BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
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See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Friday, February 13, 2004
A non-sex non-scandal
non-story. There is only one story that the media and political
world is talking about right now: the allegations that Senator John
Kerry had an extramarital affair with a young woman a few years ago.
This "news" was broken yesterday by Matt
Drudge, who is best known
for revealing in 1998 that Newsweek was preparing a report on
the relationship between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
What's perversely fascinating about
this is the post-modern nature of the current media environment.
Drudge's scoop obviously doesn't meet any sort of respectable news
standard. Not only are the allegations completely unproven, but it's
still unclear as to what the allegations even are.
Yet this is already getting picked
up by papers in the UK and in Australia, which have rather different
standards from those that prevail in the US (which are low enough as
it is). So you've got a story that everyone is talking about, that
has already broken the talk-radio barrier (Sean Hannity gushed over
Drudge yesterday, and Kerry denied the rumors, whatever they are, on
Imus this morning), but that is virtually absent from US newspapers
today.
The most specific version of the
story I've seen is this,
in the London Sun, home of the Page Three Girl. Assuming it's
accurate (a huge assumption!), the so-called scandal is even lamer
than one might have imagined. A 24-year-old woman's parents believe
that Kerry was coming on to their daughter. Reporter Brian Flynn
writes:
There is no evidence the
pair had an affair, but her father Terry, 56, said: "I think he's
a sleazeball. I did kind of wonder if my daughter didn't get that
kind of feeling herself.
"He's not the sort of guy I
would choose to be with my daughter."
This is a sex scandal? Don't you
need, you know, sex?
Joe
Conason has the definitive
(thus far) take. As for whether this grows, my guess is that we
should know by the end of the weekend.
Gay marriage survives - for
now. You can read my piece on yesterday's raucous session of the
constitutional convention, as well as other Phoenix coverage,
at BostonPhoenix.com. And check out the QuickTime video I shot of pro-marriage demonstrators.
posted at 2:49 PM |
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Thursday, February 12, 2004
ConCom continuing coverage at
BostonPhoenix.com. I'm heading back to Beacon Hill in a few
minutes to catch the resumption of the constitutional convention,
which is debating whether to amend the constitution to ban gay
marriage.
Check out our continuing coverage
at BostonPhoenix.com.
New in this week's
Phoenix. George W. Bush is going through a rough stretch,
but get
ready: the Republican
Attack Machine is gearing up to go after John Kerry on everything
from gay marriage to that fire hydrant that used to be in front of
his house.
Also, Wesley Clark finally gets
out, but the zombie
candidates trudge
on.
posted at 11:01 AM |
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Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Finneran to the rescue? It
looks like the best hope for gay activists and all supporters of
marriage equality is House Speaker Tom Finneran. Really.
Senate president Bob Travaglini and
Senate minority leader Brian Lees have crafted a compromise amendment
to the state constitution that would ban same-sex marriage, but would
guarantee the right of civil unions. It is reasonable and
well-intentioned, but would perpetuate the inequality that the
Supreme Judicial Court so eloquently denounced in its
Goodridge decision last fall. (Boston Globe coverage
here;
the Boston Herald's website seems to be messed up this
morning.)
Because Finneran doesn't like the
civil-unions provision, he may try to scuttle it, leaving an
amendment that would be far harsher, and thus less likely to pass
muster with a majority of the 199 legislators who will meet at
today's constitutional convention. And remember: Finneran controls
160 of them, as compared to just 39 for Travaglini. (Ironically,
Travaglini is short a member because Cheryl Jacques resigned to
become head of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-and-lesbian-rights
lobbying group.)
The constitutional convention will
take place after the deadline for this week's Boston Phoenix.
But Phoenicians will be swarming around Beacon Hill all day (and
night) today to put together an in-depth report for BostonPhoenix.com,
which will appear tomorrow. There may even be some updates posted
today. So keep checking in.
posted at 9:28 AM |
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Tuesday, February 10, 2004
The seductive appeal of mob
rule. There is no more seductive or pernicious argument in the
gay-marriage debate than that "the people" should get to decide the
fate of an amendment to the state constitution that would ban
same-sex marriage.
Today's Boston Globe
reports
that a state rep has come under attack from something called the
"Committee to Let the People Vote." On the op-ed page, a
hateful
little screed by Catholic
activist William Hobbib concludes: "The final decision and its
far-reaching implications should be decided by a democratic vote of
the people of the state, with the appropriate level of study and
public debate that a constitutional amendment vote would
require."
Thus in the Hobbibsean view of the
world, the legislature's role in amending the constitution should be
limited to that of a debating society, with all power resting in the
hands of the people.
State Senator Michael Morrissey put
it this
way in a Globe
interview: "The question is, what's more democratic than putting a
question on the ballot? Isn't that democratic?"
Well, of course, nothing could be
more democratic than putting gay marriage to a vote. But we don't
live in a pure democracy; we live in a republic, with constitutional
rights for the minority counterbalancing the will of the majority.
Among other things, that's why we don't see proposals on the ballot
to bring back slavery.
The Massachusetts Constitution can
be amended with stunning ease - far more than is the case with the US
Constitution, which requires a two-thirds majority of both branches
of Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures. By contrast,
an amendment here requires just a majority vote in two consecutive
sessions of the legislature (or only one-fourth if the amendment is
submitted by a petition of the voters), followed by a majority of
voters on the state ballot.
