HeadlineUpdate

And now, back to me

Q:  Does the (constant, repetitive) use of (embarrassing, critical) quotations and news clips make Tim Russert’s (provocative, tangential) questions better?
Or,
Where have you gone, Lawrence Spivack?

Meet the Press
Sunday, January 30, 2025

GUESTS: Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Brian Williams, Anchor and Managing Editor, NBC Nightly News

MODERATOR/PANELIST:  Tim Russert - NBC News

It’s not just Tim Russert, of course. George does it, Bob does it, even Wolf and Fox do it (especially Fox).  Do news clips advance the story?  Or are they used so often because audiences are thought to have short attention span?

Let’s take a stroll through some of Tim Russert’s questions for John Kerry.

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator Edward Kennedy, the senior senator from Massachusetts, a prime sponsor of your presidential candidacy...

SEN. KERRY:  I've heard of him.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...gave a speech on Thursday.  Let me show you what he said and come back and talk about it.

(Videotape, Thursday)
(End videotape)

Good morning, America, (oh sorry, that’s another network), we know you hate to watch dreary politicians blathering on, but everyone’s got an opinion about the Kennedys, so here’s Ted.  Next week we’ll try to work in a clip of Martha Stewart, we promise.

MR. RUSSERT:  You remember that well, senator.  This was the ad, part of it, that the Bush-Cheney campaign ran throughout the campaign.  Let's watch.

(Videotape, Bush-Cheney '04 ad):

SEN. KERRY:  I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.

Announcer:  Wrong on defense.

(End videotape)

No way did the producers of Meet the Press sit around and say, now how can we work in that great video of him flip flopping?  I guess Kerry should feel grateful they decided showing the windsurfing clip too would be piling on.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me show you a photograph from Inauguration Day.  Here is George W. Bush giving his second inaugural address.  And there watching is John Kerry.

See how restrained they are?  They could have shown the clip of Muskie crying in the snow, Nixon’s “last press conference” or Dean’s scream.  Instead they opted for the classic “agony of defeat” shot.

MR. RUSSERT:  See if you could clear up one issue that I think has been left over from the campaign.  And that is Steve Gardner, who was a foregunner on your PCF-44 boat, cut a commercial for the Swift Boat Veterans and made a very specific charge.  Let me just show that and you can come back and talk about it a little bit.

(End videotape)

For those who might have missed this searing controversy, Kerry was attacked as a “liar” for saying he was inside Cambodia on Christmas Eve, 1968.

MR. RUSSERT:  Now, the New York Daily News editorial wrote an editorial, and it said this.  "As for Kerry, he might ask why the Swifties' attacks have been effective.  The answer is his propensity to exaggerate. ... It's looking more likely that he exaggerated, if not worse, when he claimed through the years that he was in Cambodia on Christmas Eve '68.  He said the memory was `seared' into him, but it's now clear Kerry was elsewhere, at least at that time.  He has yet to explain.  Until he does, the Swifties will have a powerful weapon in their arsenal."

And they refer, Senator, to a speech on the floor in which you said that you were there, that the president of the United States was saying you were not there, that there were troops in Cambodia.  You have the memory seared in you. In a letter to the Boston Herald, you remember spending Christmas Eve '68 five miles across the Cambodian border.  You told The Washington Post you have a lucky hat given to you by a CIA guy "as we went in for a special mission to Cambodia."  Were you in Cambodia Christmas Eve, 1968?

Or were you a mile on the other side of an unmarked border?  Cause if you got your location wrong, none of your valor as a soldier counts.  You go to war with the compass you’ve got, not the compass you wish you had.

MR. RUSSERT:  You'll release those photographs?

MR. RUSSERT:  And you have a hat that the CIA agent gave you?

Is it a nice hat?  Does it have a pom pom on it?  Tim, why don’t you ask him about Social Security?

MR. RUSSERT:  Nixon was president-elect, not president, at that particular time.  He wasn't sworn in until...

MR. RUSSERT:  But he was president-elect, not president.

SEN. KERRY:  That's correct.

I’ve checked the transcript, and I can’t figure out where Tim is going with this one. Did Kerry refer to “President” and not “President-elect” Nixon in 1968?   That’s nothing. On his New York radio show in the early seventies, long before Watergate, Malachy McCourt used to call him “former President” Nixon.

MR. RUSSERT:  Many people who've been criticizing you have said:  Senator, if you would just do one thing and that is sign Form 180, which would allow historians and journalists complete access to all your military records.  Thus far, you have gotten the records, released them through your campaign.  They say you should not be the filter.  Sign Form 180 and let the historians...

Wake up Marge.  That Russert feller is asking Kerry about Form 180!  Form 180!  It’s….It’s…I don’t know, but it must be important.

MR. RUSSERT:  Would you sign Form 180?

MR. RUSSERT:  Would you sign Form 180?

MR. RUSSERT:  So they should sign Form 180s for themselves as well?

Tim, you’ve been in Washington too long.  I’ve seen you roll your eyes at Senators who talk in acronyms and bill numbers. You’re so intent on playing gotcha you don’t realize you’re talking nonsense.  Among us hacks a quickly done book based on other people’s reporting is called a “clip job.”  What’s the TV version called? 

Bob Forehead Lives!

Co. to Advertise on Neb. Man's Forehead

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- A Web-page designer who auctioned off the use of his forehead for advertising space is letting it go to his head.

Yes, you read that right.  But once again, my favourite newspaper got to this story first--a year ago.

Andrew Fischer, 20, of Omaha, who put his forehead for sale on eBay as advertising space, received $37,375 on Friday to advertise the snoring remedy, SnoreStop.

"Weird stuff on eBay" is a new media favorite on a slow news day -- the "man bites dog" story of our time.

            Fischer will display the SnoreStop logo on his forehead for one month.

Duck and cover, here comes a new trend.  Soon everyone will be trying to cash in.  You'll have to fight with your local school board to keep McDonald's from leasing space on your child's noggin.  Isn't there a kids cable channel by that name?  Hide this post from their corporate owner.

"I look forward to an enjoyable association with Andrew - a man who clearly has a head for business in every sense of the word," SnoreStop CEO Christian de Rivel said.

Hilarious.  Head for business.  OK, it's a good quote.   

"People will always comment on something out of the ordinary," Fischer said in his sales pitch. "People like weird."

Do people like you Andrew?  How many people are going to see this ad anyway?  Do you have any friends at all? 

But there were limits: He refused from the outset to be the conduit for any message or product deemed tasteless or unacceptable in traditional advertising formats.

So beer would be OK, (and presumably next) maybe guns, but not the Playboy channel?  I fear this standard of decency won't hold.  Watch for "giving headspace" to be the next big thing on campus.