HeadlineUpdate

George Allen goes (Ma) Ca CaUpdated Again!

William Klein — 2006-09-24T15:17:00-04:00

If like me, you can't get enough of George Allen, a couple of good links to chew on (like a good ham sandwich or pork chop). And last week's interview his mother gave to the Washington Post was pathetic:

When I told Georgie, I said, 'Now you don't love me anymore.' He said, 'Mom, I respect you more than ever.' "

And confirming suspicions that Richard Nixon's favorite coach might not have been the most tolerant of souls:

"He didn't want me to tell his mother," she said of the elder George Allen. "At that time, that was a no-no, to marry outside the church."

But Etty Allen does confirm part of my theory advanced below, that she doesn't go around referring to dark-skinned humans as "macaca."

Etty Allen said Wednesday that she had never used the word "macaca" before and had to go to a dictionary to look it up when she heard of the controversy. She said the word did not exist in her dictionary.
"I swear to you, I have never used that word," she said. "I must have used a lot of bad words, but not that word."

I believe her. As noted below, I believe her son George was simply, and typically D-R-U-N-K. He was babbling like Jerry Lewis doing his idiot boy routine and "macaca" came out. Usually Allen is in better control, but what with that and this new Jewish conspiracy he's railing against, he must be hitting the sauce even earlier in the day.

More from the madman of Richmond in the press today. George Allen is finally apologizing to the young man he was caught babbling to last week. But it doesn't matter. I said it below and I'll say it again, only more clearly this time: the man is a drunk. He was famous as Governor for showing up drunk. He was drunk when his brain failed to tell his mouth to speak intelligibly. He seems to have a problem with that sort of thing. No one seems to be willing to say this out loud, but that's what blogs are for, innit?

The kerfuffle over Virginia Senator, former Governor and future candidate for president George Allen's "racial" remarks yesterday, while extensively covered here in the Times, the Post, and everywhere else, misses the pint, I mean point.

No matter what the dictionary says, I am sure that neither George Allen nor for that matter, anyone else on the planet,uses the word "macaca" in conversation, whether in polite company or when out drinking with Mel Gibson. Nor was anyone refering to the young man's haircut, although I love the image conveyed in the Times' story of Allen's PR machinery working overtime to come up with a credible lie:

The senator’s communications director, John Reid, said in an interview Tuesday that Allen campaign workers had good-naturedly nicknamed Mr. Sidarth “Mohawk” because he would not disclose his name and the sobriquet seemed appropriate for Mr. Sidarth’s hairstyle.

Perhaps, Mr. Reid suggested, “Mohawk” morphed into “macaca,” with results that turned out to be regrettable.

Perhaps. But perhaps the boss was just out of his head again. He gets like that. Mean too, like Nixon (and George W. Bush, who stayed mean even after he quit drinking). Usually Allen does a better job acting normal--Webb must have him wattled, I mean rattled...

Check, please!

White House Office of Rebuttal and Denial

William Klein — 2006-09-23T22:37:54-04:00

One of my 14.56 regular readers sent in this link. Pretty scary stuff, eh kids? As an unapolgetic--although not uncritical--propagandist, I have nothing against advancing a point of view, but the news that the White House has devoted part of it's website to saying "Oh Yeah?" to press critics is typical of the control freaks in the Bush Administration. I trust that no actual reporters take this stuff seriously, but readers are invited to google, nexus and otherwise search these posts to see how the White House astroturf grows.

L'Shanah Tovah Tengo

William Klein — 2006-09-23T14:49:49-04:00

Raise your hand if you love Yo La Tengo. Well, mazeltov and Happy New Year. What better way to ring in 5767 than with the new YLT? "I'm Not Araid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass." No, don't go off in a Huffington, that's the name of the album.
I admit I do boast about how I was friends with YLT's Ira Kaplan in college, but that's mainly because I enjoy remembering how he introduced me to my first cheese steak. (It was at Philly Mignon on 8th Street, maybe you went there after a Rocky Horror Picture Show down the street at the Waverly.) I admit I was skeptical about the notion of melting cheese on top of grilled steak-this was, after all, the 1970s--s but the day after we'd made our midnight run into the city I realized I couldn't stop thinking about that bad boy.

But Ira also turned me on to lots of great music too, like the Kinks and the Flamin Groovies and now he, his wife Georgia Hubley and "That Skinny MF With The High Voice" James McNew have just put out their 16th (or thereabouts) album of intelligent, shimmering music. They put on generous, exciting shows and are coming to DC on Tuesday. I'll be there, will you?

Politicians' Egos

William Klein — 2006-09-09T14:35:52-04:00

As a dedicated Anglophile, I of course am fascinated with what's happening to Tony Blair's leadership. (My previously noted obsession with the Guardian puts the best coverage of this story in my browser, as does the BBC.) It began with an interview Blair gave to the Times in which he refused to be pushed in to setting a date for his departure. Reading between the lines as usual, I thought I detected a secret plan (and the hidden had of Alistair Campbell) to use Blair's upcoming speech to the Labour Party convention on September 24 to finally address the issue. After saying he wouldn't set a date (or set a date to set a date), Blair could make a dramatic gesture and get to be the framer not the framed.
Maybe that was the idea for awhile, but it all went pear-shaped when Gordon Brown or people pretending to speak for him started getting snippy. Also when a bunch of junior M.P.'s (mostly "parliamentary private secretaries", who, under the British system, perform menial tasks for other lawmakers that U.S. pols would find alarmingly democratic) quit Blair's government.
Tony Blair rightfully took credit for the being the first Prime Minister to not say he'd go "on and on and on." But now, his public dithering has riven the party. There's pressure, albeit so far, not very serious for a contested battle,which could allow a victorious Brown to put political credit in the bank years before he faces an election. But presumably Brown would rather move into #10 not a year from now, but now.
If Blair really cares about his legacy,he should, like Joe Lieberman, just go. Whose interest is served in politicians staying on after their Party rejects them? Only the self-interested party himself.
I said it before,and I'll say it again. There's only one word for politicians who put their own drive for power ahead of everything else, and it's one of my favorites: Nixonian.

Say It Aint So, Joe (Already)!!

William Klein — 2006-08-12T13:23:47-04:00

Enough already. I predict Joe Lieberman will end up not running as an Independent under intense, though for a party of donkeys, surprisingly delicate pressure. He's waiting for the first (or second) round of polls to show that Lamont has a clear lead and then he'll cave. But I wish he'd do the right thing now. There's only one word for a politician who so cravenly puts his own self-interest above his party or the voters, and it's one of my favorites: Nixonian.

More from me later, I'm back from my bucolic Northern location and grumpy about it...

Wal-Mart is Smart (and the Post is dumbing down)

William Klein — 2006-07-25T15:43:46-04:00

Two articles today, from the business sections of the Times and the Post, are almost enough to convince me that we're wrong about Wal-Mart. Sure, they're hurting local economies, exploiting workers and chewing up the landscape, but Americans mostly like their stores and as today's news shows, the company is smart and getting smarter.

Hiring Democratic operative Leslie Dach to be in charge of public relations and government affairs is bold, but this quote from the Post's profile of energy theoriest Amory Lovins is even more striking:

"He's been fantastic," said Andy Ruben, vice president for strategic planning and sustainability at Wal-Mart. Lovins suggested that Wal-Mart get its truck drivers to stop using the main engine to air-condition their cabs while parked. Instead, he proposed using small, more efficient engines installed behind the fuel tank. Ruben says the change will save 10 million gallons a year for Wal-Mart, which operates 7,200 trucks, the second-largest private fleet in the nation.

Ruben said Lovins also introduced him to the idea of "phantom loads," electricity used by televisions, microwaves and other appliances while turned off. Wal-Mart may ask suppliers to redesign such devices. Lovins and his colleagues at RMI, Ruben said, are "big thinkers and have got a different lens they see things through." Lovins said he likes working with a company that can make decisions quickly and is big enough to have a real impact.

To me, the eye-opener was the idea that Wal-Mart even has a Vice President for strategic planning and sustainability. Meanwhile, BP is running commercials promoting alternative energy, with the company formerly known as British now ID'ing themselves as "Beyond Petroleum."

There's something happening here. Maybe Leslie Dach is right when he told the Times:

"I believe that change is happening and the change is real," he said. Explaining his decision to leave his role as an outside consultant, he added, "The changes come from the inside."

As I've said before, taking on Wal-Mart is a pretty tough battle. I'm not suggesting giving up on outside pressure, but simultaneous inside progress is looking pretty good today.

One More Thing:

One of the great newspaper stylists of our time was the late Washington Post TV writer, John J. Carmody. His TV column, written in the voice of "Captain Airwaves" was witty, informative and always a pleasure. On the other hand, his successor, Lisa de Moraes, takes pride in writing like a Valley Girl:

"It's a question that not only we face with 'Vanished' but frankly the whole industry is going to be facing this year, given the proliferation of serialized shows," said Liguori, who, as one TV critic sitting in The Power Strip noted, often sounds like he's swallowed a dictionary. "Proliferation"--paleeze.

Helo? Is "proliferation" reallyl such a hard word?

One Power Strip critic, reflecting the general cranky-pants-iness of the room, said it was nice to know Liguori feels everybody's pain but what exactly is he doing about it?

Wow, what a missed metaphor pile-up in that sentence. Power Strip? "Cranky-pants-iness?" This woman, and I'm assuming that although she writes like one she isn't really a teenager, is far too in love with her own "writing." As Truman Capote said (about Jack Kerouac), "that's not writing, that's typing."

"We did want to make sure we had some portfolio management," said Liguori, coughing up a little Merriam-Webster.

More of those fancy words. Imagine that. A Fox VP who's too intellectual for the Washington Post! Please, WashPost, stop killing trees for this woman!

Armey's Army

William Klein — 2006-07-23T16:41:46-04:00

In my other life as a direct mail insultant, I am well familiar with stories like this about direct mail scams. group using the promise of tax-free medical savings accounts to lure members. In this case, former House Majority Leader Richard Armey heads a nice little earner called FreedomWorks (formerly Citizens for a Sound Economy--I bet that title change cost them a pretty penny in consultants' fees, focus groups and polls) that is giving my beloved profession of direct mail manipulation a bad name.

As this paragraph shows, the object here is really just to sell names to other mailers.

FreedomWorks and its predecessor, CSE, were careful about the deal's financial aspects. In a Sept. 13, 2000, letter, CSE's Quinn said documents should overtly refer to dues, suggesting they be set at $12 a year, to be raised at CSE's discretion upon notifying Medical Savings Insurance Co. She also noted: "I would assume that these people will become CSE members for all purposes and therefore will go on the CSE mailing list. Since the CSE mailing list is rented, as a matter of course, those names would be rented as CSE members . . . without specific identification as MSIC insureds."

Bejewelled with right wing mantras like "Flat Tax," "Across-the-Board Tax Cuts," "Limited Government" and "School Choice" this direct mail come-on attracted enough suckers to launch a lawsuit. But when it works, direct mail gives people a chance to act on their most deeply held values and beliefs. Whether it's putting an Amnesty International sticker on your car or sending a contribution to your favorite candidate, odds are you've responded to a direct mail appeal or two. So don't blame the messenger, unless it's Dick Armey. Him, blame all you want.

O Condi! O Mores! (and Maureen)

William Klein — 2006-07-22T15:08:20-04:00

I know, I really shouldn't try to pun in Latin. But I did just buy at a yard sale a copy of Henry Beard's "Latin for All Occasions" after I opened to this:

Things to Say to your Psychiatrist

Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe.

Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Euroopae vincendarum.

I think some people in togas are plotting against me.

Sentio aliquos togatos contra me conspirare.

Read Maureen Dowd today on Condi Rice's peculiar definition of diplomacy:

“I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling, and it wouldn’t have been clear what I was shuttling to do,” she said.

Keep more civilians from being killed? Or at least keep America from being even more despised in the Middle East and around the globe?

You can always count on Maureen Dowd to get it right, even if she does like her popular culture references a bit too much. This one name-checks Uma and Oprah and then pounds comparisions with the new "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie into a bloody pulp of metaphor.
But Dowd is worth reading, even if the Times does make you jump through hoops now to do so. Also on my fave rave list of columnists are:

Simon Hoggart of the Guardian
Harold Meyerson and E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post
David Corn of the Nation
Murray Waas of the National Journal

Me and Kinky Friedman

William Klein — 2006-07-18T12:17:07-04:00

I've been a fan of the Kinkster since his days as a touring partner of Bob Dylan, witty singer songwriter and with his band, the Texas Jewboys, performer of such classics as "They Don't Make Jews Like Jesus Anymore" and "I'm an Asshole from El Paso." He skyrocketed to success in 1984 with the first of his comic mysteries starring himself, his friends, and a thinly drawn plot. I've borrowed this formula for my novel in progress, Murder in the Propaganda Factory, in which every word is true, except for the parts that aren't.
Now, of course, Kinky Friedman is running for Governor of Texas in a four way race that, as Dan Rather would say, is tighter than a tick on a jackrabbit..or something like that Read all about Kinky's campaign here as he runs for the office once held by George W. Bush. As Kinky likes to observe, if he could do it, how hard can it be?

"Weather Porn" and the Boy King with all the Bling

William Klein — 2006-07-17T19:16:00-04:00

This article in the Washington Post about the Discovery Channel's plans to market video content specially made for cell phones reads like parody. An executive at National Geographic shoots himself, and his company in the corporate foot thusly, committing what Michael Kinsley once defined as the classic "gaffe"--saying what's really on your mind in public.

National Geographic Ventures, the for-profit arm of the National Geographic Society, is creating high-action shorts of natural phenomena such as tornados and hurricanes, which Chief Operating Officer Ted Prince refers to as "weather porn."

Also beyond belief is this:

The job of feeding content to small screens falls to a six-person team inside the new-media department. Four "preditors" -- industry short-hand for producers/writers/editors -- create programming for Web sites and mobile phones, combing the companies' hundreds of thousands of hours of footage for segments that can be knit into cellphone-size bits of up to two minutes. Instead of a two-hour documentary on zebras in the Serengeti, animal footage is more likely to take the form of "Top Five Takedowns," which lets viewers vote by text message on their favorite clip of predators attacking prey.

Realy scarrry, eh kids? The Post kindly links to the "Predators Attack" video. What a public service this newspaper is performing and it is clearly not at all looking to cash in internet readers' interest in cheap thrills.

Bush Being Bush? Or Bush Being a Buffoon? We Report: You Decide

William Klein — 2006-07-17T18:33:44-04:00

Link: CNN.com - Bush caught off-guard in chat with Blair - Jul 17, 2006.

I hate to direct readers to CNN, the least important news organization in the world, but they do have a video of George Bush's private chat with Tony Blair. As Chris Matthews observed earlier today, if you're a world leader you're supposed to know not to speak with your mouth full or talk when the microphone is hot, but Bush apparently forgot to do both. His smirk when he confides to Blair what's "ironic" (presumably in the Alanis Morissette sense of the word) is classic. And isn't Blair egging George on by agreeing with him about Kofi Annan's obstinance? He's still Bush's poodle. Follow what they're saying about all this on the Guardian's website here.

The Conventional Wisdom is (Almost) Always Wrong

William Klein — 2006-07-16T14:04:02-04:00

It's an age old theme, perhaps best expressed by the philosopher Groucho Marx:

"Whatever it is, I'm against it."

Whether you call it conventional wisdom or the "prevailing view" as Thomas Mann prefers in his excellent piece today in the Washington Post, it's headed for a train wreck. Can someone please start printing those old "Question Authority" buttons again? (True story. I was wearing one once and someone inquiringly approached me and said, "I have a question.")
Harold Meyerson said much the same thing in his piece the other day about how Ned Lamont is upsetting the CW and is going to beat Joe Lieberman.
Thomas Mann cites the Republicans' "traditionally higher turnout rates" and "vaunted get-out-the-vote operation" but I think that's going to prove to be their Achilles Heel this year. There are so many local races generating massive Democratic enthusiasm that I see a "'trickle up" effect from the middle to the top of the ticket. Republicans may end up losing some of their base this year as they continue to argue over stem cells and fences on the border. Democrats, meanwhile, are finding new energy in that most old-fashioned political tool: the door to door canvass.

Here in my part of Maryland, Jamie Raskin is generating massive grassroots enthusiasm in his race for State Senate as this short documentary makes clear. Full disclosure: I'm working on Jamie's campaign, but see for yourself why I and so many people think Jamie Raskin's campaign is a reminder of why we started out caring about politics in the first place. (For me, it has a lot to do with this quote from Robert Kennedy. What inspired you? Please comment below.) One of the groups endorsing Jamie, 21st Century Democrats, has a slate of endorsed candidates at all levels of government who are in a position to strengthen the position of other Democrats on the ticket.

So the next time someone knocks on your door, or phones you at home, or (my favorite) sends you a mailing, remember the grassroots and I don't mean that one hit wonder band. Back when he was mostly sensible, Ralph Nader, one of the many unlikely people I've written for over the years (including, in the same season, Walter Mondale, Jesse Jackson, Bishop Tutu and Mario Cuomo) used to talk about the "democracy toolbox" and in 2006, there's finally going to be one in the hands of every voter. Watch out!

Grover Norquist Ha Ha Ha

William Klein — 2006-07-09T12:47:27-04:00

It is truly the season of joy and wonderment here in Washingtron. First Abramoff, then DeLay, (and Ney), Ralph Reed and now Grover Norquist. They're all getting their comeuppance, and it feels so good!

I particularly enjoyed the quotes from Norquist's fellow wingers who after years of backstabbing, now enjoy stabbing people in the front.

"People were willing to cut him a lot of slack because he's done a lot of favors for a lot of people," said J. Michael Waller, a vice president of the right-leaning Center for Security Policy who for several years was an occasional participant at Norquist's Wednesday meetings. "But Grover's not that likable."

...Frank J. Gaffney Jr., the firebrand director of the Center for Security Policy, has developed an anti-Norquist presentation, complete with charts and graphs, that he has shopped around to other conservatives.

The Democrat We Don't Need Updated

William Klein — 2006-07-07T13:04:20-04:00

The indespensible politicalwire.com has this update to the question I asked below, a post that generated a flurry of emails from readers--well, two.

One of the games Washington people play is to ask each other's opinions on what to the rest of the country is pretty obscure stuff--like who's going to win the Democratic Senate nomination in Connecticut. "Get a life," you're saying on beyond the Beltway, but here we're all over today's news that Joe Lieberman is planning to run as an independent if he's rejected by the Nutmeg State's Democrats in favor of challenger Ned Lamont.

Lieberman, Al Gore's Brilliant Mistake (or one of them, at least, along with not letting Bill Clinton campaign for him in West Virginia and New Hampshire) has morphed into a Bush-kissing, mollycoddling mealy mouthed jerk. (See talk radio? I can dish it out too. Call me.) If Gore had picked Florida Senator Bob Graham-- or Flipper, for that matter,anyone who could have attracted votes in Florida-- he'd be President and Lieberman would be mostly harmless. (Warning: Preceding link is loud).

Even so, a month ago I wouldn't have bet against him, but now all bets are off. Lieberman's own polls must show him dead in the water, his feet in concrete,pushing up daisies, an ex-Senator. Democrats who weren't feeling the anger driving Lamont's supporters are feeling it now, as Lieberman's behavior becomes positively Nixonian.

The Times article cites the fate of one of the last of the really good Republicans, my own former Senator Clifford Case:

The senator's remarks about a possible independent campaign may reflect a knowledge of history as well as an abundance of caution. He was a member of the Connecticut State Senate in 1978 when Senator Clifford Case, a longtime New Jersey Republican, made a fatal mistake: underestimating an opponent.

Mr. Case paid little attention to Jeffrey Bell, a Ronald Reagan protégé who was much more conservative than the senator. Instead of running hard against Mr. Bell in the primary, the senator looked ahead to the general election against the Democrat Bill Bradley. But Mr. Bell triumphed in the primary, sending Mr. Case into retirement.

The key word here is "retirement" which Senator Case slipped into like the gentleman he always was (unlike his Garden State Senate colleague, extra bonus points--no fair Googling--for readers who recall his name, including nickname, his notable contribution to history, and the name of his press secretary).

Then there was the case of Case's colleague from New York, Jacob Javits, who after being defeated in the GOP primary by Alphonse D'Amato, ran as a Liberal, took votes away from the Democrat and handed the election to D'Amato. Six years later, I worked on Mark Green's campaign to beat D'Amato but unfortunately he stayed on to do damage for three whole terms until he was finally beaten by Chuck Schumer. Now, of course, Schumer is head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and Chuck, as they say in Brooklyn, dis is what I wanna know.

