BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Thursday, January 22, 2004
Does the Globe hate John
Kerry? Timothy Noah's latest "Chatterbox" piece in Slate
is on "Kerry's
Globe problem." The
nut: Kerry's presidential campaign has been hurt by the fact that New
England's dominant daily newspaper is out to get him.
Noah is definitely tapping into a
real undercurrent, at least in terms of what the national media
perceive. ABC's online political tip sheet, "The
Note," isn't archived; but
last fall I recall reading an observation that the Globe's
coverage of Kerry was the meanest any presidential candidate had ever
received from his hometown paper. Noah also notes that Kerry's former
campaign manager, Jim Jordan, has called the Globe's Kerry
coverage "distorted, insignificant, irrelevant, and
vindictive."
But as I told Noah yesterday, I
don't quite buy it. By far the nastiest local commentator on all
things Kerry, for instance, is Boston Herald columnist Howie
Carr. It is Carr who tagged Kerry with his most enduring nickname -
"Liveshot," for his camera-seeking-missile act - and who bashes Kerry
every afternoon on WRKO Radio (AM 680), where Carr hosts the
afternoon drive-time talk show.
Nor can anyone at the Globe
hold a candle - or perhaps I should say a flaming torch - to my
former Phoenix colleague Jon Keller, the political analyst for
WLVI-TV (Channel 56), who last fall hosted an
entire half-hour special
devoted to Kerry-bashing. Keller's column in the current issue of
Boston magazine - obviously overtaken by events - examines in
loving detail how it all fell apart for Kerry on the presidential
campaign trail.
To be sure, Noah's Slate
piece is full of "to be sures" - so many, in fact, that his
Globe theory begins to fall apart. (Among the inconvenient
facts Noah is forced to acknowledge is that today's Globe
endorses
Kerry's presidential campaign. So, for that matter, does the
Boston
Phoenix and the
Boston
Herald.) Out-of-town
journalists such as Noah take far more notice of the Globe
than they do of the Herald or Boston's local TV news stations.
But in this case that has led Noah to commit a fundamental error of
logic: he correctly observes that there has been a lot of mean
commentary about Kerry in the Globe; therefore, he decides, it
must have something to do with the Globe.
Yes, over the years the
Globe has run tough pieces on Kerry - some fair,
some
not - by what Noah properly
observes is an astonishingly large stable of columnists.
But when it come to truly inspired
anti-Kerry pieces of recent vintage, the Globe's not even on
the radar.
I could go through a laundry list
(if you'd like to compile your own, search these
incomparable archives), but
I'll close with this. Without question, the meanest, most vicious
Kerry-basher working in the media today is someone whose name pops up
on Noah's screen every time he clicks to the Slate home
page.
That would, of course, be
Mickey
Kaus, who actually ran a
Kerry
Loathsomeness Contest last
year, and who recently had to suspend his Kerry
Withdrawal Contest.
Actual Kaus lead-in for an item on
John Edwards on Tuesday: "I'd rather be trashing Kerry
..."
The fact is that Kerry is an
ambiguous figure on the Massachusetts political landscape. He's long
labored in the shadows of the state's senior senator, Ted Kennedy. He
is reserved and formal, which is another way of saying that he's
aloof. He doesn't stroke reporters, and reporters love nothing better
than to be stroked. He has a reputation for being inattentive to the
needs of local officials. He is, for better or worse, a big thinker
who's always had his eye on national politics.
Such a person is going to get
cuffed around. It would be pretty strange if the Globe ignored
that.
New in this week's
Phoenix. Speaking of Kerry ... I spent Tuesday tromping
around New Hampshire, chasing after Kerry and the other Democratic
presidential candidates. Here's
what I found.
Also, what did former treasury
secretary Paul
O'Neill really tell
journalist Ron Suskind?
posted at 8:51 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
