By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
We won’t have a more dramatic moment all week than Ted Kennedy’s speech. I was stunned — I figured he’d wave and say a couple of words. Instead, he delivered one of his patented stem-winders.
If his health continues to improve, it’s easy to imagine his returning to the Senate next January, as he vowed to do.
We interrupt this week’s orgy of national political news to tell you that Glenn Marshall — the convicted rapist and phony war hero who helped target Middleborough as the home for the world’s largest gambling casino — continues to pull strings behind the scenes.
George Brennan of the Cape Cod Times reports that Marshall is neither forgotten nor gone from the circles of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, which he served as president before his past was brought to light by Cape Cod Today and the Cape Cod Times.
And just to bring this full circle: As I recently wrote here, here and here, it’s ludicrous to pretend that the Spectrum Gaming report commissioned by Gov. Deval Patrick for $189,000 is an independent assessment. But there was one interesting wrinkle. Whereas Patrick has seemed less than enthusiastic about supporting a tribal casino, Spectrum warned that such a casino is inevitable.
As the great Gladys Kravitz recently observed, one of Spectrum’s clients is the financier Sol Kerzner, who’s the source of much of the money behind the Middleborough proposal — and thus an important guy in making Glenn Marshall an important guy.
You absolutely cannot make this stuff up.
I just spent, oh, the last hour and a half reading Roger Simon’s dauntingly well-reported piece for the Politico on how Barack Obama managed to beat the Clinton juggernaut. (Chuck Todd was praising it on Tom Ashbrook’s show this morning. Do we really believe he had time to read it?)
Like Joshua Green’s Atlantic article on what went wrong with Hillary Clinton’s campaign, it is full of insight and nuance. And, like Green’s piece, I ultimately found it unsatisfying. Here’s the problem: No one other than a political junkie is going to read such a story. And we political junkies have been living all this in real time for many, many months.
Both Simon and Green remind us of details we might have forgotten, skillfully weave a mass of information into coherent narratives and come up with some previously unreported nuggets. (Green: Mark Penn is smarter and more awful than we thought. Simon: Obama’s brain-trusters actually believed they could knock Clinton out in the opening weeks of the primary season.) In the end, though, they don’t do much more than tell us what we already know.
If there’s one thing of value I learned from the two accounts, it’s that no one should believe the Democrats would be in better shape today if Clinton had won the nomination — especially if she had won it easily, and had not had to put her dysfunctional campaign staff to the test.
OK, two. I think it’s a pretty good bet that Simon and Green are going to write books about this historic campaign. At nearly 16,000 words, Simon’s article is already about a quarter of the way there.
For the first time since 1992, I’m not going to either major political convention. In 1996, I covered the Republicans in San Diego. In 2000, I covered both the Republicans in Philadelphia and the Democrats in Los Angeles. And in 2004, I covered the Democrats here in Boston.
I have two conflicting thoughts about my absence from both conventions this year. On the one hand, I’ve never understood the argument that there’s nothing going on. Yes, it’s true that the conventions haven’t actually picked the presidential and vice-presidential nominees for many years now. But, for two weeks, the conventions are the center of the media-political universe. Why wouldn’t you want to be there?
There’s not much happening inside the hall. Outside, though, there are events ranging from parties thrown by various media organizations to demonstrations to substantive, issue-based get-togethers such as Arianna Huffington’s counter-conventions in 2000. A reporter who’s willing to keep moving can find more interesting stuff going on in a week than usually comes his way in a year.
On the other hand, if you think what’s taking place on the floor is what’s really important, then there’s no better place to be than in front of your television, popcorn and beer at the ready. It’s a TV show, so why not watch it the way it was meant to be seen?
I’m not planning to overdose on convention coverage this week or next, but I’m certainly going to catch the major speeches. And, truth be told, my colleagues in Denver will probably be watching them the same way I do — on the tube. Only they’ll be in a press tent and I’ll be home.
Some years ago I remember reading a profile of Ron Fournier, who was then fairly new as a political reporter for the Associated Press.
It’s not likely I’m going to find a link at this late date, so I’ll have to rely on my memory. What I recall was his saying he’d never been all that interested in politics, an attitude he thought had helped him break some stories. He was a hard-news reporter, not a partisan.