Do you have a tacit understanding with Lieberman that you won't undermine this Independent talk? Or are you going to say that you'll support the winner of the Democratic primary? Isn't that your job?

Ralph Reed Ha Ha HaUpdated

William Klein — 2006-06-26T17:25:00-04:00

Sure we could see this coming for months, but it still feels great, doesn't it? I've been wallowing in Ralph Reed's defeat all day, and I thoroughly recommend it. Start here and then dig in there. And thanks to C-Span, watch the little creep's concession speech here.

This is just the first political casualty of the every growing Abramoff story. Imagine what will happen when indictments hit elected officials and

(Roddy Doyle link I couldn't put in the Title here)

Oh there's nothing like the Jack Abramoff scandal to keep us Democrats happy...as Bob Woodward said about Nixon, it's the gift that keeps on giving. The latest chapter incriminates Ralph Reed, former President of the Christian Coalition and former political consultant who fancied a political career of his own. I predict his race for Lt. Governor of Georgia in 2006, and presumably President in 2016, will soon collapse under the weight of all this scandal. How long can Ralph hang on? Place your bets.

In the meantime, let's all revel in "Gimme Five," the riveting new report from John McCain's Indian Affairs Committee hearings detailing how more than $5 million in Indian payments to Ralph Reed were filtered through Abramoff-controlled corporations. The Washington Post beat the Times in getting this quote:

The report cited interviews with Mississippi Choctaw and Louisiana Coushatta tribal representatives. Reed "did not want to be paid directly by a tribe with gaming interests," said Choctaw official Nell Rogers. "It was our understanding that the structure was recommended by Jack Abramoff to accommodate Mr. Reed's political concerns.

It's clear from reading the emails in the Abramoff/Savafian/Reed imbroglio that like so much in politics, at the heart of these scandals are big boys playing with big toys, in this case power and money. Sometimes they even reveal their inner idiot to the press:

"I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag." --Ralph Reed, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, November 9, 1991

"It's like guerrilla warfare. If you reveal your location, all it does is allow your opponent to improve his artillery bearings. It's better to move quietly, with stealth, under cover of night. You've got two choices: You can wear cammies and shimmy along on your belly, or you can put on a red coat and stand up for everyone to see. It comes down to whether you want to be the British army in the Revolutionary War or the Viet Cong. History tells us which tactic was more effective."--Ralph Reed Los Angeles Times, 3/22/92

I'm going to enjoy watching the evil boy genius implode.

Note to Reader(s): You know who you are, Art. And you too Karen.
Has it really been more than a month since I last posted here? I plead...alien abduction, yeah, that's the ticket. Come support one of the reasons I've been busier than usual lately, and check this space again over the weekend.

What's Wrong with Tim Russert

William Klein — 2006-05-14T16:23:50-04:00

I recently heard about the section on the Huffington Post devoted to tirades against Tim Russert. I don't feel like wading through it all to find this out, but wonder if they've commented on my previously mentioned Gripe #1 about "Little Russ." (I did see this post about the New York Times Sunday Magazine's snarky Q&A about Tim's apparent professional neglect of his mother) (Is anyone actually reading the "'Funny" pages anyway?)

So here's my beef: Russert is addicted to the news clip. Whether it's a printed quote from long ago or video of a guest taking a contrary view on an earlier interview, Tim seems to feel his job is to play "gotcha" with his guests. On Russert's Meet the Press, the most important job is researcher.

Having said that, I wish I had seen the segment of MTP a few weeks ago with Steve Bridges, the comedian who played George W. Bush's doppelganger at the Correspondent's Dinner. (And thanks to the Internet, now I can!) I only heard it on C-Span radio, and it wasn't the same. Bridges does other political impressions too, including a dead-on Bill Clinton, which he did in his Bush get-up. Oooooo, scary stuff!

(Speaking of which, I've been asked by one of my 13.9 readers why I failed to comment on Stephen Colbert's performance at the annual Correpsondents embarrassing lovefest. All a I know is that the same story comes out practically every year about how the host's performance fell flat. I suppose it depends on where you sit, in the cheap seats, I'm told, Colbert was boffo, up in lobbyist la-la land, the audience was more hostile.)

And speaking of the Clinton family, my rant last week against Markos (Daily Kos) Moulitsas was picked up by the Columbia Journalism Review's CJRDaily, and a reader named CliffsVoice left this comment:

Next, there’s HeadlineUpdate blog which I found harder place. I looked around the site and it seems (I’m guessing now) that the author is a centrist Democrat –– that is to say a New Democrat in the Clinton-Triangulation mode. In any case, HeadlineUpdate blog is Not Left.

Hey comrade, I used to do direct mail for the Christic Institute and this week I worked on an ad from Cindy Sheehan!

The hate mail I got after teasing Elvis fans about the sanctity of Graceland was even better..

Kos Is Wrong About Hillary

William Klein — 2006-05-07T19:30:43-04:00

Markos Moulitsas, proprietor of the of-course-I'm-jealous Daily Kos, opines in the Washington Post on why Hillary Clinton may be the wrong choice for the Democrats. Of course I'm jealous of his blog (did I mention that?) but let us count the ways he's wrong:

Hillary Clinton has a few problems if she wants to secure the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. She is a leader who fails to lead. She does not appear "electable." But most of all, Hillary has a Bill Clinton problem. (And no, it's not about that. )

Actually, there's nothing wrong with this paragraph except that I don't agree with it. But that doesn't mean the writing isn't lively and clear, even if the Clinton joke is kind of, well, obvious.

Moving into 2008, Republicans will be fighting to shake off the legacy of the Bush years: the jobless recovery, the foreign misadventures, the nightmarish fiscal mismanagement, the Katrina mess, unimaginable corruption and an imperial presidency with little regard for the Constitution or the rule of law. Every Democratic contender will be offering change, but activists will be demanding the sort of change that can come only from outside the Beltway.

Hillary Clinton leads her Democratic rivals in the polls and in fundraising. Unfortunately, however, the New York senator is part of a failed Democratic Party establishment -- led by her husband -- that enabled the George W. Bush presidency and the Republican majorities, and all the havoc they have wreaked at home and abroad.

You know, the Establishment is a moving target. When Jimmy Carter ran for president, his campaign manager was quoted saying if Carter got elected and appointed Establishment figures like Cyrus Vance and Zbigniew Brzezinski he'd quit --Carter did and Hamilton Jordan didn't. Ronald Reagan ran as an outsider and so did George W. Bush. The only people who talk today about a "failed Democratic Party establishment" are embittered Howard Dean fans.

Of course, it's still early. At this point in the last presidential cycle, the first hints of Howard Dean's transformational campaign were barely emerging. In 2002, the Democrats had no clear front-runner, but the conventional wisdom was betting on a handful of insider candidates with money and connections: Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman and John F. Kerry, and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt. These three were supposed to contend. The early polls gave them (especially Lieberman) the inside track to the nomination, and the media gave the rest of the field no more than its usual dismissive coverage.

See what I mean? Bloggers are about the only ones who still have time for Howard Dean, because he gave them credibility. And it's disingenuious to say that Lieberman was ever a front-runner: all he ever had in the early polls was name recognition.

But the netroots -- the far-flung collection of grassroots political activists organizing online -- proved to be a different world, one unencumbered by Washington's conventional wisdom. Even as the establishment mocked Dean and his supporters ("like a scene out of the 'Star Wars' cantina," laughed a rival campaign aide), his army of hyper-motivated supporters organized across all 50 states. This movement exploded onto the national scene when Dean began reporting dramatically higher fundraising numbers than his opponents. Had Kerry not lent himself millions to reach the Iowa caucuses, and had Dean not been so green a candidate, Dean probably would have been the nominee.

Clever Kos, gets his plug in for the netroots and reiterates the popular myth that Dean could ever have beaten Kerry in Iowa and New Hamshire. It wasn't money or the "Dean Scream" that finished his campaign--it was Dean himself. And Joe Trippi, of course. And the consultants...

Dean lost, but the point was made. No longer would D.C. insiders impose their candidates on us without our input; those of us in the netroots could demand a say in our political fortunes. Today, however, Hillary Clinton seems unable to recognize this new reality. She seems ill-equipped to tap into the Net-energized wing of her party (or perhaps is simply uninterested in doing so) and incapable of appealing to this newly mobilized swath of voters. She may be the establishment's choice, but real power in the party has shifted.

Get real, Markos. Just because Hillary doesn't have a website doesn't mean she won't attend to your precious netroots. Besides, how many people are really tuning into John Edwards' podcasts or Mark Warner's blog? This paragraph is nonsense--"ill-equipped" is just not a term that applies to Team Clinton.

Our crashing of Washington's gates wasn't about ideology, it was about pragmatism. Democrats haven't won more than 50 percent of the vote in a presidential election since 1976. Heck, we haven't won more than 50.1 percent since 1964. And complicit in that failure was the only Democrat to occupy the White House since 1980: Bill Clinton.

There you go again. "Our crashing?" I thought this article was about Hillary Clinton? Why do you keep talking about bloggers? Can we go back to Hillary, please?

Despite all his successes -- and eight years of peace and prosperity is nothing to sneeze at -- he never broke the 50-percent mark in his two elections. Regardless of the president's personal popularity, Democrats held fewer congressional seats at the end of his presidency than before it. The Democratic Party atrophied during his two terms, partly because of his fealty to his "third way" of politics, which neglected key parts of the progressive movement and reserved its outreach efforts for corporate and moneyed interests.

I said Hillary, not Bill. And I'm getting tired of this "he seemed great but" argument. A personally popular president who brings peace and prosperity--what's wrong with that? There are a lot of competing theories about why Democrats lost ground in Washington; blaming the "Third Way" is but one of them.

While Republicans spent the past four decades building a vast network of small-dollar donors to fund their operations, Democrats tossed aside their base and fed off million-dollar-plus donations. The disconnect was stark, and ultimately destructive. Clinton's third way failed miserably. It killed off the Jesse Jackson wing of the Democratic Party and, despite its undivided control of the party apparatus, delivered nothing. Nothing, that is, except the loss of Congress, the perpetuation of the muddled Democratic "message," a demoralized and moribund party base, and electoral defeats in 2000, 2002 and 2004.

As one of the six percent of New York Jews who voted for Jesse Jackson in the 1988 primary, I feel qualifed to say that Rev. Jackson never had a wing, nor even a suite in the Democratic Party.

Those failures led the netroots to support Dean in the last presidential race. We didn't back him because he was the most "liberal" candidate. In fact, we supported him despite his moderate, pro-gun, pro-balanced-budget record, because he offered the two things we craved most: outsider credentials and leadership.

If voters really wanted outsiders to be inside politics, they'd have elected Ross Perot--or George Wallace. (Remember Send Them a Message?) And Dean's "leadership" can be traced to the declaraton he stole from Paul Wellstone: "I come from the Democratic wing of the Democratic party."

And therein lie Hillary Clinton's biggest problems. She epitomizes the "insider" label of the early crowd of 2008 Democratic contenders. She's part of the Clinton machine that decimated the national Democratic Party. And she remains surrounded by many of the old consultants who counsel meekness and caution. James Carville, the famed longtime adviser to the Clintons, told Newsweek last week, "The American people are going to be ready for an era of realism. They've seen the consequences of having too many 'big ideas.' "

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Hillary Clinton is popular because a lot of people like her. Ask the voters of upstate New York, where she's doing better than any Democrat since FDR. In 1992 Hillary famously said "If you vote for my husband, you get me; it's a two-for-one, blue plate special." I think voters are going to feel the same way this time: "Hey, we get Bill back!" And calling James Carville "meek" is like calling Karl Rove, um, "meek."

Meanwhile, pollster Mark Penn, a brilliant numbers guy, has counseled the Hillary team to ignore the party's netroots activists as "irrelevant." (After all, didn't Dean lose?) Little surprise that in late March, the Daily Kos's bimonthly presidential straw poll delivered bleak results for Clinton, with just 2 percent of respondents making her their top choice for 2008.

I'm with Penn on this one. That's right, Dean did lose. Big time. And how many more times are you going to plug your blog? I know, I know, sour grapes...

At a time when rank-and-file Democrats are using technology to become increasingly engaged and active in their party, when they are demanding that their leaders stand for something and develop big ideas, Clinton's closest advisers are headed in the opposite direction. But big ideas aren't Bush's problem -- bad ideas are.

Oh for Pete's sake. In case you haven't noticed, Hillary Clinton is taking great pains to not start her presidential campaign until after she's re-elected Senator from New York. The big ideas will come, just you wait.

Yet staying away from big ideas seems to come naturally to Hillary Clinton. Perhaps first lady Clinton was so scarred by her failed health-care reform in the early 1990s that now Sen. Clinton shows no proclivity for real leadership as a lawmaker.

Afraid to offend, she has limited her policy proposals to minor, symbolic issues -- such as co-sponsoring legislation to ban flag burning. She doesn't have a single memorable policy or legislative accomplishment to her name. Meanwhile, she remains behind the curve or downright incoherent on pressing issues such as the war in Iraq.

In case you hadn't noticed this either, the Democrats don't control the Senate and the Republican leadership doesn't give the minority party too many chances to shine. What laws do you think of when you think of Joe Biden? Or Evan Bayh?

On the war, Clinton's recent "I disagree with those who believe we should pull out, and I disagree with those who believe we should stay without end" seems little different from Kerry's famous "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it" line. The last thing we need is yet another Democrat afraid to stand on principle.

In fact it's very different from Kerry's remark, although Kos is correct in discerning it's also a compound sentence. My favorite political principal was the one I quoted in my first op-ed for the Christian Science Monitor: "if we can't take their money , drink their liquor and screw their women, and then vote against them, we have no business being in politics."

In person, Clinton is one of the warmest politicians I've ever met, but her advisers have stripped what personality she has, hiding it from the public. Some of that may be a product of her team's legendary paranoia, somewhat understandable given the knives out for her. But what remains is a heartless, passionless machine, surrounded by the very people who ground down the activist base in the 1990s and have continued to hold the party's grassroots in utter contempt. The operation is rudderless, without any sign of significant leadership. And to top it off, a sizable number of Democrats don't think she could win a general election, anyway.

I hope you didn't miss the crucial words "I've ever met" here. Remember, while this article is supposed to be about a politician named Hillary Clinton, it's really about Markos. He's got one point--the netroots are angry--and he's going to hammer it home until we say Uncle. As for that sizeable number of Democrats who don't think she can win, remember the "Anyone But Carter" effort in 1976 that led to the "Draft Muskie" campaign in 1980? No? I predict Democrats will unite around the nominee in 2008 the way they never did around Gore or Kerry.

Can Hillary Clinton overcome those impediments? Money and star power go a long way, but the netroots is now many times larger than it was only three years ago, and we have attractive alternatives to back (and fund), such as former governor Mark W. Warner and Sen. Russell Feingold.

Just as we crazy political junkies glimpsed the viability of the candidacy of an obscure governor from a small New England state three years ago, today we regard Hillary Clinton's candidacy as anything but inevitable. Her obstacles are big, and from this vantage point, possibly insurmountable.

Uncle! I give up. Netroots: Important. OK, OK, I get it. But for all your crowing from your "vantage point" I wonder if you see the same political landscape I do. Kos, if you can make Russ Feingold a viable national candidate I'll stop trying to compete for your readers. (And if anyone ever looked like a Vice President, it's Mark Warner...

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

William Klein — 2006-05-07T17:13:41-04:00

Link: More Questions Surface in the Wake of a Congressman's Bribery Case - New York Times.

The Congressional influence-peddling scandal grows juicer by the day. Now the FBI is interviewing call girls who might have ridden in limos with formerr Republican Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. And as Maureen Dowd observed the other day, in a political climate rife with satirical opportunities, the tale of Duke, Dusty Foggo, poker and prostitutes just can't be ignored. I'm still eagerly waiting for the other shoes to drop in the Abramoff/Safavian/DeLay/Ney scandals, aren't you?

Stop Feeding the Hand that Bites You

William Klein — 2006-04-23T17:41:07-04:00

An intelligent argument today by David Sanger in the New York Times against the way the White House runs press briefings. The departure of the robotic Scott McClellan brings into focus the danger that daily, televised briefings can become argument clinics where, as Sanger says, "Both sides strut."
Bill Clinton's Monica-era press secretary Michael McCurry repeats here the regret he's expressed recently about letting the briefings be televised.

"It's too late," Sanger writes, "to turn the television cameras off, of course."

I'm not so sure. After the spectacle of the last few years of the Bush press operation, I think most Americans have had enough. As blogger Jay Rosen observes, the White House strategy is to treat the media like a joke. And it's working. I'm told that McClellan's briefings inspired a new drinking game: take a shot every time he repeats a stock sentence--well, actually I made that up, but who's to know?

I recall when the great John Chancellor retired he expressed his secret wish: that the White House would just stop trying so hard to make news. Just shut down the press office, he said. I know it's impossible, but wouldn't it be nice? Sanger won't say it, but that's clearly on his mind too:

As for me, after I'm done fixing that hinge on my chair, I'll return to my daydreams about what it must have been like covering Calvin Coolidge, whose tightlipped pronouncements from his porch in Vermont must have inspired this White House. But at least when those briefings were over, there was a nice stream down the hill where reporters could cast for brook trout, and forget about the empty pages in their notebooks.

Suppose they gave a briefing, and nobody came? If a press secretary speaks in an empty room, does anyone hear him? Can we ever tune out the media watch?

Memo to the White House news corps: pick a day and stage a boycott. For one day, don't get managed, spun and bamboozled. Pick a date, put out the "Gone Fishing" sign and let's see what happens.

How about December 24th? It's both a slow news day and I.F. Stone's birthday. Go on then, do it for Izzy...

Why We Blog

William Klein — 2006-04-15T13:11:57-04:00

The Washington Post has a front page story today about a self-described "angry" blogger. Of course I'm envious of My Left Wing's sticky eyeballs and today's ink, but I have to agree with the premise of the question the Post reporter asks (and, this being the Post, never answers):

Do the hundreds of thousands of daily visitors to Daily Kos, who sign their comments with phrases such as "Anger is energy," accomplish anything other than talking among themselves?

The article describes how My Left Wing's author composes what she calls her "long, sustained scream":

She will write about Darfur. The shame of it. The culpability of all Americans, including herself, for doing nothing. She will write something so filled with outrage that it will accomplish the one thing above all she wants from her anger: to have an effect.

"Darfur is not hopeless," she begins typing, and pauses.

"Ugh," she says.

"You are not helpless," she continues typing, and pauses again.

"Weak."

She deletes everything and starts over.

"WAKE THE [expletive] UP," she writes next...

And lo and behold, by the end of the article she's received 200 responses, including

"Thank you for the kick in the [expletive]."

"I wrote to my [expletive] so-called representatives."

"I also wrote to my [expletive] congressman to get off his [expletive] [expletive] and do the right [expletive] thing."

"You know what?" O'Connor says. "I did a good thing today." And for a moment, anyway, she isn't angry at all.

I don't buy this reasoning. I've worked for tons of radical causes in my time, and hurled invective at the gates of authority more times than you can shake a stick at, if that's your idea of a good time. But I'm also a professional writer and as I've written here and elsewhere, I believe in the value of professional writing when persuading people to make political decisions. I've had direct mail clients who've lamented, can't we just write "send money now" on a postcard? Nope. It takes clever people like me to write words that get you to do hard things like voting or giving up some of your hard-earned dollars. Urgency, attacks, even anger all have their place, but all those angry people on the net should join me in memorizing my favorite Robert Kennedy quote, the one about "acts of courage and belief." Optimism trumps pessimism in politics. Keep Hope Alive!

We're Busy Making Plans for Niger*

William Klein — 2006-04-09T12:24:47-04:00

Today's Washington Post has a good behind the scenes look at the Marx Brothers farce that the Bush White House has become. As other bloggers such as the very informed on this topic David Corn report the internecine developments of in the Blame Plame Game Fame, allow me to extract this nugget from today's coverage. All of us who have worked as speechwriters can recognize when we're being set up; well, except for Peggy Noonan, and I defer to my colleagues who are far more experienced than I to read between these lines:

But the White House Iraq Group, formed in August 2002 to foster "public education" about Iraq's "grave and gathering danger" to the United States, repeatedly pitched the uranium story. The alleged procurement was a minor issue for most U.S. analysts -- the hard part for Iraq would be enriching uranium, not obtaining the ore, and Niger's controlled market made it an unlikely seller -- but the Niger story proved irresistible to speechwriters. Most nuclear arguments were highly technical, but the public could easily grasp the link between uranium and a bomb.

