Thursday, already shows Kerry-Edwards leading Bush-Cheney by 5 points. Furthermore, the "undecideds" (how, in God's name, can anyone be "undecided" at this point?) were heavily leaning toward Kerry, leaving Bush with nothing solid to gain in the next three months. Perhaps the nail in the coffin: Nancy Reagan, still steamed about Bush's stem-cell research stance, has refused an invitation to address the Republican Convention.
The more accurate question now is: Can Bush Catch Kerry?
Back to Big Tim's "comfort level." The impeccably credentialed Black Sheep from Texas went AWOL during the Vietnam War, failed at every business venture he ever tried, mocked the search for WMDs, taunted the enemy to kill our troops, can't eat a pretzel or ride a bicycle without collapsing on the ground ... The only people who can conceivably feel a "comfort level" with that record are the inmates of a lunatic asylum.
If, by chance, a few others feel any comfort with Bush, the onus is not on Kerry. It's on media whores like Russert who've been licking Captain Codpiece's boots for the past three years.
(8/8/2004)
- By Alan Bisbort , The Valley Advocate
zogby.com |