Well, now. I want to follow up my post of earlier today, because I think Fournier’s “analysis” of the Joe Biden pick is remarkable enough that we shouldn’t let go of it too quickly. It’s not that Fournier’s anti-Obama bias is so obvious, though it is. It’s that his take is embarrassingly dumb and shallow. A news analysis is an odd duck; neither a news story nor an opinion piece, it is supposed to make sense of the news. Fournier’s attempt fails dismally.
Steve Stein has posted some terrific links, and I recommend the Washington Monthly item he flags. What I like about that item, written by Steve Benen, is that it gets to the heart of how lazy Fournier is to suggest that Barack Obama’s choice shows a “lack of confidence” in his reformist, outsider message. As Benen notes, you could say that about any vice-presidential pick: if Obama had chosen Hillary Clinton, it would show a “lack of confidence” that he could win the women’s vote without her. You get the idea. Benen also notes that Fournier nearly took a job with the McCain campaign in 2007.
Drilling down a little further, Eric Boehlert’s excellent overview — which gathers everything from Fournier’s inappropriately supportive e-mail to Karl Rove to his supplying McCain with his favorite donuts (ooh, sprinkles!) — links out to a Politico piece that explains Fournier’s rationale for the AP’s increasingly edgy, opinionated journalism. Michael Calderone writes:
Fournier is a main engine in a high-stakes experiment at the 162-year old wire to move from its signature neutral and detached tone to an aggressive, plain-spoken style of writing that Fournier often describes as “cutting through the clutter.”
In the stories the new boss is encouraging, first-person writing and emotive language are okay.
So is scrapping the stonefaced approach to journalism that accepts politicians’ statements at face value and offers equal treatment to all sides of an argument. Instead, reporters are encouraged to throw away the weasel words and call it like they see it when they think public officials have revealed themselves as phonies or flip-floppers.
I’m not buying it. I’m no fan of traditional objectivity and its passive reliance on official statements. But we need tough, fair, neutral reporting more than ever, and it seems to me that the AP ought to be at the forefront of providing it. With regional newspapers cutting back on their national and international coverage, this should be a chance for the AP to shine.
In an e-mail to Media Nation, Stephen Burgard, director of the School of Journalism at Northeastern University (i.e., my chairman), writes:
I read Fournier’s “analysis” before checking your blog today and was independently appalled. Since when is choosing somebody knowledgeable in foreign affairs and the Senate Judiciary Committee, who balances a ticket as well, a sign of lack of confidence or weakness?
The suggestion that the confident move would be to bring in somebody inexperienced who represents the “politics of change” and “hope” is ludicrous; it’s something you might expect to see in a student lefty publication, not from the AP, which is supposed to understand how presidential politics works.
I can’t help remembering that the AP’s Walter Mears wrote the book on the journalistic form “news analysis.” In addition to writing good ones, he was able to explain what they were when done right. Not straight news stories. Not opinion pieces. But somehow interpretive in a way that shed an informed reporter’s light beyond just being a stenographer of events.
Perhaps Fournier thinks he was being “intrepretive.” He wasn’t. Fournier may well be in the tank for McCain, but I would feel only slightly better if he were dishing it out equally to both sides. The fact is that Fournier’s “analysis” is a piece of pure opinion, unsophisticated and uninformed.
It’s not just that it should have been better. It’s that we depend on the AP to provide us with something fundamentally different.
Photo of Fournier by Josh Hallett and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
In an “analysis” headlined “Biden pick shows lack of confidence,” Ron Fournier of the Associated Press writes:
For all his self-confidence, the 47-year-old Illinois senator worried that he couldn’t beat Republican John McCain without help from a seasoned politician willing to attack. The Biden selection is the next logistical step in an Obama campaign that has become more negative — a strategic decision that may be necessary but threatens to run counter to his image.
That’s because, well, Obama probably can’t beat McCain without help from a seasoned politician willing to attack.
Let me lend a hand and help Fournier with what he may be writing one week from today:
For all his self-confidence, the 72-year-old Arizona senator worried that he couldn’t beat Democrat Barack Obama without help from a seasoned politician willing to attack. The Romney selection is the next logistical step in a McCain campaign that has become more negative — a strategic decision that may be necessary but threatens to run counter to his image.
Any questions? Other than wondering how many brain cells Fournier fired up before putting fingers to keyboard?