"Irresistable to speechwriters, eh?" I'm sure that's just how it worked. The speechwriter found a reference on page 24 according to the New York Times, and still smarting over losing credit for that "axis of evil" line, the real live version of the terrific parody here slouched into action. Don't blame George Tent, George Bush or Dick Cheney, it's that kid in speechwriting with the Pat Buchanan haircut.

Hey messengers, you're getting blamed --speaking of which --how many hours does Scotty McClellan have left before he goes home to run his Mommy's campaign? Wager in the comment section below. If I could trust you not to send me spam, I'd turn off the registration...

*To deliver on that XTC reference in the title, click here.

The Hammer Gets the AxeUpdated

William Klein — 2006-04-04T21:07:00-04:00

Not since the golden era of Watergate have we enjoyed a political scandal so delicious as the current troubles besetting House Republicans. And as the Wall Street Journal reports, there's even a sex angle. Read all 1,153 news stories about the final fall of Tom DeLay...and remember, you heard it here first.

Originally posted 1-07-06

I've had it in for Tom DeLay since 1994, when I turned the bug man from Sugar Land's own words against him in a direct mail package I created for Public Citizen. I had an artist create a landscape of smokestacks and pollution, and quoted DeLay's view that DDT is "not harmful." I alerted fans of Ralph Nader about the forerunner of the K Street Project, a group of businesses, trade associations and PACs he called "Project Relief."
Now the GOP is relieved of the albatross they used to call The Hammer. I still maintain the man is dumb as a box of rocks. If the Republicans are smart they'll decide on a new leadership team and do what Republicans do so well, stage a coronation. But it will be more fun if they continue to eat their young.

Update

To War with Wal-Mart

William Klein — 2006-03-30T13:41:33-05:00

As I've said before, I love the smell of P.R. scandals in the morning...
This just in from the New York Times:

March 30, 2006
Wal-Mart Begins Quest for Generals in P.R. War

By MICHAEL BARBARO
Wanted: two people to help defend the nation's largest retailer against critics. Requirements: plenty of experience managing a crisis.

Crisis management is a very specialized kind of PR, but it's what most people think of when they think of public relations. The Tylenol scandal. New Coke. Gary Hart.

Wal-Mart Stores has begun circulating two senior-level job postings — both in public relations — and if the language used to describe the positions is any indication, the giant discount retailer is on the P.R. equivalent of war footing.

Fans of modern journalism can see what's coming. This story is newsworthy if some words (probably written by a drone who''s in big trouble today) are an indication of how the Wal-Mart heart beats, if it can be said to have a heart. (Hey guys, why not borrow that slogan from the right to life crowd: Every conglomerate is a beating heart") Seems like a rationalization to spin some tension and "color" out of a very thin premise: a classified ad on the internet. News editors are increasingly beholden to the "We're Desparately Losing Readers So Let's Jazz Up Our Coverage" Department.

One job includes "opposition research," presumably into Wal-Mart's major critics: Wal-Mart Watch and Wake Up Wal-Mart. The other requires the ability to "mobilize resources" during a "crisis situation."

Woo-hoo! They used the words "opposition research" did they? And "crisis situation" too? Gosh in my 25 years in politics I've not heard words like that used more than once every fifteen or twenty minutes. I guess the syllogism is that "oppo" is a negative term and "crisis" is an overheated analogy so therefore Wal-Mart is at war. Huh?

The two jobs reflect how much life has changed at Wal-Mart, which has come under withering criticism over its wages, health benefits and treatment of workers. The company barely had a public relations department in the early 1990's, but now has a staff of dozens, including a public relations war room full of former political operatives who dispute the assertions of its opponents. T

Quaint Public Relations myth #97b. Back in the old days Sam Walton didn't have much truck for citified public relations. He could run his folks business with his folksy ways and pay his folksy as little as possible, and no one would ever challenge him. Reporters love to speculate how things would be if there were no one to spin them (answer: they'd have to do a lot more work).

The job postings, which were circulated by Crowe-Innes & Associates, an executive search firm, were given to The New York Times by Wal-Mart Watch, a group backed by unions and foundations that is pressing Wal-Mart to enhance its wages and benefits.

Crowe-Innes, join Eryn Witcher and Rock Creek Creative in the HeadlineUpdate PR Hall of Shame.

According to the posting for the first job, director of media relations, the successful applicant will oversee Wal-Mart's "crisis communications program."

Rather than simply handling phone calls from the press, the employee must be able to help "triage" those calls, managing messages "in rapid response mode." Mona Williams, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said the company received hundreds of calls a day from reporters.

"Triage" Now there's an incendiary word. Listen, I'm enjoying this as much as the next Wal-Mart protester, but really this is just about a few ill chosen words. Props to Wal-Mart Watch for milking it this far, but really,if I were the boys in Bentonville I'd put out a palliative press release and move on. When in a hole, stop digging.

And, of course, the employee must be on call "24/7" to assist with "emergency response" within the public relations department.

Of course. Just like that kid, speaking of non-news stories, who "lived" at a Wal-Mart during his spring break and despite the best efforts of the NPR reporter to draw any kind of insight from him had none whatsoever to offer. It was just a dumb thing to do, and it made the news.

The job requires 10 years' experience in corporate communications and "proven media relationships."

The second job is senior director of campaign management, an executive who will oversee all corporate communications support staff and the war room.

This person, like the media relations director, must have 10 years experience in communications, but also a track record "addressing high- profile political activities," according to the posting. Candidates must "operate successfully in a campaign mode."

Another constant theme of this space is the culture of consultants and how people like me can be bad for democracy. Here, we surely see the result of a consultant telling the company, let's run this like a political campaign. Exactly like a political campaign. (And as previously noted here, the Wal-Mart party has a lot more money than the anti Wal-Mart party.

One responsibility of the job is to research opponents — a position usually found in presidential political campaigns.

Right, got that. That's why you're writing this story; they used the word "opposition research" and the editors of the WDLRSLJUOC deparment (see above) thought this would be a good, "edgy" story.

Another is overseeing Wal-Mart's relations with bloggers, many of whom frequently write about the company.

Oh, this story got even better. I love it when they slip in a really vital fact at the very end of a news story. As a blogger and PR person myself, I want to know more about that "oversight" relationship. Does that mean they sign the checks? Make up the phony names? Register the Potemkin websites?

The executive search firm, Crowe-Innes & Associates, did not respond to phone and e-mail messages.

Bye bye, Crowe, Bye Bye Associates...hello loneliness, I think you're going to cry...

Wal-Mart doesn't like contractors who embarrass them, know what I mean? Badda bing!

Both of the posted jobs, which would be based at Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., offer "competitive base salary, bonus opportunity and stock options" plus an "excellent benefits package," which are not specified.

OK, I'm convinced. Since no one's reading this blog anyway, I'm going to apply for this job, get it, and then report back from the dark side...Here's a new slogan. Wal-Mart. It's better than Baghdad.

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

The Issue is Still Privilege

William Klein — 2006-03-25T12:47:42-05:00

Back in 1976, when I was a nascent political junkie growing up in suburban New Jersey, the last great American populist presidential campaign rolled into town. My friend and I drove over to a church in East Orange to hear Fred Harris, the fiery senator from Oklahama. "The Issue is Privilege" Harris used to say, meaning there where those who thought they were entitled to it and those who where actively denied it. Harris didn't get a lot of credit at the time, but think how right he was.
David remembers that afternoon for the lesson in retail politics Senator Harris taught by shaking the hand of everyone in the room. I remember the guy who introduced Harris, a Texan named Jim Hightower. It was the first populist speech I ever heard in my life, followed closely by the second. Years later, I had the pleasure of having a drink with Harris, who told me the story I quoted in my Monitor piece here: "If we can't take their money, drink their liquor, screw their women (I cleaned that up for the Monitor) and then vote against them, we have no business here.")
I followed Hightower's career as an elected official in Texas, prayed for him to get elected to the Senate (and tried to get his direct mail contract) heard him speak at rallies and marches like the one I wrote about here; and was pleased to meet him again last night. Hightower spoke at a fundraiser for Jamie Raskin, about whom you'll be hearing much more in the months to come as I'm spending a good deal of time helping his campaign for State Senate in Maryland's District 20. So much time, that I"ve been neglecting this blog. During my absence I was pleased to hear from loyal reader the Urban Prisoner, who sent this great link from the creators of that essential internet video "Chickenhawks."

Storm the barricades!

Reading Obituaries

William Klein — 2006-02-26T20:59:29-05:00

One of my favorite writers, William Saroyan, set out to write about each and every entry in the Necrology section of Variety Magazine for the year 1976.

"Why do I write? Why am I writing this book? To save my life, to keep from dying, of course. That is why we get up in the morning."
"Obituaries is not about Death, it is abouit that large mystery that has come out of light and is, of course, called Life. (And the hell with that, too)."

I was reminded of Saroyan's book by one of those only in the New York Times obituaries that read like great fiction. Dont' miss "Emilie Muse, 98, Daredevil Who Dared Not Discuss Past, Dies" and then go back and enjoy "Sidney Frank, 86, Dies; Took a German Drink and a Vodka Brand to Stylish Heights" (NYT Select required) and Dai Ailian, Vital Figure in Building Ballet in China, Dies at 89.

A New York Timesman named Alden Whitman pioneered the paper's obituary coverage; interviewing notable people with the promise he wouldn't write a word until after they died. Sidney Zion wrote in the Nation, "in all the history of journalism, including the caves, nobody ever thought to draw the future dead into their own obituaries ."

As Saryoyan himself said to the A.P. a day or so before he died, "Everybody has to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?"

Cheney Blasts Hunter, Wounds Bush

William Klein — 2006-02-13T17:01:00-05:00

Oh well done, Dick. Who's the big guy now? I'm sure you've always wanted to know what it was like to shoot something bigger than a quail, you little draft dodger. You know, you kind of resemble a fat little bird yourself, don't you? And speaking of your weight, you don't look the kind of heart patient who's improving his diet. Why is that you refuse to release your cholesterol numbers, anyway? Remember when Mary Matalin said your "undisclosed location" was the basement of the Palm? That was bad PR, in the next few days there's going to be a lot more of it. Starting with questions about why the White House sat on this story for 24 hours. Spin this, Karl.

Bonus video: Watch (or read) Scotty McLellan sweat and squirm at today's briefing.

"Q: But let's just be clear here. The Vice President of the United States accidentally shoots a man and he feels that it's appropriate for a ranch owner who witnessed this to tell the local Corpus Christi newspaper, and not the White House press corps at large, or notify the public in a national way?"

"If You Tell the Truth, You Don't Have to Remember Anything"

William Klein — 2006-02-04T13:03:18-05:00

Mark Twain said that. In politics, it's sometimes hard to find folks who understand the value of truth.
Take the campaign of the flying Dutchman of politics, William Weld, as reported in the New York Times story below.

February 4, 2006
Aides Re-edited News Articles on Candidate's Web Site

By PATRICK D. HEALY
As William F. Weld runs for governor of New York this year, his campaign has put a new spin on the old political rule of having a positive message.

I love political stories that start like this: establishing cred by quoting some "old political rule" that really isn't a rule at all, like, say, the importance of getting more votes or in this case, "having a positive (as opposed to negative?) message. Beware of false prophesies.

Campaign aides have significantly altered two newspaper articles on his Web site about his bid for governor, removing all negative phrases about him, like "mini-slump" and "dogged by an investigation," and passages about his political problems.

You see, this is why you need actual newspapers and real reporters, as opposed to getting all your news from Wikipedia. It takes a journalist to find colorful words like "mini-slump" and "dogged" to put in embarassing public places, like the front pages of newspapers.

Also removed were references to a federal investigation of Decker College, a Kentucky trade school that Mr. Weld led until he left to run for governor last fall; the college collapsed into bankruptcy weeks later amid allegations of financial aid fraud. And criticism of Mr. Weld by a former New York Republican senator, Alfonse D'Amato, was removed.

Unlike much of what I write about here, this is a subject I know quite a bit about. I've reprinted news articles countless times in the direct mail packages I've created for national, state and local campaigns. I've highlighted the good parts of a clip, pulled out quotes and of course, made fair use of our friend the ellipses. But this, as the WASPs say, is just not done. How rude!

The Weld campaign placed the sanitized articles, still under the reporters' bylines, on its Web site, weldfornewyork.org under the heading "news." Nothing told readers about the changes.

Lively newspaper writing, you can't beat it. "Sanitized articles." Then the voice of doom sentence, as ominous as those four notes from Beethoven. "Nothing told readers about the changes."

But wait, there's more.

It is generally considered inappropriate for a political campaign to alter news articles or photos and then render them as the true content. "It's totally dishonest" said George Arzt, a New York political communications consultant who worked for Eliot Spitzer, now the leading Democratic candidate for governor, in 1998. "I've never heard of such a thing done by a major player in a gubernatorial race."

But a Weld spokesman defended the practice, comparing it to selecting positive blurbs to run in movie advertisements.

"Inappropriate?" I'll say. Like a movie blurb? What do you want to bet that the Weld spokesman speaking here spake before for a commercial, not political boss and will not speak tomorrow?

Continue reading the Times article below, and come back later for more truth-avoiding from NASA.

One of the articles is from The New York Times of Jan. 21, and the other, by a Gannett News Service writer, ran in The Poughkeepsie Journal on Jan. 25.

In its revision of the Times article, the Weld campaign lopped off the first three paragraphs, which reviewed Mr. Weld's problems. The Weld version carried the reporter's byline but dropped the story headline, "Campaign May Be Down, But Weld Certainly Isn't," and began with a first paragraph (originally the fourth) about Mr. Weld being known in Massachusetts as "a man who never had a bad day."

The changes, which were discovered by a reporter, were made at a time when Mr. Weld, a former governor of Massachusetts, is trying to establish himself as the leading Republican candidate for governor. He is ahead of his three rivals in fund-raising and influential Republican leaders have endorsed him.

Reached on his cellphone yesterday, Mr. Weld said that he was going into a meeting, and that he was unaware of the editing of articles on his Web site and would seek information from his staff. One Weld aide reacted with surprise when notified about the changes. Soon after, the words "excerpted version" appeared on the Web site above the two articles.

Dominick Ianno, a spokesman for Mr. Weld, later defended the revised news stories. He said no words were replaced or inserted, and that it was normal in publicity material to highlight flattering passages from news stories and leave out criticism.

"We don't think using excerpts is uncommon — it's regularly in advertising, movie reviews, book reviews, and other promotional materials," Mr. Ianno said. "That said, for the two articles, we have added the words 'excerpted versions' on the Web site."

Mr. Ianno said it was fair to use the word "excerpt" to describe the 800-word version of the original 1,500-word Times article. He also asserted that "every other candidate is doing the same thing," but added that he and the Weld campaign had not had time to make such a review.

A review of the news sections on the Web sites of John Faso, a Republican rival to Mr. Weld, and of Mr. Spitzer did not produce signs of the same sort of revisions.

On Mr. Spitzer's site, most of the items were press releases. Some items did appear to be news articles, but the imprimatur of the authors and publications had been removed. In the one case where a news article, an Associated Press dispatch from Jan. 19, was clearly identified on the Web site, the campaign version appeared identical to the version found in the Nexis news archive. Both versions also included negative references to Mr. Spitzer, who is the state attorney general, allegedly threatening critics of his.

Told of the editing on Mr. Weld's Web site yesterday, a spokesman for the New York Democratic Party, Howard Wolfson, said, "Bill Weld may be able to edit these stories, but he can't change reality." After noticing the revised stories, The Times reviewed more than 20 other news articles and editorials on the Weld site since October, and compared them to the original versions. Stories that were wholly positive about Mr. Weld were included in full; some others were compressed, but had buttons to guide readers to the full articles.

A link was not provided to the Times article, Mr. Ianno said, because it had been removed from public access and was available only to Times subscribers. Yet the Weld site linked to full stories in the New York Sun that were also only available to subscribers.

Mr. Ianno said he did not know why there was no link to the Poughkeepsie Journal.

Politicians and campaigns usually avoid altering news stories and photographs. A Democratic candidate for mayor of New York last year, C. Virginia Fields, never recovered her political and fund-raising momentum after a controversy over a photo on a campaign flier that was altered to add two Asian-Americans in a crowd of supporters. And editorial pages regularly criticize politicians when they use flattering news passages out of context in fliers or letters to donors.

The two revised articles show that the Weld campaign focused on removing negative assessments of Mr. Weld's fund-raising, momentum and record of leadership.

Among the deletions were words and phrases like "setbacks," "mini-slump," "getting back on track," and "raising money has been a challenge."

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Newspapers: Tactile or Virtual?

William Klein — 2006-01-28T16:05:15-05:00

I had an interesting conversation recently with a New York Times reader who wanted my views, as a Washington insider and part time pundit, on why they were making him pay for Tom Friedman. Newspapers are scared to death of the Internet, I opined. "I read him a lot less often now," he said. I've heard this a lot lately. Is Times Select the new New Coke?

More proof of the fear lurking in the news business is found at Washingtonpost.com, where online versions of Post stories include links to carping bloggers like me. Word has it the Post did a focus group and asked the coveted younger demographic what it was that kept them from reading newspapers. It was the way they tended to pile up in the house, they said. News executives are sure they're hearing the voice of doom. Even Michael Kinsley, perhaps embittered by his recent eviction, says he won't bother getting the real paper in front of his house if it's more than 10 feet away.

I, on the other hand, love to hold newspapers, turn their pages, serendipitously find stories I wouldn't find by scrolling down a list of headlines. I used to love to buy the Guardian, even though I could get all the same content on line, and luxuriate in it's over-sized pages, finding news stories that the U.S. press wouldn't discover for a year. (Notably the one about that little translation error about the virgins in the afterlife on offer to suicide bombers) But they stopped shipping the real paper to the States a couple of years ago, replacing it with a faxed version that's as reader unfriendly as a utility bill. Now I pay twice as much for a digital version which I read far less often, and always less completely than I used to. I used to at least glance at every page of the paper, now days go by and I don't even look at it.

A surgical resident in a New York City hospital told me once that the gloves they used were called "New York Times" gloves, because they were designed to protect from the Old Gray Lady's seepage. All those in favo(u)r of printed newspapers please comment below.

One more thing. The inscrutably named Jennifer 8.Lee has a surprisingly wonderful article in the Times about Chinatown life. Is there still such a thing as the New York Times Style book, and if so, does it say anything about punctuating numbers in surnames?

Is this the end of Gorgeous George?

William Klein — 2006-01-24T23:00:08-05:00

"Love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal," sang Phil Ochs. But some liberals make it so hard to love them. Take that scalawag George Galloway, M.P. from Bethnal Green and Bow and currently cut off from contact with the outside world as a resident of the "Big Brother" house on British reality TV. According to the Guardian, Galloway may be facing a criminal inquiry based on all the nasty things Norm Coleman said about him.

HeadlineUpdate reader LeRoy Hartle saw this coming, when he emailed us this picture

View this photo

of Galloway cavorting in a tight red leotard on the Big Brother show. As much as it pleases the mind to consider, say, Rick Santorum in a similar get-up, it's probably best if American politicians don't start cross-dressing in public. (Two words: Dick Cheney)

The Meaning of Messages

William Klein — 2006-01-15T15:09:00-05:00

A favorite topic of this space is the way words are turned into messages--persuasive language intended to motivate people to do hard things like giving money or voting. Today's Washington Post brings an update from the Democrats, who as previously noted here have been lumbering towards cohesiveness with the grace and subtlety of an elephant. First they're days away from announcing their new campaign theme; than they're not. First Nancy Pelosi finds a guru she trusts, then he's out. According to the Post, announcement of the Democrats' latest national agenda has been "pushed back and no hard launch date has been chosen." I can only imagine how many drafts they've been through and consultants and writers they've fired.

Words matter. Years ago, when I was learning the art of political propaganda from a very smart media consultant named Arnold Bennett, he showed me a neat move we used in a Florida Congressional race. In those days, radio and TV spots had to include the spoken words of the campaign "authority line" which was invariably something generic like "Citizens for Trotsky" or "Friends of Bebe Rebozo." But Arnold saw an additional propaganda opportunity in the authority line, and named the committee "Senior Citizens and Working Families for George Sheldon."
Now, federal candidates have to say "I'm Monty Python, and I approved this message," which takes the fun out of that trick completely.

