Kerry’s ‘botched joke’ was widely seen? You don’t say

November 6, 2006

MSNBC and CNN have been touting the results of this poll all day, and I have to admit, it’s more than a little annoying.

“There also are some indications that Sen. John Kerry’s ‘botched joke’ about the war Iraq may have had a modest impact on the race. Fully 84% of voters say they have heard a lot or a little about Kerry’s remarks — with 60% saying they have heard a lot. By comparison, just 26% say they have heard a lot about President Bush’s statement that he will keep Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of Defense until he leaves office in 2009.”

There’s an odd detachment from the reporting, as if the media had nothing to do with this. “Wow,” the networks seem to be reporting, “it’s amazing how everyone heard about Kerry’s word-missing joke, but the Rumsfeld news didn’t permeate.”

Has it occurred to CNN and MSNBC that maybe, just maybe, they’re responsible for the fact that no one heard about Rumsfeld and everyone heard about Kerry?

It was less than a week ago….

During a discussion with wire service reporters on November 1, President Bush stated his intent to keep Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary until the end of his presidency, despite widespread, bipartisan criticism of Rumsfeld’s management of the Iraq war. That evening, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann asked MSNBC correspondent David Shuster whether Bush’s pledge to retain Rumsfeld or the ongoing uproar over Sen. John Kerry’s (D-MA) “botched joke” will have “the greatest net effect on these really tight” congressional races around the country. Shuster replied, “[T]he Rumsfeld news is going to strike a lot harder than the news about John Kerry.”

Of course it would “strike a lot harder,” right? I mean, Kerry missed a word in a joke; Rumsfeld is a universally loathed Defense Secretary. Which would have a bigger impact? It’s a, to borrow Cheney’s phrase, no-brainer.

Except it wasn’t.

[A] Media Matters for America survey of political reporting on the evening of November 1 and morning of November 2 found that many news outlets briefly mentioned — and, in some cases, altogether ignored — Bush’s statement regarding Rumsfeld, while devoting significant coverage to the Kerry flap.

And now CNN and MSNBC are reporting this as some kind of oddity?

If Kerry was making illegal robocalls, that would have been ignored. No, wait. I smell a double standard here, somewhere…

Well, the good news is that when Democrats take the House tomorrow, journalists can finally return to the kind of “speaking truth to power” we saw during the Clinton years.

Hide the truth. Spread the lies.

I’m telling you, nuking Iran is the only thing that will wake us from our trance.

  • I try to resist the Media as ReThuglican Whore conspiracy theory but this makes me want to put on a tin foil hat and join the party.

    Here’s when the media usually engages in navel gazing-type activities:

    1. There is nothing else to report.
    2. A journalist/reporter has done something particularly news worthy (Jason Blair, Judith Miller etc).

    Neither situation applies here. Pass the aluminum foil please.

  • This is one of the most annoying, yet often repeated, traits of the MSM. They start their own meme of deniability. They are as bad about takingresponsibility as BushCo. The media does not want to be thought of as manufacturing the news, even though with each and every choice they make they clearly and unavoidably do. It would be much more intellectually honest to admit that someone has to make editorial choices and then have an open debate about how that gets done and if it gets done well.

    Not to trot out a universally reviled comic strip, but this does remind me of the Family Circus cartoons with the little “Not Me” ghosts.

  • Ah yes…

    I speculated that the Kerry thing might be an important part of the recent tightening in some polls on the earlier post today — of, course that was before realizing that you made the same point on the very same thread.

    The dangers of clicking “comments” instead of “Read more.”

    Perhaps a new phrase needs to be added to the political lexicon…

    “Disappearing the Messenger”

    Overturning the Freak Show should be paramount in the plans of progressives over the next two years.

  • I think Dems have to ride these idiotic media waves. Kerry had the nation’s (read MSM) ear. He should have had an embedded comment in each of his remarks about the joke. “It was just a botched (botched like the Bush’s botch the war) joke. That’s all.” Put it in there so they can’t easily edit it out.

    I remember the Fox headline: White House OK With Kerry Apology, But GOP Tire of ‘Blame America’ Outlook.

    A-holes!

  • Today on Hardball: Leftwing bloggers cry foul over video of Rumsfeld eating a live baby on TV. A look back at some of the major Democrats who have been connected to murders today’s roundtable of notable liberals Joe Leiberman, Joe Klien and Tom Friedman.

    Friedman: Liberals can hardly contain their glee, Chris. They want to see George Bush fail.

    Matthews: Should liberals be making a big deal out of this?

    Leiberman: There’s a war going on, Chris.

    Joe Klien: The nastiness is palpable, Chris. The blogosphere is seething. This is clearly an effort to psyche out the terrorists, and the Democrats want to take political advantage of it. This is why we lose. The Democrats need to stand for something.

    Leiberman: It’s why I left the party. We want to elevate the tone in Washington.

    Matthews: It’s not like Union Bosses haven’t been connected to a mob killing or two…

    Joe Klien: That’s right. It’s really hypocritical politicking for the Pro-Choice Party to exploit this as they have… I have a feeling it will backfire on the Democrats. This is exactly the sort of thing that turns off voters, Chris.

    Leiberman: Does someone this naive have what it takes to fight the War on Terror?

    Friedman: Hussein has killed literally hundreds of children, yet you don’t hear the Left complain about that, do you?

    Klien: Certainly not.

    Leiberman: George Bush is America. Why do they hate America?

  • Gloria Borger on PBS did the same thing last Friday interviewing Howard Dean and Ken Mehlman. She wasted several minutes asking them questions about the Kerry BS and whether that would change the election. THEN she asked about whether the gay-meth-preacher story would affect the elections.

    NOTHING about the atom-bomb-plans issue, and nothing about Rumsfailed. Dean, to his credit, brushed aside the questions as stupid distractions and went on to beat the crap out of the Republicans with a bat.

    I’m beginning to think that maybe most media people are STUPID and they like to ask their own questions, and not about icky complicated stuff, they like the simple issues that they can understand.

  • Exactly why the next time there is an election, Kerry should be on ‘vacation.’

    I hope he gets a gift basket from Karl Rove.

  • Kerry’s an unfair victim. Nothing in his joke referred to the troops specifically and it should’ve been clear to anyone watching or reading his joke that he clearly meant Bush. Bush IS stuck in Iraq. The people who should be apologizing are those who jumped to the conclusion that he was talking about the troops. They should be ashamed of themselves because they made the connection in their heads and decided that what Kerry had said was, “If you don’t study, you end up in the army, and you get stuck in Iraq,” when in actuality he never made the second point.

  • Good point, memekiller. Democrats are eating live babies on TV too! It’s all about fairness and balance.

    • Comments are closed.