David Brooks on Friday: “Biden’s the one. The only question is whether Obama was wise and self-aware enough to know that.”
Granted, the Olympics messed up the timing, and no one announces his running mate during the convention anymore. But why would Barack Obama tell everyone his choice is Joe Biden “in the wee hours of Saturday morning”?
If nothing else, we’ll get to see how many Sunday talk shows Biden can hit tomorrow. There are — what — five? He can do it. The man does like to talk.
The Newton Tab blog says that a Boston Globe reporter may have quoted the wrong Baker when he wrote a story about the arrest of a Newton firefighter on heroin-possession charges. Greg Reibman, who’s been following this for most of the day, links to all the relevant background.
Newton Board of Alderman president Lisle Baker was originally quoted as saying that the arrest pointed to the need for mandatory drug testing of public-safety workers. But the Globe then removed the quote, at least from its online story. Baker insists he never spoke with the Globe. Supposedly a correction is going to appear tomorrow.
Good thing the Newton Fire Department is otherwise quiet. Oh, wait. A bag of pot was found inside the 62-year-old fire chief’s car. The chief says he has no idea of how it got there.
Saturday morning update: Here’s the correction. The Globe did reach the wrong Baker. I’m scratching my head. How is it that Mr. Wrong provided exactly the sort of quotes you might have expected from Mr. Right?
Chris Lehmann repeats an oft-heard fallacy in an interview conducted by Ken Silverstein for Harpers.org. Reacting to Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s appearances with evangelical minister Rick Warren last Saturday, Lehmann says:
The only important issue about Saddleback is that the Constitution specifically forbids any religious test for office, so why are you having an evangelical minister asking the two candidates about their relationship to Christ? But the people who are in charge of delivering useful information to the public about the process have no historical frame of reference. They literally don’t know what they’re doing.
Lehmann’s right about what the Constitution says regarding a religious test, but he suggests that it somehow applies to the media and to voters. It does not. Here’s the exact language, from Article VI:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
That’s pretty clear: the government may not establish a religious test for candidates. If Congress were to pass a law stating that only believing Christians may run for president, or that practicing Muslims may not, then that would be unconstitutional under Article VI.
If, on the other hand, a voter decides he will not consider any candidate who isn’t an evangelical, that’s not only his right, but it’s perfectly in accord with both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. Likewise, Rick Warren is free to invite the candidates in for a talk; the candidates are free to accept or decline; and the media are free to cover it or not.
Needless to say, this is a relevant issue, as Mitt Romney remains the subject of some speculation as to whether John McCain will choose him as his running mate. Some evangelicals have made it clear that they would object vociferously because Romney is a Mormon. That sentiment may be offensive to you and me, but it’s not offensive in the least to the Constitution.
If you think about it, we’ve all got our religious tests. Would you vote for a so-called Christian who believes we should hasten the Apocalypse through nuclear war? Of course you wouldn’t. The Constitution says such a person can run for office. It doesn’t say you have to vote for him. Neither does it say the press and the public can’t make an issue of his beliefs.
The Constitution is supposed to be a check on the government, not on the people.
Former Boston radio talk-show host John DePetro, class act that he is, has decided to blame his wife for the book-cooking that resulted in his meteoric — and, as it turns out, fraudulent — climb in the Providence ratings.
“It’s embarrassing all the way around,” DePetro tells Alisha Pina of the Providence Journal. “I don’t have a lot to add. My wife was asked to take part in a radio survey, she did and she shouldn’t have. It was wrong.”
Ratings for DePetro, the morning host on WPRO Radio (AM 630), had showed him zooming from 11th to fourth place recently. Now we know why. The six ratings diaries submitted to Arbitron by Kristen DePetro represented more than 3,800 listeners, according to the ProJo.
DePetro was canned by Boston’s WRKO (AM 680) in November 2006 after he referred to independent gubernatorial candidate Grace Ross as a “fat lesbian.” Worse than that is heard on WRKO every day, of course, but DePetro’s problems were compounded by his minuscule ratings. (DePetro’s bio on the WPRO Web site says that he “left Boston with much fanfare, and returns to Rhode Island as a well known name.”)
Looks like he — or at least his wife — tried to fix his ratings problem in Providence, and I mean that in both senses of the word.
More from Jessica Heslam of the Boston Herald.