In praise of Gorgeous George Updated

William Klein — 2006-01-15T13:19:00-05:00

He came, he saw, he conquered --then he went back home and made a fool of himself. British MP George "Gorgeous George" Galloway, who socked it to the Senate last year, is currently locked in the "Big Brother" house on the British reality TV show of that name. Told to act like an animal, Galloway, according to the Guardian, "got on all fours and pretended to lick milk from the cupped hands of the once-famous television actor Rula Lenska. She rubbed the "cream" from his "whiskers" and stroked his head and behind his ears."

Transcript is at the end of the story linked above, don't miss it, or these pictures. Looks like George Galloway is more Al Sharpton than Tony Benn. I guess if I want a leftist hero, I'm going to have to stick with Hugo.

(Originally posted July 2006) No, I'm not talking about the "original showman of professional wrestling." I refer instead to the newly elected M.P. for Bethnal Green and Bow, George Galloway, who after being kicked out of Tony Blair's Labour Party for being too anti-war, booted the Labour incumbent and came back to Parliament as an Independent. Listening to him lose his cool on election night was one of the joys of watching BBC coverage on C-Span; his delicious Scottish burr soaring to new heights of invective and lows of bitterness.

The rest of America got a chance to meet Galloway after Senator Norm (going to get his butt kicked by Al Franken) Coleman charged Galloway with aiding and abetting Saddam Hussein, charges Galloway has already beaten in Britain. Galloway leapt at the chance to testify in Washington. He came, he saw, he conquered. Now, he's cashing in with a U.S. speaking tour where he'll make more money than he ever could have squeezed from Saddam. As Margaret Thatcher said, "it's a funny old world."

Sometimes politics is great theater. Sometimes, as Michael Waldman writes in his book/CD of great Presdiential speeches "My Fellow Americans," it "gives us the chance to hear for ourselves how,in our best moments, our leaders have challenged our ideas, stirred our hearts, and moved our nation."

Jack Abramoff's Shoe

William Klein — 2006-01-03T17:01:06-05:00

My favorite story is breaking in all sorts of wonderful ways. While we wait for the shoe to drop, we can speculate and revel in what's to come. A HeadlineUpdate reader was kind enough to forward this quote:

"Words will not ever be able to express my sorrow and my profound regret for all my actions and mistakes," Abramoff said, addressing the judge. "I hope I can merit forgiveness from the Almighty and those I've wronged or caused to suffer."

More from me later. Remember, the bottom line on this scandal is how quickly it will grow to include other lobbyists. Does anyone believe that Abramoff was the only one to cosy up to Members of Congress, and their wives? People who own skyboxes in sports stadiums are quaking in their Versace tonight...

New Jersey New Jersey New Jersey!Updated Again

William Klein — 2005-12-27T19:55:00-05:00

I know it's a slow news week, but there's slow and then there's glacial, as the New York Times proves with this follow-up to the story I commented on below. Although is it still a follow-up if the second story makes no reference to the news lede of the first? Which in this case, was that the state of New Jersey paid taxpayer dollars to a "branding consultant" to invent a new state slogan, found the suggestion "We'll Win You Over" somewheat defensive, and opened it up to the public. I just love it when the inner workings of the spin machinery get opened up to the public.

As predicted, the public has weighed in with lots of Soprano jokes as the state whittled 8000 submissions to a final five, including, I kid you not, "New Jersey: Expect the Unexpected" and new Jersey, "The Best Kept Secret." Now, I love the Garden State, and thrilled last night to hear a reference to my home town of West Orange, NJ on the episode from Season 5 I was watching, but I kind of wish they'd hired a different branding consultant, rather than open this whole thing up. The risk is what New York Magazine's Competition once defined as a "murkyism" -- a saying that sounds profound, but is really quite empty. My favorite was Mort Sahl's album title, "The Future Lies Ahead." Readers are invited to submit their favorites, real or imagined.

Posted 11.02.05 When people ask me where I grew up, I do this thing where I put my hand over my mouth and mumble while I take my hand away, "Nuh Grzy" and everybody laughs. But except for the brief period in the mid 70s when the state received some reflectled glory from Bruce Springsteen (someone actually said to me, "wow, you're from New Jersey?") the Garden State has never had the right profile.

Now comes the news that after hiring an expensive branding consultant the state of New Jersey is turning to vox populi. It was thought the consultant's $260,000 result: "New Jersey: We'll Win You Over" was a bit defensive, so acting governor Dick Codey is opening it up to the people.

Getting inside people's heads and finding what advertising genius Tony Schwarz calls "the responsive chord" is hard. Some tools of market research are valuable, others can be a crutch for advertisers looking for "proof" that their ideas will work.

Branding consultant Tracey Riese says, "New Jersey has confused their slogan with their brand. A great brand stands for something that matters to the customer. A good slogan embodies that. "I love New York" was "magic", in Alan Siegal's words, not because it was a brilliant slogan, but because New York is a great brand that resonates with meaning."

I wish them well, as a natal New Jerseyan and professional marketer. But no one will ever be able to top the contribution by the legendary WMCA newsboys, who recorded the anthemic "Raucous in Secaucus" back in the 1970s. I think I remember most of the words...if you know any I've missed please fill in the gaps...and wish the state of New Jersey well in its search for a slogan. Stay tuned...

I was raucous in Secaucus on a Saturday night,
Because of you.
I was broken in Hoboken on a Saturday night,
That's your fault too.

Oh in Whippany, Parsippany and Boonton I got sore
I heaved a sigh in Tenafly,
And then came back for more.

I was raucous in Secaucus on a Saturday night,
Because of you.

I was walkin in Weehawken on a Saturday night,
Lonely for you.
Things were looking stark in Cliffside Park on Saturday night,
You made me blue.

I heaved a sigh in Tenafly, again in Carteret,
In Trenton you seemed bent on making me just fume and fret

I was raucous in Secaucus on a Saturday night,
Because of you.

(missing lyric)
I popped my cork in West New York,
I bombed out in Bayonne

I was raucous in Secaucus on a Saturday night,
Because of you.

We did it your way
Because of you
In downtown Rahway
Because of you!

Doug Bandow, Armstrong Williams and me

William Klein — 2005-12-17T12:06:04-05:00

Today's papers update two of my favorite long-running stories; the Jack Abramoff follies and the pay for play opinion writers' racket. Business Week has a scoop which has already led to the resignation of columnist Doug Bandow from the Cato Institute and the suspension of Bandow's column. Read an excerpt from a Bandow column extolling the virtues of that favorite Abramoff client, the Choctaw Indians. Apparently Bandow got $1000-$2000 every time he wrote an "opinion" column plugging an Abramoff client. I'm thrilled to read this and not just because I love this scandal so much.

I've been thinking about marketing my skills as an op-ed writer to clients and now I know what to charge.

R.I.P. Eugene McCarthy

William Klein — 2005-12-11T13:38:02-05:00

I was twelve in 1968 and just starting my fanatical obsession with politics. My parents were for McCarthy, my best friend's family for Kennedy. I watched every minute of the Chicago convention and saw Mayor Daley say to Abe Ribicoff (readers who caught the "fnord" reference in a previous post will want to see what happened when I googled that) what Dick Cheney would much later say to Patrick Leahy. The events of 1968 put politics in an urgent spotlight that never faded for me. I read all the books, sang the songs, learned about some new heros. I didn't realize it then, but my political consciousness was kick-started by Eugene McCarthy.

I appreciated this obit in the New York Times, and this recollection of McCarthy's wit,though it doesn't include my personal favorite: "Reporters are like birds on a telephone wire. One flies off, they all fly off. One flies back, they all fly back."

HeadlineUpdateWeekendUpdate

William Klein — 2005-12-10T22:13:58-05:00

Apart from the occasional outburst from Dick (what about that heart condition, fatso?) Cheney and that wacko Congresswoman from Cincinnati, actual invective is rarely hurled on Capitol Hill.
But across the pond, in the mother of all Parliaments, they show us Yankee cousins how to really play hardball. Be sure to watch the video on this BBC story about a left-wing M.P.'s "Tory cocaine jibe," and read this or any political sketch by Guardian columnists Simon Hoggart and John O'Farrell.(Breaking news: O'Farrell says this is his last column for the Guardian. Guess he's fed up with them too...) (Even more reason why you should read his funny, touching book about coming of age as a left winger during the Thatcher years.)
Meanwhile, we have the great Kinky Friedman, who summed up the rigors of being Texas governor here and needs your support there.

A long time ago, for the wise and important media watchdog FAIR, I invented a media bias detector that helped decode the evening news. Today, I'm passing along a new tool to pry inside the spin machine. It's called "x-ray the e-mail" and here's how it works.
If a newsmaker or source's quote is reported to have come from an "email interview or comment" immediately put down your newspaper and find an alternative view. As this article from the American Journalism Review should point out even more firmly, allowing sources to answer interview questions via e-mail opens the door to more spin and packaged news.

"Mike Foley, a former executive editor of the St. Petersburg Times who now teaches at the University of Florida's College of Journalism and Mass Communications, says he is constantly fighting students on the e-mail issue. When they rely too heavily on e-mails in their assignments, "I jump up and down and scream at them not to use it," he says.
To Foley, dependence on e-mail is the ultimate sign of laziness. "There's something to be said for the old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting. E-mail requires no shoe leather... It's easy, like quoting from a press release, and then your stories are sterile and boring, neither of which compels me to read them."
Unreliability is the drawback that he most fervently drives home to his students. "You don't know who you're talking to," he says. "It could be the CEO, the public relations VP, the secretary, a clerk — it could be the janitor who just happened to be in there cleaning up."

Holy Astroturf! Updated

William Klein — 2005-11-30T21:00:00-05:00

As I shamefully boast below, my most widely reprinted column was my op-ed for the Christian Science Monitor about phony grassroots, or "astroturf" letters to the editor. If you follow my logic on the links below, you'll see that when it comes to ghostwriting, propaganda and public relations, sometimes I'm for it, sometimes I'm agin it. But even I was gobsmacked (as Guardian readers might say) to read this, from the Guardian by way of the L.A. Times. Now, your tax dollars are at work paying for phony news stories that Iraqi middlemen pay to play in the press. Stop the spin machine. I want to get off!

More on this story from the NY Times, the Washington Post and Romanesko. (Can you see Scott McLellan squirm? Squirm, Scott, Squirm)

Watch this story blow up over the next few days as government officials express shock, shock, that they paid to place news articles in Iraqi papers. Wasn't it easier when the CIA just paid U.S. journalists directly ?

Originally posted 9 July 2005 On Thursday, The New York Times printed an op-ed by Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, archbishop of Vienna called "Finding Design in Nature," in which he wrote:

"Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense--an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection--is not."

Then, Saturday's Times contained a page one article on reaction to the Cardinal's views and the links between the Cardinal and the Discovery Institute in Seattle, which promotes the theory of "intelligent design." Read the article in full for yourself, and prepare for the coming storm over evolution.

Book your seats now for the next monkey trial on TV.

But while we wait, consider this nugget dropped in the eleventh graf of the Times story, after the jump to page A11:

"The cardinal's essay...was submitted to The Times by a Virginia public relations firm, Creative Response Concepts, which also represents the Discovery Institute."

Holy Astroturf, Benedict!

Is it shocking that the Church has the same PR acumen as, say, the tobacco industry ( I just like mentioning them whenever this blog needs a villain)?

The Creative Response Concepts website describes the services it performed for Cardinal Chris thusly:
Opinion editorials and letters to the editor enable the author
to comment directly on important news of the day. They provide an
unfiltered opportunity to reach readers. Op-Eds enable you to reach
opinion leaders and help you shape the terms of debate on issues of
concern to you, your industry or your constituency.

My most widely reprinted column (thank you, Google) was about the retailing of one of the last homes to honest discourse in the daily paper. It was even reprinted in a media textbook that included the words "like Malcom Gladwell" in its bio of me. OK, they were referring to a fact only slightly more distinguishing that we both breathe oxygen but still...

Is the answer really more truth in labeling? Should The Times note which columns are submitted by professional interests?

I'm not sure that's a good idea. As a professional writer, I appreciate professional writing, and if a public figure signs an op-ed I actually enjoy reading, I consider the ghostwriter a good investment.

But I bet the Times' ombudspeople are busy as bees tonight...

Turning Safavian

William Klein — 2005-11-27T12:06:14-05:00

As noted before in this space, one of the ways journalism has changed in recent years is the shifting of the most important information from the beginning of a story to the very end. This update on the ever-expanding Jack Abramoff scandal waits until the very last two grafs to make an important, if indirect point.
First, credit where credit's due: there's lots and lots of solid reporting and juicy tidbits here, including how Abramoff put wives of GOP bigwigs (including Tom DeLay! Yea!) on monthly retainers to do things like answer phone calls for a fundraiser that ended up cancelled, and in Mrs. DeLay's case, determining the favorite charity of every member of Congress. (Can you say, "busy work?")
The article also makes clear that "plea deals have become more likely" as Justice Department investigators enter a "highly active" phase in their investigation of "at least half a dozen members of Congress."
So it was with great interest that I read between the lines of these two last grafs:

The Justice Department investigation is also looking into Abramoff's influence among executive branch officials. Sources said prosecutors are continuing to seek information about Abramoff's dealings with then-Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles, including a job offer from the lobbyist at a time when he was seeking department actions on behalf of his tribal clients.

The former top procurement official in the Bush administration, David H. Safavian, has already been charged with lying and obstruction of justice in connection with the Abramoff investigation. Safavian, who traveled to Scotland with Ney on a golf outing arranged by Abramoff, is accused of concealing from federal investigators that Abramoff was seeking to do business with the General Services Administration at the time of the golf trip. Safavian was then GSA chief of staff.

What does David Safavian know, and who in the White House does he know it about? Can you see the invisible words after the first sentence in the second graf? The full sentence should read:

The former top procurement official in the Bush administration, David H. Safavian, has already been charged with lying and obstruction of justice in connection with the Abramoff investigation and is currently cooperating with prosecutors.

Buy Citgo (You Go, Hugo!)

William Klein — 2005-11-22T12:23:14-05:00

Did you know that the government of Venezuela owns the Citgo oil company? According to this article in the Washington Post, they gained control of the company that began as Cities Service in 1990.
That sign in Fenway? Hugo's. Now, Hugo Chavez is sending discounted heating oil to the U.S. and donating gasoline to the Gulf Coast. The Post says that several Citgo refineries are in operation in the U.S., and "about 14,000 independently owned gas stations carry the company's name."
So if want to spend your petro dollars on leftists, not Texans, now you know where to go.

Happy Thanksgiving...more from me after the holiday...

Sunday Brunch

William Klein — 2005-11-20T14:06:48-05:00

The tastiest news today is surely the continuing saga of Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon, "Lawmaker A," Grover Norquist...like Bob Woodward said about Nixon, this is truly the gift that keeps on giving.

This could build the tidal wave that sweeps Republicans out of power. Crucial grafs from today's Times story:

Scholars who specialize in the history and operations of Congress say that given the brazenness of Mr. Abramoff's lobbying efforts, as measured by the huge fees he charged clients and the extravagant gifts he showered on friends on Capitol Hill, almost all of them Republicans, the investigation could end up costing several lawmakers their careers, if not their freedom.
The investigation threatens to ensnarl many outside Congress as well, including Interior Department officials and others in the Bush administration who were courted by Mr. Abramoff on behalf of the Indian tribe casinos that were his most lucrative clients.
The inquiry has already reached into the White House; a White House budget official, David H. Safavian, resigned only days before his arrest in September on charges of lying to investigators about his business ties to Mr. Abramoff, a former lobbying partner.

"I think this has the potential to be the biggest scandal in Congress in over a century," said Thomas E. Mann, a Congressional specialist at the Brookings Institution. "I've been around Washington for 35 years, watching Congress, and I've never seen anything approaching Abramoff for cynicism and chutzpah in proposing quid pro quos to members of Congress."

I'm sure one or two Democrats will be found to have taken Abramoff's money, but six months from now voters will have a new meaning for G.O.P. -- Get Out Pronto. Earlier campaigns to "Clean Up Congress" used a broom as a graphic symbol --this next one will require a vacuum cleaner.

Moving on from stories of political mortality to real death--no, this won't be about Iraq--check out this fascinating obituary from today's NY Times. One of the reasons we need newspapers is for stories like this --nobody online has the kind of obituary file the Times famously built.

Woodward, We Hardly Knew Ye

William Klein — 2005-11-17T19:14:39-05:00

Thanks to reader Bill Kalish for passing on this blogger's take on Bob Woodward's "oops!" moment. Good background on the story can be found in the Times and the Post today, stating the obvious that Mr. Woodward has come a long way from the seat-of-the-pants journalism he practiced during Watergate. Now he posts transcripts of taped interviews with top sources on government websites.

Once upon a time, the very use of tape recorders was considered suspect; the machine was said to add an unnatural external element to the interview, obstructing natural conversation and leading people to "talk to the tape." Now "star reporters" submit 18 pages of questions in advance, show up with a tape recorder, and consider that "investigative journalism."

The great Truman Capote not only refused to use tape recorders; he'd often not even bring a pencil. He told George Plimpton about this in a 1966 interview:

You never used a tape-recorder?

Twelve years ago I began to train myself, for the purpose of this sort of book, to transcribe conversation without using a tape-recorder. I did it by having a friend read passages from a book, and then later I'd write them down to see how close I could come to the original. I had a natural facility for it, but after doing these exercises for a year and a half, for a couple of hours a day, I could get within 95 percent of absolute accuracy, which is as close as you need. I felt it was essential. Even note-taking artificializes the atmosphere of an interview, or a scene-in- progress; it interferes with the communication between author and subject--the latter is usually self-conscious or an untrusting wariness is induced. Certainly, a tape-recorder does so. Not long ago, a French literary critic turned up with a tape-recorder. I don't like them, as I say, but I agreed to its use. In the middle of the interview it broke down. The French literary critic was desperately unhappy. He didn't know what to do. I said, "Well, let's just go on as if nothing had happened." He said, "It's not the same. I'm not accustomed to listen to what you're saying."

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics?

William Klein — 2005-11-15T13:44:54-05:00

As much as I like to quote Mark Twain, I have to acknowledge that sometimes statistics are true. And while I love to make fun of focus groups and other expensive marketing tools, I won't deny that polling works. The problem comes when people who don't understand the nuances of polling interpret the results. To really get inside a poll, you need a fairly sophisticated understanding of data and statistics.

This story about Michael Bloomberg's state-of-the-art polling operation makes some very interesting points --but as is often the case, the most important graf here is the last one. (Talk about "burying the lede"). There have long been pollsters who've attempted to group the electorate into "psychological portraits," or clusters, and no doubt the "never-before-identified" groups Bloomberg's pollsters identified do "transcend the traditional political fault lines of race, party and class," but if Fernando Ferrer had been given (he couldn't afford to pay for it) the same data, he still would have lost to Bloomberg.
For as Ferrer's pollster, Jef Pollock points out, "It's kind of hard to pinpoint things that did work in the face of millions of dollars of broadcast advertising." Q.E.D.

F*!@ the South???

William Klein — 2005-11-13T12:41:40-05:00

This is a family website, and I don't want to get in even more naughty search engines than I am already (thanks to the headlines of this post and also this one) so I won't repeat what one Democratic strategist told me years ago.* But Tim Kaine's victory in Virginia, and the lessons from Loudon County, force me to reassess my views, and you know how painful that can be.

Like Tim Noah, I read with interest an article in the Washington Post during the 2004 campaign by political scientist Thomas Schaller that reinforced this view. But now I'm not so sure.

If you were following the Virginia Governor's race,you heard a lot about Jerry Kilgore's ads attacking Kaine for being against the death penalty. Did those ads turn people off from Kilgore? Yes. Did they make the critical difference in the election? No. The ads that I think really sold Kaine to voters were the ones showing Kaine behind the wheel of his car, talking about transportation and suburban sprawl.

These are natural issues for Democrats, as they tie into rebuilding infrastructure which means jobs. Kaine's ads were startling in part because you never see a politician driving himself, and effective because like all good propaganda, they hit people where they live. Right on, Tim. Maybe you're showing us how we can win in the South. Holy #$@!

*But it's of course the same language the great Steve Earle uses in the song of freedom and democracy I compare to "This Land is Your Land"

Elections Post Mortem (Delayed)

William Klein — 2005-11-12T22:41:32-05:00

Apologies to the loyal HeadlineUpdate reader, as well as anyone else, who wondered why I'd been silent on the subject of last week's elections. I was too busy gloating...tune in tomorrow for Sunday papers round up and why the results in Virginia lead me to question my favorite unpopular national election strategy...

