BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
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See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
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here.
Thursday, June 03, 2004
WHO'LL STOP THE RAINES?
You'll not find a more vacuous piece of political analysis all week
than former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines's
debut for the Guardian on the shortcomings of John Kerry. You
may have learned about it, as I did, from today's
Boston Herald. Well,
here
it is in all its
unexpurgated glory.
Sorry to quote the same stuff as
the Herald wire report, but this riff on Kerry just screams
out:
I personally find him
easier to talk to than Al Gore, but there's no denying that he's
ponderous. And he's pompous in a way that Gore is not. With Gore,
you feel that if he could choose, he would have been born poor and
cool. Kerry radiates the feeling that he is entitled to his sense
of entitlement. Probably that comes from spending too much time
with Teddy Kennedy, but it's a problem. The TV camera is an x-ray
for picking up attitudinal truths, and Kerry's lantern jaw and
Addams Family face somehow reinforce the message that this guy has
passed from ponderous to pompous and is so accustomed to privilege
that he doesn't have to worry about looking goofy. It's as if
Lurch had gone to Choate.
Good grief. I'm not sure which is
worse - that a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist is eager to allow
such non-thoughts to be published under his byline, or that he was
actually in charge of the World's Greatest Newspaper for a
year-and-a-half. It is becoming easier to understand why his reign
was such a fiasco, isn't it?
By the way, the headline over
Raines's ditty is "Must Do Better." No kidding.
PRESS BOXED. Both the
Globe
and the Herald
report today that media workspace at the Democratic National
Convention is getting squeezed. Some reporters may not even be able
to work inside the security zone, meaning they're going to get the
Richard Reid treatment every time they want to wander inside the
FleetCenter.
Just thought I'd point out that if
the show had been moved to the South Boston convention center, as it
should have been, the entire media horde could have been housed in
big, comfortable, cheap tents in the parking lot, which was done with
great effectiveness at the Republican gathering in Philadelphia four
years ago.
NEW IN THIS WEEK'S
PHOENIX. The New York Times confesses
its sins in hyping Iraq's
non-existent weapons capabilities and terrorist ties. So what took so
long?
posted at 7:50 AM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