The point is that the amendment
process, though extremely easy, requires the involvement of
the legislature. If, as Hobbib and Morrissey assert, the
legislature's role is merely to wave the amendment through and let
the voters decide, then they are arguing against any role at all. In
the Hobbib-Morrissey model, the fact that the legislature has to vote
twice is nothing more than impediment, an anachronism, something to
be set aside for the greater good of pure democracy.
That has it exactly backwards. The
legislature is there to protect the rights of the minority. The
drafters of the state constitution - headed by John Adams - gave an
explicit role to the legislature so that our elected officials could
exercise their considered judgment as to whether a proposed amendment
might do so much damage that it should not even be considered by the
voters. Only after legislators have had a chance to reflect - twice -
is an amendment to go before the public.
The amendment to ban gay marriage
may be voted on as soon as tomorrow. Legislators owe us their wisdom,
such as it may be, as well as the courage to act on that wisdom.
Simply letting "the people" decide is an invitation to mob rule. It
would send an ugly message that our elected officials see nothing
wrong with oppression as long as it is "the people" who are doing the
oppressing.
posted at 9:19 AM |
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Monday, February 09, 2004
Winning by losing. Jay Rosen
is among the more thoughtful observers of media today. A leading
light in the fading "public journalism" movement and chairman of the
journalism department at New York University, he writes a weblog -
"Pressthink"
- that is part of the online community "Blogging
of the President."
Recently Rosen wrote
this
post on an encounter he'd
witnessed between CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Ohio congressman Dennis
Kucinich. Rosen was repulsed by Blitzer's focus on horse-race
questions, and on his repeated badgering of Kucinich as to why he's
doing so badly in the presidential campaign and why he doesn't just
get out of the race. Rosen writes:
When the press looks for
its credibility problems today, it ought to look more at moments
like these. To me, it's in-credible, Blitzer's question. The
public service validity I assign it is zero. Most of the audience,
most of the time, senses the bad faith in it, whether we "like"
Kucinich or not. In a catalogue of low points for the campaign
press (which, done well, is an idea for a kick-ass weblog... )
this was one.
Political man gives it his best
shot. He runs in order to speak to the country, and to see if the
country listens and responds. It is for others to say why he
failed when he is still in the campaign to succeed.
Intuitively we know this. Blitzer, in a boorish way, does
not.
What I find fascinating about
Rosen's post is that he gets an important point half-right. Yes, the
media are generally dreadful to candidates who can't garner much
support, alternately ignoring them or mocking them. Yet Kucinich has
essentially invited the Blitzer's "boorish" behavior by playing the
game of mainstream expectations rather than trying to rise above
it.
As a presidential candidate,
Kucinich has worn well, at least with me. At first, I saw him as
little more than a Ralph Nader wanna-be - a fringe pain in the ass
with nothing interesting to say and no record of accomplishment,
unless you count throwing the city of Cleveland into default as its
boy mayor a generation ago an accomplishment.
But he's shown that he's a serious
candidate of ideas. He forced me to go back and look
at his record in Cleveland.
It turns out he sacrificed his mayoralty over a principled refusal to
give in to the banks and sell the city's municipal power plant - not
smart, perhaps, but certainly courageous.
Kucinich's plan to sit down with
the UN and negotiate a transfer of power in Iraq - about which he
straightened
out Tom Brokaw at the
January 29 debate - is reasonable and sensible, a far cry from the
cut-and-run caricature it has usually been portrayed as.
As for a Department
of Peace, well, why
not?
Where Kucinich continues to annoy
me is when he espouses his increasingly absurd scenarios for how he's
going to win. For instance, here is Kucinich's response to Brokaw's
why-don't-you-get-out question at the
last debate:
Well, Tom, keep in mind,
there's so much talent on this stage that I believe this race is
going to go all the way to the convention. And what that means -
no one's going to get 50 percent of the delegates going to the
convention. And I expect to be able to pick up delegates, state by
state. And I'll arrive at the convention right in the mix for the
nomination, and I look forward to it.
He's still going to win! Contrast
this with the Reverend Al Sharpton's response to the same question,
the highlight of which was this: "They ought to want all of us to
stay in and bring our constituency to the table rather than try to
eliminate."
Sharpton is being realistic and
truthful: he's running for a place at the table. Kucinich is in la-la
land.
The problem here is that Kucinich
knew he wasn't going to win the day he announced, and everyone - Wolf
Blitzer and Tom Brokaw included - knows Kucinich knows he isn't going
to win. So when Blitzer acts "boorish" and Brokaw is dismissive,
they are, in at least some small way, reacting to the intellectual
contempt that Kucinich is showing not just to them, but to their
audiences as well.
Kucinich did
pretty good in Maine
yesterday, but he still has just
two delegates.
A far more honest - and disarming -
answer to Blitzer's question would have been this:
Wolf, I know I'm not
going to win. I'm running to give a voice to people who are rarely
heard from: the poor, the disenfranchised, the working-class
families who've been hurt by our so-called free-trade policies.
And I'm running to stand up against war. No one in this race, not
even Howard Dean, is as committed to peace as I am. Like Al
Sharpton, I want a place at the table. I want to help change my
party, to make it a better, more principled vehicle for
progressive aspirations. Four years ago we lost the presidency
because too many voters saw Ralph Nader as a better alternative to
Al Gore. We need to bring those people back inside the tent. And
that's what I'm going to do.
What would Blitzer have said to
that? "But you're still losing"? Perhaps. But at least viewers would
have understood what Kucinich is really fighting for. And Blitzer
would have been more fully exposed for asking a buffoonish, bullying
question.
posted at 10:08 AM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