When Presidents and Trustees Fight: Bad Behavior Behind the Ivy WallsUpdated Again

William Klein — 2005-11-12T16:02:00-05:00

Today's Washington Post updates the story at American University, and includes quotes from trustee David Carmen, who comments on my original post below. I'm in agreement with him that AU could emerge from this as a national model for good governance; I know from personal experience that governance issues occupy a great deal of a Board's time.

Goddard College went through a turbulent patch or two, too, and like the Trustees of AU, the Goddard Board had one of their meetings interrupted by angry students. But as H.L. Mencken said, "The cure of the evils of democracy is more democracy." Goddard's Board re-emphasized it's commitment to transparency and inclusiveness, and it sounds like the AU Board is doing likewise.

What's truly shocking about the fracas at AU is how it split the Board into factions, and how a rump group of trustees formed an ad hoc committee behind the rest of the Board's back. As the Post reported earlier:

Opposition to the executive committee, led by then-board Chairman Leslie E. Bains, grew to the point that 13 trustees banded together, calling themselves the ad hoc committee, and hired an attorney.

Hey, I'm on my Board's Executive Committee and no one is meeting beind my back...at least I don't think they are...

Actually the elephant in the room is called Sarbanes-Oxley --seems like some AU trustees were worried they'd be held personally liable for the Ladner spending spree...

(Originally posted October 9) "There's a lot of politics in politics," my girlfriend said when I was fired from a presidential campaign. She could just have easily been speaking of campus politics.

The scandals surrounding Ben Ladner and his performance as American University's president are different than the scandals surrounding Ladner's predecessor but similar enough to other hubris-fueled spending sprees/power grabs.

If you read between the lines of the reporting on this story, you can perceive a Board of Trustees riven by factionalism, secret deals and mistrust. Power corrupts, even in ivory towers. Too bad.

I'm on the Board of Trustees of Goddard College, a school known more for Phish than phoul (though there's plenty of good vegetarian food in the area). Once or twice, our Board has made news, but mainly we concern ourselves with oversight, serious leadership issues, and how to get better food at Board meetings.

American University is in for some tough times. Ladner will go, the accusations will linger, the school will be damaged. Message to AU's Board: Take immediate steps to reassure the faculty and students, apologize and make necessary changes. Ben Ladner's the bad guy now --if you're not careful, you're next.

Weekend Update--This dispatch from the Day After --following the fall of Ladner, the purging of the Board, why it's all, as one expert quoted here says, "very unusual" for Boards to take potshots at each other. Note the heroic efforts being made by a reader of this very post. And if any readers are themselves members of a Board of Trustees, circulate this story to your colleagues and count your blessings...

Inside Baseball or Dizzy Dean's Revenge

William Klein — 2005-10-30T16:41:46-05:00

Yes, sports fans, I'm using a sports metaphor, which as you may know is most unusual for your bookish blogmeister...

But in the car just now I was listening to Tavis Smiley, who was interviewing Howard Dean. Smiley said, "I know this is inside baseball, but there are reports the Democrats are looking for a slogan and are choosing between 'Together, We Can Do Better' and 'Together, America Can Do Better.'' Is this true?"

Foolishly, Dean told the truth and said it was, and that he preferered the version with "America." I had read the same story and was incredulous that such a conversation was being held in public. I can imagine the conversation among consultants and politicos, having been in many similar rooms.

Consultant: We have to use the word "America." It tests off the charts in focus groups.

Politician: I always like to say "together," people really respond to that.

Politician's aide: It's a positive message.

Consultant: The whole message is positive, whether we say we, you, your family or your country.

Second Consultant: That's what's wrong with it.

Politician: Not that again. I told you, voters want a positive message. They're tired of old fashioned politics.

Second Consultant: Don't be so sure. Old fashioned politics is what elected you. Besides you can be negative and positive at the same time. Look at Britain. In 1997, Tony Blair's slogan was "Because Britain Deserves Better." That word 'deserves' makes all the difference. Why does Britain deserve better? Who's responsible for Britain not being as good as it should be? See what one word can do?"

Politician: What do the rest of you think about that. How about "Because America Deserves Better?"

First Consultant: We can test it. We can add it to the DNC tracking poll tonight and see what happens.

Second Consultant: You can't test it. You can't use it. You'll get the Joe Biden treatment.

Politician: I'm not going back to the drawing board. We've spent a half million dollars on focus groups getting this far. Let's flip a coin. Heads it's "America" and tails it's "We" Who's calling it?

STAY TUNED FOR THE EXCITING CONCLUSION OF "A PARTY SEARCHES FOR A SLOGAN

Oh Harriet, Poor Harriet

William Klein — 2005-10-27T15:22:23-04:00

The Scene: An Oval Office
George: Well that worked out real well.
Laura: Now, Bush, you know it was just as much your idea as mine.
George: Seemed like the right thing to do. It's what Dad always did. Appoint the family lawyer.
Laura: I thought you were ticked off at Baker?
George: Well yeah, he forgets he's not the President sometimes, but he's still reliable.
Laura: Like Harriet.
George: And Al. One saved my butt in Texas, the other in Maine.
Laura: You can't put Al on the Court, I've told you this already.
George: I know. Maybe Jeb can.
Laura (sotto voce): Or me...
George: What?
Laura: I said, we'll see. Now let's wrap this up, the West Wing is almost on.
George: I wish you'd get over that Martin Sheen thing. It's embarrassing.
Laura: Now hush. I like Alan Alda too. Listen, who will the Senators approve easiest?
George: I don't know, Karl, I mean, somebody is working on it.
Laura: Forget that, listen to me. You want to make a Senator happy, appoint a Senator.
George: I like that. Who? I'm not going to appoint Specter if that's what you're thinking.
Laura: No, not Pennsylvania. Think closer to home. Think Texas.
George: Kay Bailey? She wants to run for Governor, that's a great idea, wait till I tell Rick.
Laura: No. Not Kay Bailey. The other one. The one who's on the Judiciary Committee. The one who's been an Attorney General and a judge.
George: Cornyn, huh. John Cornyn. Good hair, good man.
(Picks up the phone)
Andy, cancel tomorrow's meetings, I've worked out the Court nominee. No listen, you'll love this.
Yes, I know that's what I said last time...Hey I was kidding when I said I wanted to appoint my CPA to the Fed! No, this wasn't Laura's idea...

Who'll be Indicted? Updated

William Klein — 2005-10-26T15:00:00-04:00

Wrong again, it seems. Last night's hopeful prediction we'd be glued to the tube by now was off. The AP says the grand jury has adjourned for the day, and that the judge could extend its life beyond Friday at Fitzgerald's request. The fact that investigators were still conducting interviews today indicates that the report isn't quite at the printer. For more on who knew what about Valerie, read this very interesting column by Cliff May. Did you tell Fitzgerald what you just told us?

I don't mind waiting another day or two. The anticipation is sweet. I haven't felt this enthralled since Watergate...

(Posted 10/26)Fitzgerald meets with the grand jury on Wednesday and Friday. Will Fitzgerald wait till Friday, or will the hammer fall tomorrow?

I'm betting on indictments of Libbey and Rove, and praying for an "unindicted co-conspirator" rap for Cheney.

Tune in for the perp walk tomorrow...reminds me of what my friend said when I asked his advice on being a spin doctor for Michael Milken...

When It Says Libby Libby Libby...Updated

William Klein — 2005-10-24T20:00:00-04:00

Until recently, when I heard the word "Libby" I thought of canned food and an old advertising jingle. Now I, along with the rest of DC am salivating over Scooter (also agog about Abramoff, delighting in DeLay and mired in Miers). As we wait for indictments (Libby and Rove? One and not the other? How about Cheney?) and enjoy the Sunday papers (unless your name is Judith Miller, in which case you probably should spend the day at the movies), we wonder what scandal is coming next. I predict it will be connected to what in this story GOP lobbyist Charles Black called the "lingering nuisance" named Jack Abramoff.

Oh, and speaking of the most qualified person in the country to be nominated to the Supreme Court, here's some hitherto undiscovered evidence of Miers' intellectual heft. A year ago, then Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Miers participated in the "Ask the White House" forum on the official White House web page. She was tasked to answer important questions like this:

Sam -- Thanks for your strong support in Miami Beach!

I hope this doesn't disappoint you too much, but I understand that the real Camp David was not used to film episodes of the West Wing. Camp David is a beautiful, serene place. It provides a perfect backdrop for the President to meet with and entertain foreign and other visitors. It is a real asset for the United States Government.

Recent reports that President Bush is spending a lot of time watching West Wing reruns suggest he thinks the show is a documentary too.

...This Just In....(with thanks to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire)...............
UPI reports that Fitzgerald's investigation includes the forgery of the stories about uranium in Niger

NATO sources have confirmed to United Press International that Fitzgerald's team of investigators has sought and obtained documentation on the forgeries from the Italian government.

Fitzgerald's team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with Yellowcake uranium. This claim, which made its way into President Bush's State of the Union address in January, 2003, was based on falsified documents from Niger and was later withdrawn by the White House.

This opens the door to what has always been the most serious implication of the CIA leak case, that the Bush administration could face a brutally damaging and public inquiry into the case for war against Iraq being false or artificially exaggerated. This was the same charge that imperiled the government of Bush's closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, after a BBC Radio program claimed Blair's aides has "sexed up" the evidence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

O Guardian! My Guardian!

William Klein — 2005-10-15T16:23:51-04:00

I used to say without hesitation that it was the best newspaper in the world. Now I hesitate.

The Guardian, something I'd long considered one of life's great pleasures, has changed. For the official view of management, as written by the editor, see here. And here's what graphic designers think. (I can tell you right away what they like, having worked with their ilk for 25 years: "more white space!")

To their credit, the Guardian has opened up their own discussion of the change, but since they didn't ask me my opinion I'm posting it here. What else are blogs for? Like the man said, "I've suffered for my art, now it's your turn."

First, let me note that my reaction to this format change is not based on having seen the actual paper. Oh no. The Guardian, perhaps in the run-up to starting a U.S. edition, has long made it impossible for American customers to buy their product (a problem none of the other English newspapers seem to have).

First came the withholding of the Saturday Review and magazine. Some weeks they made it out of Britain, other times they were left at the dock.

   Then an “international edition” appeared, printed with the kind of ink (a ghastly shade of orange) and paper used by ancient presses in former African colonies. Fortunately, this being Washington D.C., I was able to make a special arrangement with a news agent who saved me a complete edition of the Saturday Guardian, little plastic bag and all.

But then the paper switched to the kind of technology used by hotel clerks in Ramada Inns to print replicas of newspapers on their fax machines, and my exalted Guardian became a black and white monstrosity about as much fun to read as a hotel bill. I was forced to pay nearly $20 per month for the digital edition, which I read far less carefully than I did the one with pages I could turn.

   Sure, the columnists Simon Hoggart and John O'Farrell still write witty, incisive commentary. The cultural coverage makes people even hipper than reading Mojo. The coverage of U.K. politics provides the andrenalin political junkies in the U.S. find lacking from the state of things at home. I used to savor page after well designed page of the overisized "broadsheet." Reading the Guardian was like settling into a comfy chair with a nice cuppa.

But you couldn't read it very comfortably on the subway, yada yada yada...New Yorkers long ago learned the "subway fold." You make do, at least we did, before "focus groups" asked us if we wouldn't really rather have a smaller paper, with catchier stories and more color, with valuable prizes and only really stupid people are preferring the old way anyway? Who can say no to change like that?

Well, me. But they didn't ask me. Instead they're betting the future on the "Berliner" edition, bigger than a tabloid but hardly something you can luxuriate with in on a hammock or beach.

I'll be in London in a few days and will be able to pick up the paper for the first time. Maybe I'm wrong. (I've been so wrong before.) Maybe I'll love it. Comments from Guardian readers are invited below. But unless things change radically, I fear newspapers, like networks and books of serious fiction, are going the way of the dinosaur.

For example, do you know why people in their 20s and 30s say they don't like to read newspapers? Come, on, guess.

I'll even make you click on the continuation to find the answer..

OK.

They hate they way all those papers pile up. True fact, that's what they said in focus groups.

(What, they never heard of recycling?)

It used to that sober, serious news organizations could wait for its audience to grow up past the point where the first page they turn to is the comics. Not today's multi-purpose brands formerly known as newspapers! Did you know that the New York Times is reviewing computer games in the business section now?

We'd all be better off, we'd do our jobs better, we'd be better citzens, better consumers, better parents, if we all were given time at work to read the paper. Pass it on. Tell funders. How about it, Mr. Soros?

Don't Tread on Me, Arthur

William Klein — 2005-10-08T13:54:46-04:00

The New York Times Saturday Business section is not the first place you'd look for psycho/sexual satire, but gaze your eyes upon this excerpt from Harry Hurt III's confessional about the thrill of buying $1,300 shoes:

Ms. Berluti encourages clients to treat their shoes with elaborately ritualized tender loving care. In 1992, she founded the Swann Club, named after Proust's protagonist in "Remembrance of Things Past." Swann Club members gather for black-tie dinners, after which they polish their Berluti shoes with special creams lubricated with drops of Champagne. Per Ms. Berluti's recommendation, they also examine and re-examine the pigments and transparencies in the leather under the light of a first-quarter moon.

Berluti sales employees classify and fit clients according to five morphological types: masochistic, pretentious, fragile, disagreeable and intellectual. With scarcely a hint of disingenuousness, Mr. Ottomani allowed that I was the fifth type. "Some people need heavy, thick-soled shoes to attach themselves to the ground, but you need light, airy shoes because you are a writer," he said. "At the same time, your foot needs to be held because you have a very high arch that requires support."

Oh what dry, sarcastic wit. "Special creams lubicated with drops of Champagne" indeed...

Please, Mr. Fitzgerald

William Klein — 2005-10-06T23:16:48-04:00

I'm counting the hours until Karl Rove is indicted, aren't you?

But wouldn't it be even sweeter if the prosecutor indicted Harriet Miers?

Ooops!

William Klein — 2005-10-03T17:23:17-04:00

I was wrong about the Supreme Court nominee. Now I understand why Laura Bush was dropping all those hints. They hired the family lawyer again. James Baker, Alberto Gonzalez, Harriet Miers --they all toiled to hush up family scandals and fulfill the Bush family's manifest destiny.

Fun fact: Harriet Miers was the person who first introduced George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzales.

Blame Plame Game Fame Flames Same

William Klein — 2005-10-02T13:08:19-04:00

I"m sorry, I just couldn't resist the Variety-speak. The Washington Post has some good insights into the CIA leak investigation, which is quickly resembling a frantic screwball comedy.

washingtonpost.com
Role of Rove, Libby in CIA Leak Case Clearer
Bush and Cheney Aides' Testimony Contradicts Earlier White House Statement
By Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, October 2, 2005; A05

As the CIA leak investigation heads toward its expected conclusion this month, it has become increasingly clear that two of the most powerful men in the Bush administration were more involved in the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame than the White House originally indicated.

With New York Times reporter Judith Miller's release from jail Thursday and testimony Friday before a federal grand jury, the role of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, came into clearer focus. Libby, a central figure in the probe since its earliest days and the vice president's main counselor, discussed Plame with at least two reporters but testified that he never mentioned her name or her covert status at the CIA, according to lawyers in the case.

His story is similar to that of Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser. Rove, who was not an initial focus of the investigation, testified that he, too, talked with two reporters about Plame but never supplied her name or CIA role.

Here's my question about this whole "never mentioned her name" argument which we've heard many times during this whole discussion. It's been established that Joseph Wilson's wife Valerie didn't use her maiden name at CIA. However she's listed as Valerie Plame in her husband's entry in Who's Who, as that dogged reporter Robert Novak found out. (See the section in the Wiki entry called "Air Force One memo") So, isn't it enough to show a conspiracy, as this article implies the prosecutor is planning, if Wilson's wife is referred to as, say, "Wilson's wife?" Thus she is clearly identified without mentioning her name.

Their testimony seems to contradict what the White House was saying a few months after Plame's CIA job became public.

In October 2003, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that he personally asked Libby and Rove whether they were involved, "so I could come back to you and say they were not involved." Asked if that was a categorical denial of their involvement, he said, "That is correct."

Will little Scottie McClellan be named part of the conspiracy? Will Ari Fleischer? We can but hope. Early in this story, I enjoyed watching Scottie take questions about this and counting how many times he used the words "get to the bottom of this", as in "No one wants to get to the bottom of this more than the President." Well, I guess they're about to hit bottom now.

What remains a central mystery in the case is whether special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has accumulated evidence during his two-year investigation that any crime was committed. His investigation has White House aides and congressional Republicans on edge as they await Fitzgerald's announcement of an indictment or the conclusion of the probe with no charges. The grand jury is scheduled to expire Oct. 28, and lawyers in the case expect Fitzgerald to signal his intentions as early as this week.

Thank goodness for special prosecutors. Since the demise of the Independent Counsel Act, they're all we've got. Who else can hold Republican administrations' feet to the fire? Thank you, Lawrence Walsh, Archibald Cox and now Patrick Fitzgerald. I'll skip down a bit now, but do read the entire Post story...

But a new theory about Fitzgerald's aim has emerged in recent weeks from two lawyers who have had extensive conversations with the prosecutor while representing witnesses in the case. They surmise that Fitzgerald is considering whether he can bring charges of a criminal conspiracy perpetrated by a group of senior Bush administration officials. Under this legal tactic, Fitzgerald would attempt to establish that at least two or more officials agreed to take affirmative steps to discredit and retaliate against Wilson and leak sensitive government information about his wife. To prove a criminal conspiracy, the actions need not have been criminal, but conspirators must have had a criminal purpose.

I have a long and checkered history with conspiracy theorists, but in this case I think the word is justified. It's just the sort of thing the Bush Admnistration would do, put the word out that there was something fishy about Wilson and his wife. The question is: did it stop with Libby and Rove or were there bigger players in this frat-boy game?

Lawyers involved in the case interviewed for this report agreed to talk only if their names were not used, citing Fitzgerald's request for secrecy.
One source briefed on Miller's account of conversations with Libby said it is doubtful her testimony would on its own lead to charges against any government officials. But, the source said, her account could establish a piece of a web of actions taken by officials that had an underlying criminal purpose.

What does Judith Miller know? Who did she talk to besides Libby?
Mythtaken politics had a daring theory about this months ago, to which I subscribe. Wouldn't it make sense that the White House would reward Miller for her Chalabi-fed WMD stories with an off the record sit down with POTUS or VPOTUS? I''ll skip some more of this article and get to the nice new information about the Veep.

Cheney's staff was looking into Wilson as early as May 2003, nearly two months before columnist Robert D. Novak identified Wilson's wife as a CIA operative, according to administration sources familiar with the effort. What stirred the interest of the vice president's office was a May 6 New York Times column by Nicholas D. Kristof in which the mission to Niger was described without using Wilson's name. Kristof's column said Cheney had authorized the trip.

According to former senior CIA officials, the vice president's office pressed the CIA to find out how the trip was arranged, because Cheney did not know that a query he made much earlier to a CIA briefer about a report alleging Iraq was seeking Niger uranium had triggered Wilson's trip. "They were very uptight about the vice president being tagged that way," a former senior CIA official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. "They asked questions that set [off] a chain of inquiries."

Aha! We've established more motive! Cheney was mad that he got tagged for being responsible for the Wilson visit. His guys started the whispering campaign to save face with the Bushies. Just like I imagine he does every day at lunch, when Bush says "Have a cheeseburger, Dick!"

Does the man look like he's leading a heart-healthy life? You know, they refuse to release his cholesterol numbers, and during the aftermath of 9/11 that raucous wit Mary Matalin said his "undisclosed location" was the basement of the Palm...

I'm still taking bets on my earlier prediction, but now I'm also figuring that the CIA leak case is about to go bang! Should be fun.

Armstrong Williams Is Doing It, The Pope's Doing It, Now the EPA is Doing ItUpdated

William Klein — 2005-10-01T19:54:00-04:00

I do so love the smell of propaganda in the morning...today's news of what the New York Times called the GAO's "blistering" report (while the WashPost said it was a "mixed ruling") revists the Armstrong Williams "scandal" we've been following so closely here. True PR professionals should know the difference between honest communication and astroturf--and their clients should want them to operate under ethical guidelines. Otherwise a valid exchange of ideas becomes media manipulation.

First posted 7/18/05 More from the astroturf front.

As if to distract us from the still percolating repercussions of the Gray Lady's own negotiable virtue, the New York Times removes further scales from the eyes of those shocked,shocked, by the notion the government pays ghostwriters.

