BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Wednesday, November 05, 2003
Stars, bars, and Howard
Dean. I taped last night's "Rock
the Vote" debate while I
was out. Naturally, I screwed up somehow, and missed the first
half-hour, when all the fireworks took place over Howard Dean's
earlier comment that he "want[s] to be the candidate for guys
with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks."
But I caught the exchange between
him and Al Sharpton in the post-debate wrap-up. In any case, that
particular dust-up now appears to have been chewed over
sufficiently.
Here
is the Boston Globe report, by Patrick Healy and Joanna Weiss.
Chris Suellentrop has a good analysis
in Slate this morning on how Dean boneheadedly turned this
into a bigger deal than it should have been. And the Boston
Herald's David Guarino caught
up with Sekou Dilday, who
initially popped the question, and who now says he's decided not to
support Dean.
So here's what I'm mad about. At
one point, a 20-year-old student asked the candidates to describe who
they were when they were 20. It was a good question, the sort that
I'd have liked to hear all eight candidates answer.
But moderator Anderson Cooper, who
must have been told to keep things moving no matter what, cut it off
after only Dennis Kucinich, Wesley Clark, Dean, and Joe Lieberman had
answered. (John Kerry must have been eating his heart out, but he
managed to work in the Vietnam stuff later.)
Good move, Coop! The next question
was from a Tufts kid, who asked Carol Moseley Braun about --
AmeriCorps. "I think AmeriCorps is important. I think public
service is important," Moseley Braun began, sucking all semblance of
life out of my TV set.
And so it went. There were moments
when the debate veered toward being the best Democratic forum yet.
But it was too disjointed, and Cooper -- a white-haired 36-year-old
whom CNN has designated as its youth magnet -- was all too eager to
contribute to the disjointedness.
For instance, Kerry -- criticized
for that photo
of him hunting pheasants the other day -- joked, "It's a tough
economy now, and it's amazing what you have to do to put food on the
table." He then turned it around, blasting Dean for wooing and
winning the support of the National Rifle Association. "You want an
assault weapon? Join the Army," Kerry said.
Dean responded by saying he
supports the assault-weapons ban. But when Kerry tried to challenge
him, Cooper wouldn't let him.
Kerry's most idiotic moment came
when he was asked about polls that show Hillary Clinton would lead
the entire pack of Democrats by a wide margin if she were to jump
into the race. "I saw a poll the other day that showed me 15 points
ahead of her," Kerry replied. Citation, Senator?
The weirdest performance of the
evening came from Kucinich, but that was no surprise. He and Clark
looked like Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in their black ensembles;
perhaps they're auditioning for MiB III. Kucinich was wearing
orange make-up, and toward the end -- waving his arms and shouting
out a five-point plan for something or other -- he looked positively
bug-eyed and unhinged. Kucinich's video
did have the best music, though.
Clark seemed sharper and more
assertive than he has since his shaky start, but he still can't
answer a simple question. Asked about lesbian and gay rights, he
seemed to support letting homosexuals serve openly in the military,
but then backed away. Afterwards, CNN's Paula Zahn asked him to
clarify his "blurred line" on don't ask/don't tell.
"I don't think there are any lines
blurred there, Paula," he replied, and then blurred things even more:
"We have a policy that may be working or may not be working." The
rest of his answer continued in a similar vein.
The funniest line of the evening
(also no surprise) came from the Reverend Al Sharpton. When asked
what his first thought would be upon moving into the White House, he
replied, "Well, I think the first thing going through my head will be
to make sure that Bush has all his stuff out."
But maybe the most effective line
-- to get back to the Confederate-flag flap -- was from John Edwards,
the Southerner who's trying to appeal to the Bubba vote. "I drive a
pickup truck," he told Zahn, "but I've got an American flag in the
back."
Presidential pix online.
NPR's All Things Considered yesterday had a nice piece on
Diana Walker, a former Time magazine photographer who
photographed presidents and their families for more than two
decades.
If, like me, you heard the piece
and wanted to see the photos, click
here.
You say "art," I say, "So what?"
Q: What do you call a docu-drama that gets canceled? A: A step in
the right direction.
I simply cannot get excited over
the fact that CBS has decide to yank its controversial, fictitious
treatment of the Reagans. Yes, it's disturbing -- as the New York
Times reports today
-- that CBS knuckled under to a concerted campaign by top-level
Republicans. I have no doubt that Sumner Redstone and Mel Karmazin
were, uh, gently reminded of regulatory and legislative issues that
could have a serious effect on their immensely profitable
enterprise.
But then I saw this quote from
Barbra Streisand, wife of faux-Reagan James Brolin: "Indeed, today
marks a sad day for artistic freedom -- one of the most important
elements of an open and democratic society."
Good grief. As Madonna once
explained to Ted Koppel, "It's like my art, ya know?"
Come on down. I'll be
reading from Little
People today at noon in
The Studio, in Northeastern University's Curry Student Center. If
you're in the neighborhood, stop on by.
posted at 9:02 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
