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Kerry Komfort

Do the voters or the corporations need the security

blanket?

 

by Alan Bisbort - August 5, 2004

 

The World This Week

Big Tim Russert, the wide-faced Sunday-morning spewer

of political incredulity, has found a sound bite he

likes. As we all know, when TV pundits find sound

bites they like, they chew on them like cuds. Big

Tim's sound bite du jour is " Americans need a comfort

level with John Kerry. "

 

Rather than saying anything about Kerry, this bite

says loads about Big Tim and the corporate propaganda

machine for which he stands. It should also prompt a

response from any self-respecting American voter, like

" Get your thumb out of your ass, Russert, and talk to

us like we're grown-ups. "

 

Let's turn this around for a minute. Why is it up to

Kerry to prove himself " comfort " -worthy to assume our

nation's highest office? Twenty-one years of service

in the U.S. Senate is not sufficient? Medals earned

for bravery in combat not enough? Years of work as a

no-nonsense prosecuting attorney don't count for

anything? Why, then, does it come down to something

that can't be defined -- comfort level -- but is

reported as if it were hard news by a reporter who

inexplicably commands respect in America?

 

Before examining this any further, let's take time out

for a word from our sponsors: the Bloggers of America,

the only news media many of us trust anymore, the only

one demonstrably interested in the continued existence

of our democracy. Without people like Josh Marshall

and his Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, and Bill Scher

at Liberal Oasis, we'd be sunk. Their fair and

balanced coverage of the convention, and pretty much

all other political events of the past three years,

has trumped the combined efforts of the

" professionals " in the Fourth Estate, who sit around

pondering comfort levels.

 

I've curtailed reading American newspapers, stopped

watching American news programs. All I need to know

about the priorities of the nation's news networks is

this: During the Democratic convention last week, Al

Jazeera, the Arab world's leading news network,

offered five times more live coverage than either ABC,

CBS or NBC, and twice the live coverage of all three

networks combined. Think about the disgrace in that

fact. Arabs are more informed about American democracy

than American voters.

 

Just in case you think this massive press failing is

limited to TV, consider the story distributed by the

Associated Press to hundreds of newspapers just prior

to the convention. In it, AP stated as fact that Bush

had a lead in electoral votes over Kerry, and most

papers around the country ran this story with

headlines like " Can Kerry Catch Him? " One problem. The

story was a fraud. The numbers the AP reporter cited

were scrutinized by Stephen Crockett and Al Lawrence

at Democratic Talk Radio, and all of the figures had

been skewed to Bush's advantage. By using the AP's own

rule of thumb -- awarding electoral votes only of

states solidly behind each candidate or leaning that

way -- Crockett and Lawrence demonstrated that, in

fact, Kerry had 168 solid votes to Bush's 144 (rather

than the 217 to 193 Bush lead that AP reported).

 

All moot, of course. Since the Democratic Convention,

the Kerry-Edwards ticket has enjoyed a 7- to 8-point

bump in all the polls. In fact, the generally

conservative Zogby Poll, taken even before Kerry's

rousing acceptance speech on Thursday, already shows

Kerry-Edwards leading Bush-Cheney by 5 points.

Furthermore, the " undecideds " (how, in God's name, can

anyone be " undecided " at this point?) were heavily

leaning toward Kerry, leaving Bush with nothing solid

to gain in the next three months. Perhaps the nail in

the coffin: Nancy Reagan, still steamed about Bush's

stem-cell research stance, has refused an invitation

to address the Republican Convention.

 

The more accurate question now is: Can Bush Catch

Kerry?

 

Back to Big Tim's " comfort level. " The impeccably

credentialed Black Sheep from Texas went AWOL during

the Vietnam War, failed at every business venture he

ever tried, mocked the search for WMDs, taunted the

enemy to kill our troops, can't eat a pretzel or ride

a bicycle without collapsing on the ground ... The

only people who can conceivably feel a " comfort level "

with that record are the inmates of a lunatic asylum.

 

If, by chance, a few others feel any comfort with

Bush, the onus is not on Kerry. It's on media whores

like Russert who've been licking Captain Codpiece's

boots for the past three years.