July 18, 2005

Public Relations Campaign for Research Office at E.P.A. Includes Ghostwriting Articles

By FELICITY BARRINGER
WASHINGTON, July 17 - The Office of Research and Development at the Environmental Protection Agency is seeking outside public relations consultants, to be paid up to $5 million over five years, to polish its Web site, organize focus groups on how to buff the office's image and ghostwrite articles "for publication in scholarly journals and magazines."

This is called Public Relations. It is not illegal or even unethical. However the above quote from the EPA contract contains one fatal mistake. Can you find the word that EPA hire-ups are now kicking themselves they didn't catch?

The strategy, laid out in a May 26 exploratory proposal notice and further defined in two recently awarded public relations contracts totaling $150,000, includes writing and placing "good stories" about the E.P.A.'s research office in consumer and trade publications.

The above graf contains a clue. The reference to "consumer and trade publications" is the bread and butter of PR --articles placed in "mainstream" media and business publications fascinating to insiders but thick as mud to the rest of us. But the phrase "consumer and trade" does not refer to another elite group of publications...

The contracts were awarded just months after the Bush administration came under scrutiny for its public relations policies. In some cases payments were made to columnists, including Armstrong Williams, who promoted the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind and received an undisclosed $240,000. In January, President Bush publicly abandoned this practice.

Armstrong Williams has gone from a perplexing pundit to hack to iconic figure, and handy touchstone for the Times trying to add sizzle to stories that aren't about Karl Rove. That paragraph contains an inaccuracy too --Bush may have made a speech against this "practice," but he didn't pull the plug on PR.

The governmentwide public relations strategies, however, continue to include the preparation of TV-ready news reports on government policies.

Like I said.

An E.P.A. spokeswoman said over the weekend that the effort to raise the profile of the agency's research had a worthwhile goal: calling attention to the work of 1,900 scientists and staff members. Noting that the office's annual budget is $600 million, the spokeswoman, Eryn Witcher, said, "We would like to use less than 1 percent of that to make information accessible to the public."

GONG! Show Ms. Lost-Her-Witcher the door, please. While the defensive, feel-good response to an unfavorable story might be to stand by the troops (1,900 scientists and staff members) a better answer would have framed EPA's core issues.

Three similar contracts - one of which was abandoned, the agency said - and the broader $5 million proposal were provided to The New York Times by the environmental group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Its director, Jeff Ruch, said he had received them from an agency employee who believed that research money was being inappropriately diverted to a public relations campaign.

"The idea that they would take limited science dollars and spend them on P.R. is not only ill advised, it's just plain stupid," Mr. Ruch said in an interview.

Ms. Witcher responded: "It's not spending money on communications at the expense of research but rather in support of it. This allows the results of E.P.A. research to be shared with the general public."

Are you still here, Eryn? Mistake #2: repeating the charge made against you in your answer. Mistake #3: talking about dusty, dry "research" when you could be talking about protecting kids' health, ensuring clean water and all the other nice things previous EPA leaders cared about.

While the scope of the exploratory proposal is new, Ms. Witcher said, the two smaller contracts "are standard. It's standard to get more help with skills that folks don't have. It's very common throughout the entire federal government."

Everybody's doing it, is that what you're saying? Please, Mr. Johnson, find a new flack. Instead of marshmellow fluff like "skills that folks don't have" try, "sometimes it's better to hire professional writers when you need something professionally written."

One of the smaller contracts asks the contractor to "develop feature article research and strategy" and to "write the strategy to support a new unit that will be identifying feature story ideas, creating slant, identifying consumer magazines to target and polishing the final article."

That contract, for feature articles, was awarded to JDG Communications of Falls Church, Va., for $65,692.62, Ms. Witcher said.

The second smaller contract was also awarded to JDG Communications, for $85,829.06. It calls on the contractor to develop two "perception specific indicators" that "must show whether public relations efforts to create awareness and improve the reputation of E.P.A.'s research and development, its labs and its top-quality scientists has favorably influenced public perception."

Aha! Now we see what this article is really all about. I love mush like "perception specific indicators." For as long as clients have paid public relations bills, clients have craved some way to measure the effectiveness of public relations. Apart from counting clips, which can be misleading, there really is none.

The more extensive and expensive plan seeks help from public relations agencies to, among other things, "provide research, writing and editing of Office of Research and Development articles for publications in scholarly journals and magazines."

There it is again. That word, probably written by a junior account executive, that no one noticed. Study the paragraph carefully. (That was a hint)

Yes, "scholarly" was dumb. Placing articles in consumer or trade publications is one thing, but you can't monkey around with Science magazine, JAMA or other big guns. Well, you can actually but only if you're a multinational pharmaceutical company, as noted below. Read the full NY Times story for even more dumb remarks from the EPA spokespod, but for now we'll let Donald Kennedy have the last word.

Donald Kennedy, the editor of Science magazine and a former head of the Food and Drug Administration, said in a telephone interview on Saturday that he found the idea of public relations firms ghostwriting for government scientists "appalling."

"If we knew that it had been written by someone who was not a scientist and submitted as though it were the work of a scientist, we wouldn't take it," Mr. Kennedy said. "But it's conceivable that we wouldn't know, if it was carefully constructed."

He added that the practice of putting public relations polish on scientific work has already been practiced by industry. "We had seen it coming in the pharmaceutical industry and were sort of wary about it," he said. "The idea that a government agency would feel the necessity to do this is doubly troubling."

Speaking of ghostwriting, Mr. Kennedy said: "If the ghostwriting is the kind of ghostwriting that most of the good mentors I knew did with Ph.D. students on first paper, it could be a good thing. But I sincerely doubt if any for-profit P.R. firm hired in the interest of improving a scientific publication is going to be the right person to do that."

Dumb DeLay DumUpdated

William Klein — 2005-09-28T14:12:00-04:00

This one I got right. Today's indictment of TomDeLay was foretold in this space back in April. We may not be able to stop the war, but at least an organized and determined opposition managed to get the House to take back their corrupt rule which would have allowed Tom DeLay to keep his post after indictment.

Originally posted 4/10/05 More distractions than usual and melted computers keep me from dissecting a lengthy news article today, but here's the truth about Tom DeLay: He's just not that smart. If you go back and study his role in the abortive coup (before the successful coup) against Speaker Newt Gingrich, you'll see how the former flyswatter from Sugar Land just got caught in the middle and didn't know what to do. He got a good rep with this colleagues for bringing in Texas barbecue on Thursday nights. Who can resist the power of good barbecue? Why it's enough to make a yellow dog turn red.

Of course, being dumb is no impediment to success in politics, as we all know. Does anyone but me remember watching the 1988 primary debate in which Michael Dukakis said, "if we can't beat George Bush, we should find another country?" Ha ha, big joke.

But now I'll go out on another limb and join those who see the writing on the wall for Tom DeLay. He'll be indicted, or all those pesticides he used to spew will turn him into a cockroach.

Going out on a Limb, V.2

William Klein — 2005-09-27T20:41:18-04:00

Since my last wild prediction has fizzled into nothingness (althought technically it still could happen), just like the one before and the one before that, it's amazing I would ever prognosticate again.

But hey, what are blogs for:

I predict Bush picks Larry Thompson for the Court. He's got the right credentials, the right amount of proven loyalty and is a diversity pick from W.'s favorite place, his inner circle. (Where people think Condi Rice and Karen Hughes are actually smart...)

If I'm right, tell them you heard it here first. If I'm wrong, come back and watch me eat crow. (No it won't be a streaming video...)

Got to Revolution, Got to Revolution!

William Klein — 2005-09-24T23:25:56-04:00

Attended both the Greenfestival (where I met the Ode family and friends of this great magazine) and the March on Washington today. As a consequence, I got to hear Jim Hightower twice. (The first time I heard Jim was in 1976, when he was Sen. Fred Harris' campaign manager in his great race for President. Do readers recall Harris' great campaign slogan? "The issue is privilege.")

I'll try not to be cynical today about the "peace movement" but I will say this: we need some more songs. Listening to Steve Earle sing his instant patriotic classic "F*@# the FCC" (as true blue American a song as "This Land is Your Land") was a thrill. But where are today's Volunteers by the Jefferson Airplane, For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfield, or CSNY's version of Joni Mitchell's Woodstock? Steve Earle said it this afternoon, he's said it before: music can change people's lives and change the world. What songs would go on your list, either for antiwar impact or just plain activism. Billy Bragg, of course...what else?

This is Funny

William Klein — 2005-09-23T11:13:13-04:00

Badmash has a short comedy film about the "genius" behind Bush's Bushisms. It's hilarious, and worth sending to your friends. I understand it stars someone known in Hollywood as "omnisexual menace Andy Dick."

Welcome to the Spin Machine

William Klein — 2005-09-22T14:00:00-04:00

On the internet, everybody will be famous for fifteen people. So the New York Times told me this summer. I'm working hard to interest mine. That means you. And you. And a big welcome to you.

Enjoy that? I'm mixing my trenchant commentary with blog links or "blinks" that sometimes illuminate my point, sometimes take you somewhere you may not have known about and other times are just designed to get a laugh. (And no, they won't always lead to my articles, I promise.)

What's inside the spin machine? How do media professionals--like me--influence the news you consume? Come back next time you're in this corner of cyberspace and join the discussion.

Live (sort of) from New York! It's the Democratic Party!

William Klein — 2005-09-22T12:21:25-04:00

I went to a fascinating conference yesterday on politics and the internet, and one of the discussions was about how newspapers are using the Web. Although our speaker was from Washingtonpost.com, his remarks could have been titled "The Times, they are a Changing"....ouch! sorry...but what's the deal with this new Times Select? Remember when we thought that "information wants to be free? Not at today''s Times, I guess.

The first blow from W.43rd Street to news junkies like me in D.C. was when they decided to stop sending the New York City editions of the Times to Washington. The Sulzbergers decreed that Washingtonians needed local TV listings more than the NYC news a lot of former New Yorkers and New Yorker wannabes counted on from the Times. I had to go online to find this account of the latest from the NYC mayoral election.

September 22, 2005
Ferrer Campaigns With Green and Criticizes Bloomberg
By PATRICK D. HEALY and THOMAS J. LUECK
Hello Mark! I've been wondering when Mark Green (disclosure: I've worked on his campaigns) would make an entrance in the 2005 mayoral race. The Times could have written one of those "Former Rivals in bittersweet embrace" headlines but chose to play it cool. Besides, now that the paper has it's must-miss gossip column "Boldface Names" that headline is saved for news from J-Lo or Gwyneth)
Fernando Ferrer, the Democratic nominee for mayor, campaigned for the first time yesterday with his former political archnemesis, Mark Green, while also unveiling his first television commercials against his new rival, Michael R. Bloomberg, one of which suggested that the Republican mayor had failed to tackle poverty in the city.
Archnemesis ---ooo, scary. I guess they couldn't fit that into the headline so they used it in the lede. But all in all so far this story is handing the Ferrer campaign the mike and letting them say their piece about Mike Bloomberg. They'll beat up on Freddy again, but for now the press had decided that after being reborn by his primary win he's got hybrid vigor.

The Ferrer camp, seeking to build political muscle as a new poll showed the mayor leading by 14 percentage points, also geared the new ad and its allies' lobbying efforts to woo the Working Families Party and the United Federation of Teachers for endorsements that could particularly influence liberal voters who may be leaning to Mr. Bloomberg.

God I miss the Vietnam war. Back then, the New York left had a focus, a clear area of agreement. Now we've got the Working Families and the Teachers and the hospital workers and a newly split labor movement --can't we just all get along?

The two candidates themselves scuffled lightly, meanwhile, over the issue of debates, with the mayor saying there would be two and the Democratic challenger appearing to call for at least five.

Here it comes, the invevitable debate about debates. Watch for more stories in the weeks to come, giving the press a focus and another reason not to cover important issues. Every campaign underdog calls for more debates, the bigger the gap between the candidates, the more outrageously the front-runner can manipulate the process. In 1986, when I helped Mark Green lose his race for U.S. Senate, Al D'Amato got a debate scheduled opposite a playoff game at Yankee Stadium.

Yet it was Mr. Ferrer's appearance with Mr. Green that provided the drama of the day. Mr. Ferrer won more votes than Mr. Green in the 2001 mayoral primary, yet lost to him in a runoff. The two camps accused each other of racially tinged politicking, bitterness set in and Mr. Green led a divided party to defeat against Mr. Bloomberg.

OK, I've been wrong about Ferrer and Green in the past. (Note the dateline on that first clip...) But it is big news that Mark Green has endorsed Ferrer, and if the press will let them, maybe these two leading Democrats can work together.

That enmity, which is still palpable among some of their past and present advisers, was not visible yesterday as the men shook hands with voters on the Upper West Side, which provided crucial support for Mr. Green in 2001 and is now a likely Bloomberg-Ferrer battleground. As they introduced each other to voters, Mr. Green repeated, "Say hello to Fernando Ferrer, Democratic nominee for mayor," while "You know Mark Green?" was Mr. Ferrer's mantra.

Know what that first sentence really says? Someone in the room who's been around Mark Green a long time said something disparaging. The only thing "palpable" in this paragraph is the reporter looking for something specific for his story, in this case, a dig about a grudge. Too bad, really, because the rest of that sentence has a nugget of real news. Where's Waldo? Do you know?

Addressing the issue of their relationship, Mr. Green characterized it as fine, adding that they realized after debating together against a proposed charter change in 2003 that they were "a much better team together than against each other."

In making the endorsement, Mr. Green said he was supporting Mr. Ferrer because he had fought over the years for "all those millions of people who can't privatize their lives." Mr. Ferrer said he was grateful for the support yet did not return the favor and endorse Mr. Green's candidacy for attorney general next year, saying he would make that decision at the appropriate time.

Oh well. It would have been nice to get an endorsement for AG but I have a feeling Mark wasn't counting on one. But I'll tell you one thing that would get the attention of a "Mayor" Ferrer --and it's the answer to our riddle--if Mark Green made it a personal priority to beat Bloomberg on the Upper West Side, or in his old neighborhood on the Upper East Side.

Appearing with his old rival reflected a budding confidence in Mr. Ferrer, who notably avoided events during the primary campaign that might be unpredictable or remind voters of his past failures (such as losing to Mr. Green).

Cute. Oh, let's give a round of applause to that snide (at least it was edited if not written in the parenthetical) remark.

Mr. Ferrer and other Democrats see the mayor as less politically sure-footed than usual lately, citing Mr. Bloomberg's recent break with President Bush over abortion rights and hurricane recovery.

I'm sorry, but how is telling the swing voters in this race (liberals) what they want to hear a mis-step? (This race may be the exception to the rule articulated yesterday by Hal Malchow, who said "I've never seen a piece of Republican direct mail that didn't include the words "liberal Democrat."

Yesterday, the mayor again sought to curry favor with Democrats by standing with a Democratic senator, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, as she criticized the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina. Yet he seemed uncertain about echoing her criticism; asked by a reporter about the federal and local efforts along the Gulf Coast, he said, "I am not an expert," before urging better emergency planning.

Bloomberg may be trying to win re-election in New York, but he still can't say boo to Bush, in the bayou or Sohoo. That's why Ferrer will try to change his name to "Republican Michael Bloomberg" but it probably won't be enough to beat Mike's many advantages. But hey -- I've been wrong before.

Trying to tweak the mayor, the state Democratic Party sent a man wearing a George W. Bush mask to a Times Square rally yesterday, where the mayor was endorsed by unions of theater, film and art professionals. The man held a sign that read, "Thanks, Mike, for Your Support," while a woman handed out fliers describing how the mayor had raised millions of dollars for Republicans.

Clever! You have to do stuff like that to get attention these days. (If you're in DC this weekend for the protests, look out the folks from Funny Times and see what kind of seeds they're planting.)

Mr. Ferrer was pointedly aggressive in criticizing the mayor yesterday, ranging from the city's evacuation plans to the years-overdue contract for public school teachers. In an appeal to the 105,000 teachers' union members who are registered city voters, Mr. Ferrer said contract talks were foundering because Mr. Bloomberg "walks away from that table and fails to take the most basic action a mayor has to engage in."

Mush. Freddy, couldn't you have come up with stronger verbs than "walks" and "fails" and "engage in?" The man (kidding!) next to you knows how to frame the debate and seize control of the rhetoric. Get his help.

The mayor said yesterday he was optimistic that a new contract would be reached, and noted that his earlier one with teachers included a landmark double-digit raise. Yet he faces pressure from the union to settle a contract during the election season or endure a possible strike as well as a probable teachers' endorsement of Mr. Ferrer.

Yes, I think we can probably assume that the teachers won't endorse Bloomberg. Although many parents will, including parents who've voted in the past for Mark Green.

In one of its new television commercials yesterday, the Ferrer campaign sought to deepen an impression of the mayor as uncaring about working New Yorkers, citing what he said was a rising city poverty rate. Kevin Sheekey, the mayor's campaign manager, said Mr. Ferrer was trying to fool New Yorkers with "distortions and deceit" by citing poverty rates in a way that the Census Bureau had discouraged.

"Distortions and deceit" is better than "engage in" but never mind the war of spoken words. How about the battle over the mailbox?

I've created political direct mail for decades and the strategy for those oversize postcards you get is for their arrival to be staggered; so a piece about education comes a week or so before the one about health care, and so on and so on until a well-tuned juggernaut rolls out on Election Day.

But when a ton of candidates are running and every printer and mail shop from New York to Milwaukee are working overtime, everything gets dumped at once. A friend in Manhattan estimates receiving 100 pieces within the last few weeks of the primary. When every candidate is pulling on your coat at the same time, you just want to get away.

Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Ferrer, who have yet to joust aggressively with each other in the week-old general election campaign, did clash briefly over televised debates.

"Two debates is what we had the last time and two debates is what we are going to have this time," the mayor said at a news conference. Mr. Ferrer scoffed at the mayor's suggestion of two debates. "We owe it to the people of all of this city not only to have debates in every one of the five boroughs but to have debates on specific topics," Mr. Ferrer said during a visit to the Michael J. Petrides High School on Staten Island.

You see? They can't even wait until tomorrow to the debate/debate/distraction. Keep an eye on reporting about the New York election --if you can find it.

Bush Family Quote of the Week

William Klein — 2005-09-06T15:23:20-04:00

Leave it to Barbara Bush, the meanest one (read halfway down that article, for Bush's great line about his mother's cooking: "the woman had frostbite on her fingers...") in the family, to lay it out on the line:

In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of
evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: "Almost
everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to
Houston."

Then she added: "What I’m hearing which is sort of
scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is
so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you
know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she
chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

Remember when her husband showed a picture of his grandkids to President Reagan, not knowing the mikes were catching his comment, "That's Jebby's kids from Florida, the little brown ones ."

Woody Guthrie got this one right a long time ago.

10,000 Dead?

William Klein — 2005-09-03T12:16:55-04:00

The Guardian says it, quoting an educated guess from Senator David Vitter. The U.S. press is still too skittish. But today's New York Times does have this heartbreaking story that includes a great question from Ted Koppel to the head of FEMA: "Don't you guys watch television?"

One horrorshow we've all been watching over the years is the genre known as the disaster movie. The poor people of New Orleans found themselves living in one this week. Is it really a surprise that powderkegs explode? W.B. Yeats was right...

I wrote the other day that Katrina's toll might exceed 9/11 -- it's sure to now. Maybe it will take that attack's place as our most vivid national nightmare. The trauma is only going to get worse, but Bush still doesn't get it (see below).

In the meantime, I'm staying tuned to NPR. Their coverage has been gripping, like this report by Anne Hawke and this commentary by Leon Wynter.

And I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Wynter also read, as I did, this wondrous excursion into the mind of the great Hank Jones.
I'm grateful to Ben Ratliff for providing a needed breather from the news.

Bush Can Count

William Klein — 2005-09-01T06:59:00-04:00

"In a time of crisis, for all our cynicism, we look to the president for inspiration, information, and direction...in our best moments, our leaders have challenged our ideas, stirred our hearts, and moved our nation."
Michael Waldman, My Fellow Americans

"The Department of Transportation has provided more than 400 trucks to move 1,000 truckloads containing 5.4 million meals ready to eat, or MREs; 13.4 million liters of water; 10,400 tarps; 3.4 million pounds of ice; 144 generators; 20 containers of prepositions disaster supplies; 135,000 blankets and 11,000 cots. And we're just starting. There are more than 78,000 people now in shelters."

George W. Bush, 8/31/05

The death toll and devastation from Katrina (and what band is wishing it had a different name today?) may well exceed 9/11. This is a time for big thoughts and meaningful words. All George Bush knows how to do is read lists.

More soon...and note to readers (all three of you): Summer's Over. Watch this space for daily updates. Bug me if I fail to produce. I read in the New York Times (so it must be true) that in the internet, everyone will be famous for fifteen people. I'm working hard to interest mine.

Naral Crumples, Democrats DitherUpdated

William Klein — 2005-08-13T12:45:24-04:00

Gather round, politics fans, for this is a classic story of how things go wrong in the high-stakes world of propaganda.

As everyone knows by now, Naral Pro-Choice America was first out of the box with an anti-Judge Roberts commercial. It was hard hitting and only "fair" by the standards of political advertising, where guilt by insinuation is part of the frame. Conservatives protested, bloggers bleated, moderate Democrats and Arlen Specter caviled, (and Carville carvilled) and Naral withdrew the ad.

The result is that Naral looks weak (check out the photo in today's Washington Post story), the Democrats are back on the defensive, and the real culprit is so far off the hook.

Who's that? Who hasn't been mentioned in any of the news stories? Whose name hasn't been leaked by Naral staffers eager to spread the blame for greenlighting an ad they couldn't defend? Who, even now, has Naral by the, uh, reproductive organs as they scramble to put together a replacement ad?

If this were a political campaign,by now we'd have read sniping by insiders about the media consultant who thought up this ad, and quotes from other consultants who smelled potential new business.

In politics, when the going gets tough, the tough blame their consultants. Come on, Naral, play hardball.

**Update**
Not good enough. Naral's communications director seems to be trying to take the bullet, but it won't work. Watch for the new improved Naral ad to fizzle too, and then watch Naral hire a new consultant.

Have You Heard Hem?

William Klein — 2005-08-07T17:13:46-04:00

The courtyard at Mass MoCa was the scene of an extraordinary, unforgettable evening of music last night. Like my other fave raves, Hem has three strong songwriters, but unlike the Fanclub Hem has only one lead singer. Sally Ellyson's voice haunts, inspires and transports you, and rings true like a bell.

The Berkshire Eagle (or "Beagle") reviewer felt much the same way, although he had some quibbles others might question, not me, I believe in free speech and Bobby Kennedy...

Not Virgins. Grapes. D'oh!

William Klein — 2005-08-05T21:00:18-04:00

While we wait for the next terrorist shoe to drop (touch wood), it's worth remembering the news my favourite newspaper broke back in January 2002. (The U.S. media picked up the story a mere 18 months later.) As the Guardian reported, a new translation of the Qu'ran has a different reading of the passage promising 72 virgins to the successful martyr. Read it please in the entirety but I'll skip to the good part:

Luxenberg 's new analysis, leaning on the Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian, yields "white raisins" of "crystal clarity" rather than doe-eyed, and ever willing virgins - the houris. Luxenberg claims that the context makes it clear that it is food and drink that is being offerred, and not unsullied maidens or houris.

How embarrassing is that? You strap a bomb to your waist, blow yourself and a bunch of your fellow humans to bits, stroll into Paradise eager to reap your reward...

The Message is the Message

William Klein — 2005-08-04T12:07:47-04:00

Marshall McLuhan was wrong. Or if he was right then, he's at least a little bit wrong now.

"The medium is the message," McLuhan famously said, and so began our 24/7 media universe. McLuhan was right when he forecast how important the media would become, but George Lakoff is right, too. Framing the message is vital.

But to quote a political golden oldie, "where's the beef?"* Forget theory -- how do we win?

Jim Wallis in today's New York Times slices up a good helping of visionary red meat. Interestingly, the same edition brings news that the most aggressive of the so-called liberal 527 groups, Americans for Coming Together, is cutting back to a bare-bones operation. ACT's leader, the former head of the AFL-CIO's political department, Steve Rosenthal, tells the Times, "This is an extremely unpredictable business."

Maybe not. Maybe we can now predict, after getting our donkeys kicked from Ohio to Florida, that when Democrats focus on the mechanics of elections they lose the vision thing. Jim Wallis has the right idea. Pass it on.

*When Walter Mondale said "where's the beef" to Gary Hart he was following up on an idea originally hatched by an old friend of mine who was dating one of Mondale's campaign managers. He came home one night and she said, "Honey, I was watching this Wendy's commercial where a little old lady keeps asking, 'Where's the beef?' You should have Mondale say that to Hart." The rest is history.

Push the (NY) Primary Up!

William Klein — 2005-08-01T22:21:17-04:00

What the Gray Lady gives on one day, she takes away the next.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story that quoted Democratic operative Howard Wolfson taking to task Democratic donors who have been making campaign contributions to plutocrat Michael Bloomberg. This contributed to the general impression in news coverage that Bloomberg will easily win re-election.

Today, the Times flips to the other perspective, and offers a headline with an extra dose of hype: "Big Bloomberg Concern: United Democratic Party," which includes the view that Fernando Ferrer "could win the Democratic primary outright, giving the party a nominee unbloodied by a divisive runoff and signnificantly enhancing the chances for a Democratic victory in November."

News media always want to make news more exciting, whether it's reporting on the "horse race" aspect of elections or, in the case of the New York Post, running a story about the "runaway bride" every day for three months.

This year's race for Mayor has been a yawner since the start, with occasional media reports of gaffes and mishaps. Although I've been wrong (except here, where I was right) about New York politics in the past, it sure looks as if Bloomberg put away this race early with his money, and also by exceeding expectations and governing the city in a way that appeals to many Democrats.

The increasingly factional --and occasionaly feudal--nature of New York City politics makes it more difficult for Democrats to unite the electorate. In the equation of "Us vs.Them," everyone loses.

Even more reason, then, for New Yorkers to change the state's brutal election calendar, with a September primary followed by a runoff if no one gets 40% of the vote.

In 1986, Mark Green stunned the establishment by winning the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate against a millionaire who massively outspent him. If the primary had been in May rather than September, Green could have fundraised and organized enough to beat Al D'Amato. (Noted with vested interest: I worked on that race and on succeeding Green campaigns and projects, although none in this century.) (And I'm not above giving Mark's campaign for NY Attorney General a plug, either).

In 2001, Green and Ferrer competed in a runoff election that was held on, yes, September 11. That election was cancelled, rescheduled, Green won, the city was in chaos, Guiliani embraced Bloomberg, Bloomberg spent $74 million, Green, again, had little time to fundraise and organize, and now the Democrats in New York are heading for their fourth straight loss of the Mayoral race.

I've proposed simple solutions to complex problems in the past, so here's another: push the primary up. Of course, the Republican state legislature is hardly inclined to do Democrats any favors, but let's at least get this subject on the agenda.

Taking a Break from Politics: A Teenage Fanclub Fan's Notes

William Klein — 2005-07-27T14:15:33-04:00

"Songs are what I listen to, almost to the inclusion of everything else. I don't listen to classical music or jazz very often, and when people ask me what music I like, I find it very difficult to reply, because they usually want names of people, and I can only give them song titles. And mostly all I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along to them, and force other people to listen to them, and get cross when these other people don't like them as much as I do."

Nick Hornby, "31 Songs"
Chapter 1: "Teenage Fanclub: Your Love is the Place Where I Come From"

A Fan's Notes is a great book about being a fan (in this case football, which I know and care nothing about) and so was Hornby's High Fidelity.(If you've only seen that movie --or this one-- read the book(s).)

Teenage Fanclub is one of my favorite bands too --probably my #1 Fave Rave. Norman Blake, Gerard Love and Raymond McGinley each have distinctive songwriting styles, and with Francis Macdonald working up a sweat at the drum kit the band is giving tour audiences this summer some great shows.

Through the magic of the internet, I joined up with some people who are even more diehard fans of the band than I am for shows in DC and NY. We started talking about books that get the world of music, bands and fans right.

Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman was recommended by one of the cool rock chicks in attendance and if it had been about idealistic folk music, which I was listening to in high school instead of heavy mental (that's an old David Johansen line) I probably would have read it before now.

Lonely Planet Boy by Barney Hoskyns is one of my favorites; a novel about a fan who gets what he wants, and pays the price. A character who emerges in better shape is Gary Valentine, a founder of Blondie who wrote some of their early hits. His memoir New York Rocker is a time machine back to the seventies --the good parts, not the disco and bell bottoms bit.

Some of the best books about music are available from the British Amazon. Look for Giles Smith's Lost in Music-- if you're the kind of person who likes to dig through record bins, this book is about your life. The late great John Peel said "Read this book." Also available from amazon.co.uk is Cider with Roadies by former NME writer Stuart Maconie, who discovers the "comically tawdry truth behind the glitter." Yet more sleaze and insight into the music scene can be found in Mick Farren's Give the Anarchist a Cigarette.

You can find great books about music but far more importantly, in my opinion, the Village's best selection of music you'll like at RebelRebel on Bleecker Street. I feel about that place the way Norm and Cliff felt about Cheers. Ask David for a recommendation, spend a lot of money, go away happy. It always works for me.

Quote of the Week

William Klein — 2005-07-26T15:10:45-04:00

The Washington Post has a story about a right-wing radio talker who referred to Islam as "a terrorist organization." Station spokespod Randall Bloomquist wins the stupid-quote-of-the-week gong awarded last to the EPA flack who, like so many before her, thinks getting off a zinger is better than helping a reporter get the story right.

Read the full article and judge for yourself if it's a further sign that the world is hurtling towards the sun and we're all going to die, or if it's just more blather from the blogsphere, but do stop to enjoy this useful reminder of the "news standards" in use today.

"Remember that this is talk radio. We don't do the dainty minuet of the newspaper editorial page. It's not 'Washington Week in Review.' It depends on pungent statements to drive it. Michael is rattling the cage. It's designed to start and further a conversation, and it has certainly done that."

You Can Scare Me, I'm Sticking with the Union

William Klein — 2005-07-25T13:10:39-04:00

These are sad days for the house of labor. As the New York Times and the Washington Post update the story, the long-simmering fratricide at the AFL-CIO is almost complete.

When I first got to Washington, when I met with union officials I was struck by how much they resembled the stereotype --cigar-smoking men with no necks and lots of jewelry. Dose guys are gone, mostly. I think some of the best people in politics work for unions, and their talent is needed more than ever as elected officials and corporate powers target working families.

The question must be asked, as the fight comes down to one man's determination to stay in office:

John Sweeney, why don't you go? You have been a good leader but if your departure can keep this from happening, then go. (P.S. to Andy Stern: if you target Wal-mart, you have to beat Wal-mart, and they would spend $50 million before breakfast to stop you).

I Felt It Was Felt Breaking News Update

William Klein — 2005-06-24T17:37:00-04:00

My lifelong obsession (click here) with Richard Nixon has paid off.
You heard it here first. I thought I remembered reading the first mention of Mark Felt being Deep Throat in J. Anthony Lukas' 1976 book about Watergate, Nightmare

but I hadn't checked the reference until recently. There it is, in the index:

Felt, W. Mark, Jr. as "Deep Throat," 273; and FBI investigation of break-in, 230-31; and Sullivan demotion, 285

Go to page 273 of this groundbreaking and essential book and you find:
Woodward had one supersource whom he called "Deep Throat" and met in drafty parking garages (and whom many believe to have been W. Mark Felt, Jr., then deputy associate director of the FBI).

So credit where credit is due -- all hail the late, great reporter and writer Tony Lukas!

Below is my post from earlier this month:

As Tim Noah writes in Slate, the news that former FBI official Mark Felt(and not Fred Fielding) was Watergate source Deep Throat comes as no great surprise. While it's a shame that this revelation will bring to a close all the wacky speculation about his identity, it's satisfying to join Nora Ephron in saying, "I told you so."

It was the flowerpot that tipped us off. Woodward wrote in All the President's Men that when he wanted to meet with his "friend" he would move a flower pot on his apartment balcony. So whoever Deep Throat was, he had to know surveillance tradecraft.

Then there were the hints dropped by Ben Bradlee. In 1975, a college teacher of mine took our political science class to Washington, where we met Bradlee in his office at the Washington Post. When we asked him about Deep Throat, he told us if you could put into a computer the schedules of everyone who was mentioned as possibly being DT, and cross indexed it with the dates of Woodward's meetings, the mystery would be solved. So that meant it had to be an official whose schedule would be more or less part of the public record.

For those who, like me, are still wallowing in Watergate, links here, here , and here can keep you busy until Woodward's next book comes out.

The Rich are Different from you and me...

William Klein — 2005-06-22T19:28:33-04:00

I love quotes about rich people and how clueless they are.

The headline quote is from F. Scott Fitzgerald, to which Hemingway replied, "Yes, they have more money." And Truman Capote noticed that rich people prefer enormous houses and tiny vegetables.

Even better than a great quote are instances where a reporter hands them a shovel, turns on the tape recorder, and takes down their every word as they dig themselves deeper holes.

Walter Nicholls in the Washington Post gives us this hilarious account of two clueless multimillionaires who probably think they got good publicity today. Read the full text for yourself, and watch for these highlights:

For her upcoming 50th birthday, Lerner plans to treat herself to a heavy-duty road roller that will groom the 14 miles of lanes that wind through her property. That should guarantee a comfortable ride, whether she chooses to cruise the rolling hills at the wheel of a Land Rover, on a Harley-Davidson or atop a highly polished carriage drawn by a powerful Shire horse. Her hobby is jousting in period costume, which gives her "a chance to spear cabbages."

No comment necessary. Oh alright just the one: "Jousting in period costume?"

"I thought to myself, wouldn't it be nice if we had a local restaurant"

You know, the kind of place we like to go in London, New York and the Islands.

At Home Farm, the prime steaks cost as much as $27 per pound. Seven kinds of sausage are made in-house. In the prepared foods area, savory turnovers and pulled pork are ready for a picnic. Some of the organic produce is grown on local estates owned by margarine heiress Dielle Fleischmann and Mars candy billionaire Jacqueline Mars, whom Lerner calls "the lettuce queen."

Forget micro-farming. It's the dawn of macroeconomic farming. Soon they'll have their own product seal -- gold bullion and the words: "Certified grown by plutocrats"

Johnson says her new plan will win more supporters. "My vision is still being followed," says Johnson. "But in the beginning, there was not a real business plan. The design team was pretty haphazard. My whole strategic plan has changed in the last few months, and when it's finished, there's a book in this."

No. No. No. Do not give this woman a book contract. That means you, Judith.

"Now, not every Joe Blow Public will come. But if I have, let's say, the king of Jordan or Oprah or if the president comes, we can stage something wonderful here," she says.

Shall we take that as an invitation? Abdullah, Oprah, W -- waddya say?

And for more about rich people and their food obsession, don't miss this from today's New York Times. (careful readers of this blog will note the presence here of a character we've met before --the inappropriately present public relations person)

Where have you gone, Calvin Trillin? I'd much rather read about your food obsessions...

War-gate

William Klein — 2005-06-20T23:00:17-04:00

Reader S.A. Colvin in Portland, OR writes:

Ample evidence has been uncovered to impeach Bush. For me, the Downing Street memo confirms what I've known all along, the problem is, everyone knows. But now the evidence can't be ignored. I watched John Conyers' hearing and heard many dedicated Congresswomen delve further into timelines that don't connect with the White House's version of events. This isn't about Republican or Democrat it is about the Office of the President and its credibility. So I figure the only way to get the media involved is to give them a slogan. I'm suggesting this one:

War-gate.

Love it. And not just for the obvious connecton with My Favorite Scandal.

War-gate. Pass it on.

Yes, Virginia Will be the First State to Honor Tibet

William Klein — 2005-06-20T20:01:16-04:00

Yes, Virginia will be the first place in the world to issue “Friends of Tibet” license plates. But it’s up to traveling monks, Virginia schoolchildren and Tibetan exiles to make it happen. If you live in Virginia or know someone who does, please pass this on.

Green doesn't grow my iPod Updated

William Klein — 2005-06-10T15:01:00-04:00

We did it. Steve Jobs caved in to the growing demand that iPods be easier to recycle. As I wrote shortly before the Apple shareholders meeting, Instead of being smart and doing the right thing then, Jobs chose to kick and scream and get some more bad press for awhile first. Links to my post surely are what turned the tide. Don't you think?

A story in Friday's Technology Daily spotlights what online advocates are doing to pressure Apple to redesign iPods so consumers can recycle the batteries. If they're not recycled, the batteries leech toxic lead and mercury out of landfills and into public ecosystems.

Activists are focusing on the April 21 Apple shareholders meeting to get Board members like Al Gore to push Apple to produce toxic-free iPods. The article quotes Ted Smith of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition who says, "They designed it so you can't remove the battery and recycle it. Apple designed them for consumer glitz and not for the environment."

Why won't Steve Jobs make iPods greener? The Computer Take Back Campaign website quotes an unidentified Apple worker, who says that Steve Jobs is telling employees, "Oh, we’re as green as we can be.Those activists just want money from us."

I hope that rumor's wrong.Fans of Apple want the company to do more than make financial contributions. The Green Guide, the source for green living resources, allows consumers to forward voice mail messages and e-mail to Steve Jobs, reminding him that "unlike Dell and HP, you do not support legislation here in the U.S. that would require companies such as Apple to take responsibility for the electronics they sell once they have become obsolete. These requirements are already standard in other parts of the world where you do business."

Get with the program, Steve. You've got a PR disaster on your hands if this blows up at the shareholders meeting.Your customers want to be green, so do the right thing.

Bernie Bernie Bernie 2nd Update

William Klein — 2005-05-10T13:01:00-04:00

Political Wire has an item about some hesitation by Democrats about whether to endorse Bernie Sanders' candidacy for Senate. There's no way the Democrats can field a credible candidate against the longtime Independent. Calling Doctor Dean! Would Terry McAuliffe have let this situation simmer so long? Appoint Bill Clinton as your special envoy to Vermont and have him work this out.

OK, so when I first posted this I wasn't alone in the blogosphere predicting that Bernie Sanders would run for Jeffords' seat --but he still hasn't announced, leaked or hinted that he'll run on both ballots. I'm sure he and Doctor Dean are downing a lot of spaghetti with vodka sauce at Boves hashing this one out.

*****Warning***** The following punditry is Misinformed and Wrong!

The news today that Senator Jeffords won't run for re-election invites me to go out on another limb.

I predict that Bernie Sanders runs for Senate as both a Democrat and an Independent. How can the Democrats run anyone against him?

Of course, if I had bothered to check I would have learned that you can't run on two party lines in Vermont.

Which only makes Dean and the Democrats' dilemma more difficult!

Nervous Nellies at NPR

William Klein — 2005-05-04T20:18:22-04:00

A Washington Post interview gone wrong with the "Car Talk" guys becomes an object lesson in how not to handle media relations

Oh, Brother: 'Car Talk' Guy Puts Mouth in Gear
Tom Magliozzi Opines and NPR Goes Into Reverse
By Mark Leibovich
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 4, 2005; C01

“Thou shall make the client available to the media—and then leave.”
--Ted Klein’s 3rd Commandment of Public Relations

We all love NPR, and we’re all concerned about reports of new interference from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB) into NPR and PBS operations. But this is not the way to keep the wolf from the door. (Oh right, that's the World Bank)

The guys who host "Car Talk" on National Public Radio -- brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi -- were in Washington yesterday to visit with some of the powerful government officials whose support for public radio is so vital. They also sat for a rare interview.

"George Bush is a [unprintable vulgarity]," Tom Magliozzi says, about three minutes into the interview.

You might be thinking, well, that’s a good lede –this should be an interesting profile. I’m afraid not!

Rule Number One: When you're trying to ensure government funding, it's best not to refer to the head of said government as an unprintable vulgarity.

Now, if this were an ordinary interview and not one specially designed to implode in an embarrassing public spectacle, Click (or is he Clack?)’s comment would have been a throwaway the writer might have used at the end of the article. Too bad NPR blew it—big time.

Maybe this is why the "Car Talk" guys rarely give interviews.

"Yeah, you probably shouldn't say that," says Doug Berman, executive producer of public radio's most popular weekend show, who is sitting across the breakfast table at Cafe Luna on P Street. NPR spokeswoman Jenny Lawhorn agrees. As do Ray and Tom, aka "Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers" at least until Tom essentially repeats himself, twice.

Even here, this story could have gone on to a happier ending, if the NPR mis-spokeswoman had just left this alone after registering the obligatory disclaimer. As Zero Mostel said to Gene Wilder at their first awkward meeting in The Producers, the appropriate word is “oops.” That’s all.

This is the part of the story where NPR officials make it clear that the views of the show's personalities do not reflect those of its management.
"I'd like to point out that 'Car Talk' is editorially independent," Lawhorn says.
"Their jokes and jabs," she further states in a follow-up e-mail, "aren't in any way the official views of NPR and its member stations."

Follow-up e-mail? De trop, darling, strictly de trop. But as the poet didn’t say, “at my back I always hear CPB’s winged chariot hurrying near.” Tom’s vulgarism must have set off a 4-alarm panic at NPR. And as we all know, first reactions to panic are usually wrong.

This is an important distinction, since local public radio stations rely partly on the largess of Congress, some of whose members are Republicans. These stations, in turn, pay fees to NPR for programming. So NPR executives are understandably sensitive to what they call their "perception problem" -- that NPR is often considered a bastion of liberal sensibilities that are winning little love from Washington these days, or, for that matter, funding.

Is this what it was like in the McCarthy era? How many loyalty tests do we have to pass before we can call ourselves citizens?

But the Magliozzis are prime assets for the radio network, given that their stock in trade -- cars and humor -- is largely apolitical and is enjoyed across party lines. About 30 members of Congress of both parties attended a reception with the Magliozzis in the Rayburn Building last night.
The duo attracts 4.7 million listeners a week on nearly 600 stations. They debuted on Boston's WBUR in 1977 and took "Car Talk" into national syndication 10 years later.

We now return you to this regularly scheduled feature story, in the mostly harmless style section of the Washington Post, where the news is soft, light and fluffy. See how this story starts to move in a typical Style style as the house organ of this company town? No one reading this needs to be told what the Rayburn Building is (for those of you on the Left Coast, it’s a Congressional Office Building).

Click and Clack's radio shtick is indistinguishable from their real-life conversations, say people who know them. "People say, 'You sound just like those shmucks on the radio,' " Ray says. In other words, they sound like drunk raccoons with Boston accents who cackle perpetually and occasionally dispense car-related wisdom.

Good writing – “drunk raccoons with Boston accents” nice one! See what can happen when you let a reporter just do their job? But wait, there’s more from the Nervous Nellies at NPR.

"Eventually the conversation rolls around to car problems, no matter where we are," says Ray, 56, who still works a few days a week at the brothers' Good News Garage in their hometown of Cambridge, Mass. Tom, who is 67 and semi-retired, dabbles in building picture frames, among other pursuits.
But Tom and Ray are essentially blue-collar wiseacres, albeit with degrees from MIT (Tom graduated in 1958 and Ray in 1972). "They are equal-opportunity quipsters," Lawhorn says in her ongoing disclaimer over Tom's Bush quip. "They pick on everybody."

“Ongoing disclaimer?” Sounds like she sent more than one e-mail doesn’t it? Methinks she doth protest too much. Much too much!

Click and Clack's favorite everybodies include their callers, each other, their late mother (whom they have referred to on the air as a drunk and a criminal) and the nation's automakers. They once suggested on air that the Ford Festiva should come equipped with a funeral wreath. At breakfast yesterday, Tom Magliozzi characterized automobile executives with the epithet that he used to describe Bush.
Speaking of which, here comes another e-mail disclaimer from Lawhorn, the NPR spokeswoman: "Doug Berman says, 'We've never had a president Tommy liked.' "

OK, that makes it three, maybe four. Are the full texts on Romanesko yet?

Followed, two minutes later, by a phone call from Berman himself, emphasizing that the Magliozzis aren't really politically inclined and that it would be a shame if this story included Tom's unfortunate quote about the president. But in the event that it does, Ray wishes to distance himself from the sentiment.

A phone call? From the producer they’re always calling silly names in the credits? Oh, Berman, what did the suits make you do?

Followed, a few minutes later, by a more formal statement from Ray Magliozzi, issued through Lawhorn.

You too? Ray, Ray, Ray. These are dark days in Narnia, no question about it.

"It is my policy to vehemently disagree with Tommy, no matter what the issue," the statement says.
Now that that's cleared up, we move on to something car-related. Like, what do Click and Clack drive themselves?
"We drive ourselves crazy," Tom says. Among others.

Here we have a reporter trying desperately to get this story back on track, no matter how much the network weasels are mucking it up.

In the future, it would be much better for all concerned to let reporters interview subjects, as my wise late father would advise, with no one else in the room. Unless the subject is someone like Jack Abramoff, who needs to go everywhere with his lawyer.

Yip Yip Hooray! Updated

William Klein — 2005-05-03T21:07:00-04:00

A wonderful column in the Washington Post last week and another in today's New York Times about the great American lyricist E.Y. "Yip" Harburg. From "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?" to "Over the Rainbow" Harburg captured the American spirit as well as Walt Whitman or Mark Twain. The Post Office has just put this blacklisted leftist on a stamp. Don't tell Tom DeLay.

You can read it in the sunday papers

William Klein — 2005-05-01T13:26:14-04:00

A story in Sunday's New York Times underscores the main point about Bush's Social Security plan. He said it himself at his "news conference." Social Security's mission, he said, was to keep people from retiring into poverty.

Oh Yeah? A friend told me about a conversation she had with a rich young thing who scoffed at the Social Security system and said, "Imagine! Who in the world could live on just Social Security?"

My friend said, "My mother." And lots of other mothers and fathers, kids and siblings, disabled and widowed Americans. Bush has it all wrong, as usual. Social Security isn't a poverty program. As this article in the Sunday Post quotes Warren Buffett's investment partner, "it's one of the most successful things the government has ever done." (And Republicans, he said, are "out of their cotton-picking minds" to make radical changes.)

Over at the Washington Post, (and also in the NYT Sunday Magazine) the orgy of revelations about uber-lobbist Jack Abramoff continues. For devotees of the money and politics nexus, Abramoff is truly the gift that keeps on giving. Of course what makes this story truly scrumptious is the heat it continues to turn on Tom DeLay. I continue to say the man smells like burnt toast.

The Pope

William Klein — 2005-04-04T16:12:46-04:00

It seems like only yesterday that the new pope who was called John Paul died and the speculation was the next one would be named George Ringo.

Now, according to Beliefnet's Steven Waldman, the successor to John Paul I I might be black, Hispanic, Jewish or even an American. It reminds me of an old New York magazine competition, in which readers were invited to compose greeting cards for use in very special occasions, like this one for a cardinal who just got the Nod: "Watched your smoke. Now you're Pope. Congrats!"

(Aren't you glad Bush doesn't get to appoint this one?)

Going Out On A Limb

William Klein — 2005-03-31T16:12:53-05:00

OK, I'll speculate about this bulletin that Ted Koppel is leaving "Nightline" and ABC News.

I'll bet he's going to be one of the new anchors of the CBS News. If I'm wrong, I'm just another blogger with blegg on his face. If I'm right, tune in tomorrow.

Wall Street Weak

William Klein — 2005-03-29T11:04:57-05:00

More tremors in the firmament -- Wall Street is cracking down on ethics.

March 29, 2005

The New York Times
On Wall Street, a Rise in Dismissals Over Ethics
By LANDON THOMAS Jr

The opening of this story reads like a spy thriller. The nervous bankers described here could have been hauled in front of the Bulgarian mafia. Instead, it was bank lawyers and regulators. And the difference is?

Two senior investment bankers at Bank of America were summoned to a meeting this month where their boss, visibly uncomfortable and flanked by bank lawyers, read them a statement. They were both dismissed and asked to leave the building immediately. The decision was final.

Stunned, the bankers asked if they had broken any regulations. No, they were told. Nor had they traded on any inside information. Within the hour, they had turned in their BlackBerrys and laptops and were on their way home to the suburbs.

You know that game some people play with fortune cookie messages? Instead of mocking the AP for their dunderheaded decision to goose the truth, I'm trying it their way today.

Kids, this is a fun game you can try at home. Enhance stories like these, where one can easily twist reality just a little and substitute one key element for something more exciting. Today's game is called Widely Sniplash, in which we switch one key villain while retaining the original protraganist. So, for example:

Two senior investment bankers at Bank of America were summoned to a meeting this month where their boss, visibly uncomfortable and flanked by renegade Bulgarian secret police. After hours of torture, they were both dismissed and asked to leave the building immediately. The decision was final.

Stunned, the bankers asked if they had broken any of the mob's unwritten laws or regulations. No, they were told. Nor had they traded on any inside information. Within the hour, they had turned in their BlackBerrys and laptops and were on their way home to the suburbs. There they were ruthlessly murdered.

See how easy?

Headline Update Updated Headlines

William Klein — 2005-03-27T20:57:20-05:00

You Heard It Here First

A must-read op-ed in the Saturday New York Times about "packaged news" makes a point I raised earlier about the pressure on broadcasters large and small to add more programming. If you can't afford to produce your own news, you'll take someone else's.

And Sunday's Washington Post Outlook section includes another writer's take on the scoop first reported by Romanesko that the Associated Press is offering "alternative" leads along with the boring old news. I think the reality of what the AP is doing (second item) is funnier than any of the strained jokes here, but I'm just a hifalutin satirist who prefers Robert Benchley to Dave Barry any day.

Quote of the Year

William Klein — 2005-03-24T19:05:47-05:00

"Union." The other night, I saw Steve Earle in concert and he said that was one of his favorite words. Not so the boys at GM, who according to the New York Times want to gut workers' health care benefits. Ever wondered how those weasels think, if they can be said to really think?

Quoth one:

Mr. Lutz dismissed concerns that volatile gas prices would mean that large S.U.V.'s may not be the savior they have been in the past.

"Everybody thinks high gas prices hurt sport utility sales. In fact they don't," he said, adding that buyers of big S.U.V.'s like the Suburban, GMC Denali and Cadillac Escalade were well-off enough to be insulated from rising gas prices.

"Rich people don't care," he said.

Ghostbloggers

William Klein — 2005-03-19T15:58:36-05:00

More PR Than No-Holds-Barred On Bosses' Corporate Blogs
By Amy Joyce
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 19, 2005; Page A01

Is it really a surprise that the new medium of blogging has spawned its own version of Astroturf?

The soul-baring, anything-goes, free-for-all phenomenon called the Web log has come to this:

"This is the first of many commentaries I will make on this forum," wrote General Motors Vice Chairman Robert A. Lutz in January when he first started his blog, fastlane.gmblogs.com, "and I'd like to begin with, surprise, some product talk -- specifically, Saturn products."

Web logs -- or blogs -- started as a way to talk about new technologies, vent about life and interact in a no-holds-barred forum. Since blogs became the next big thing, an increasing number of companies have come to see them as the next great public relations vehicle -- a way for executives to demonstrate their casual, interactive side.

“What’s a blog?,” people ask me with surprising frequency. A new survey shows that blogging is catching on, although it may be a guy thing.

But, of course, the executives do nothing of the sort. Their attempts at hip, guerrilla-style blogging are often pained -- and painful.

Hey, this writer must have read that AP memo about “alternative leads.” Instead of boring old facts we’ve got words like “hip” and “guerrilla.” And we don’t have to wait for the end of the story to jump to conclusions .

"Looking back before the dust settles on 2004, it was a great year of building momentum for BCA [Boeing Commercial Airplanes]. Our orders went up, with 272 in '04 compared to 239 in '03. It was a super year for widebodies for us," wrote Randolph S. Baseler, Boeing Co.'s vice president of marketing, on Jan. 17 in his first entry at boeing.com/randy.

With blogs like that, who needs news releases? Some Internet watchers wonder if a blog that sounds like nothing more than a corporate press room is worth the effort.

We’ve been through this before. What is a legitimately expressed point of view, and what is propaganda? If a ghostwriter puts words in a writer’s mouth, does anyone hear them?

"Repositing marketing materials on a blog is a waste of time," said Rebecca Blood, author of "The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog." "I would advise them to just stop right now. Those materials already exist. The blog that is powerful is when it is real."

Right on, sister. I like that “stop right now” quote. No ambiguity there.

Ideally, blogs can provide companies with a connection they don't otherwise have with the public, employees and clients. But it may take some time before executives figure out how to best use them.

Ideally is right. Name a company that engenders love through the Internet.
I said love.

"Success in blogging is exactly the same as success in conversation, where if you stay on message, you're being a bore," said David Weinberger, a research fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. "It's very hard to wean yourself. You stay on message then congratulate yourself for staying on message. Then what you do is alienate readers."

I didn’t quite get that, could you run that by me again? If you talk to me about dumplings, and I start conversing about Siberian throat singing, am I getting the message?

Although corporate blogging gives many readers what they want from a company -- an avenue to listen to and talk to decision makers -- it also loses that edgy, voyeuristic feel of personal blogs about bad bosses, annoying roommates and flings. As much as personal bloggers blithely ignore the conventional boundaries of etiquette, corporate bloggers edit themselves to avoid disclosing a company secret or representing an organization in a way not intended by the marketing department.

Raise your hands if what you want from a company is a pipeline to the boss. Early subscribers to AOL remember the regular emails from Steve Case that earnestly promised a different, more responsive company. Ha!

Company in trouble? Chief executive in the middle of some scandal? Don't expect anyone to be emoting about it on a corporate blog. No mention on Lutz's blog, for instance, that GM's stock fell to its lowest level in more than a decade this week. The day Boeing's board announced its chief executive had resigned after an investigation uncovered that he had an affair with a female employee, Baseler wrote about competition from Airbus SAS.

Sun Microsystems President Jonathan Schwartz rants against new executive bloggers who essentially post news releases. "Authenticity is fundamental," he said in an interview. "Blogs get pretty dull if you just blog your products. There has to be something personal."

It's not often that even Schwartz writes about his private life on his blog, at blogs.sun.com/jonathan, but once in a while, readers will get something like this: "And because I don't want it to come out on some tech tabloid tell-all, I would like to inform everyone that reads my blog that I did, in fact, taste kangaroo meat at a luncheon yesterday," he wrote during a trip to Australia in October. "I feel bad saying that, I hope my [nieces] and nephews don't find out about it, but I tasted it."

Wow, what a juicy story. Some CEO I’ve never heard of tasted forbidden flesh. Who needs newspapers, when corporate suits can regale us with stories like that?

Schwartz railed in a November entry titled "Stranger Than Fiction" against the have-someone-else-blog-for-me practice some executives use. "Who would've thought the world would come to this? Funny. My view, it's not a blogger that makes a blog effective. It's authenticity. Everything else is just along for the ride," he wrote, with a link to an eBay auction that ended in December that offered "Blogger for Hire -- Start or Improve Your Blog." It continued, "Hire a Successful Blogger for your Company." There were 30 bids, the winner grabbing the service for $3,350.

The auction probably left die-hard bloggers banging their heads against their ergonomic keyboards. Blogs were invented to vent, to offer a personal look into others' lives. They were not meant to be written by someone else.

Neither were op-eds, speeches and books. But it happens. And as I noted in 2003, Astroturf letters to the editor are now cropping up in newspapers large and small (mostly small).

Schwartz probably knows he will win points with his audience by taking a little more liberty with his blog than other executives.

In August, he criticized competitor Hewlett-Packard Co. when the company missed earnings predictions. "So we all saw that HP had a bad week. My bet? It's only going to get worse -- and it has nothing to do with their SAP implementation," he wrote.

He explained why he thought HP was in trouble. HP's lawyers filed a cease-and-desist order. Sun fired back, and the issue was dropped.

"I rarely have a lawyer look over what I'm posting. It's like, am I going to have a lawyer read my e-mail? A blog is no more dangerous than e-mail or a mobile phone," Schwartz said. But not, he said, in the view of HP, which Schwartz said went out and hired people to write a blog for one of its executives to fight back.

Is it really winning points to dis the competition? I guess that’s being “edgy” and “voyeurstic.”But you can’t have it both ways. Either blogs are the same as private conversation, or they’re public speech. And in the marketplace of ideas, no one can hear you scream “it’s alright, I’m only blogging.”

"That's a ridiculous claim, but not entirely unexpected by Jonathan," said Rich Marcello, a senior vice president, general manager and one of several new bloggers at HP. A poet and songwriter outside of his job, Marcello said he sweats over the entries in his blog, at www.hp.com/blogs/marcello, trying to show readers the inner workings of the company while also writing in a way not typical in his environment. To wit:

"Last week was a good week and it reminded me of something I've believed for a long time -- we are all Michelangelos. Sometimes we don't like to call what we do artistic and we certainly are much too humble to equate ourselves or our work or our teams to Michelangelos, but I believe it's true," Marcello wrote Jan. 19. "I guess that's because I believe anytime we do something that's a work or act of love, what we produce is as much about who we are and what we believe as it is about the actual product we produce.

"Take OpenVMS."

Huh?

Huh? Did you go to journalism school? This story has a bit too much personality for me. Here the reporter is saying, I know you went to sleep during those previous paragraph, but I want you to know I thought it was boring too. That’s my point.

"I think it's going to be a while before we see actually that real honest transparency in public facing corporate Web logs," said Meg Hourihan, co-founder of Blogger, a software that allows people to create and host their own blogs. Google bought the company in 2003. "It would be nice if you could find a way to do it so it's not sanitized. Just sticking press releases on the front of the blog just doesn't cut it."

I’ve proposed a fine solution to this – more product labeling in news coverage.

In "The Web Log Handbook," Blood defines blogs this way: "Weblogs are the mavericks of the online world. Two of their greatest strengths are their ability to filter and disseminate information to a widely dispersed audience, and their position outside the mainstream of mass media. Beholden to no one, web logs point to, comment on, and spread information according to their own, quirky criteria."

Executive blogs: Beholden to no one? Quirky? Not so much. But Schwartz, for one, says he is trying.

In his first blog entry, on June 28, 2004, Schwartz explained his plans: "I promise to listen -- from all the constituencies we serve (customers, stockholders, developers, consumers, suppliers . . . all)," he wrote. "Hello, world."

Three of the new biggest lies:

“My door is always open.”
“I read all my mail.”
“This is a community.”

You Couldn't Make This Up (But The AP Can)

William Klein — 2005-03-16T19:51:43-05:00

Did you feel that? The ground upon which journalism rests has shifted once again. Romanesko reports the AP is now offering a choice of "straight" or "alternative" leads. I kid you not.

End of the World Near (Pictures at 11)

William Klein — 2005-03-14T21:52:46-05:00

All seriousness aside, as Steve Allen used to say, these pictures from the Guardian show some vivid, frightening effects of global warming. Pass these on and keep reading the Guardian and the Observer for coverage of environmental news you won't find in the New York Times.

The News (Business) is Even Worse Than You Think

William Klein — 2005-03-13T13:40:49-05:00

While today's front page NYT story misses the bleeding obvious about the "prepackaged news" brouhaha, it gets a lot of other stuff right. I'm sufficiently impressed by this reporting that instead of my usual sentence by sentence deconstruction of a news story, read this one uninterrupted and I'll see you on the other side.

While you're waiting...

OK, everyone back? Good. As previously noted here, and here, there are a lot of crocodile tears being shed about the news that stations run video news releases from the government, disguised as original reports on local news shows. The Times article does a good job at placing this story in context, but fails to land the knock-out punch.

As the Times says, VNRs are a "well established tool of public relations." That's an understatement. When my brethren in the PR cabal gather to plot new ways to manipulate the public (oh, we don't really, I was just testing you. Really) we often chuckle about how easy it is to get VNRs on the air, or for that matter, press releases printed, virtually unedited.

Let me connect three important dots in the Times story:

The fifth graf begins with a sentence that could not be applied to most business clients:

"Federal agencies are forthright with broadcasters about the origin of the news segments they distribute."

The government should be applauded for this transparency.

Business interests, on the other hand, set up front groups and hire independent producers to make and distribute video news releases, "b-roll" footage (film designed to be shown in the background while an on-air reporter reads the "news") and interviews.

Now, go back a sentence and read the end of graf four:

"At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source."

Finally, skip down towards the end, the next to last sub-head called "Meeting a Need"

A local news director is quoted:

"I don't want to use the word 'filler,' per se, but they meet a need we have."

Local TV stations aren't the only ones with "needs."
Big news networks have them too.
Hey CNN, I'm talking to you. You too Fox and all those NBC's:

Do you ever run footage supplied by business interests? Do story ideas ever begin with a contact from a public relations person? Do you read press releases?

See how complicated this is? The first accusation is pretty serious: stations and networks probably shouldn't let other voices into their news gathering process.
The second charge is a little ambiguous -- where's the line between appropriate publicity and media manipulation?
The third is absurd. Of course people read press releases.

What's the answer? Should all stories contain product labeling?
"This story contains 38% news reporting, 27% news releases, 13% wire service rewriting, 10% recycled information and 12% information gained over lunch, drinks or golf games with sources."

Or how about a new crawl for the news networks screens:

In order to better serve you, we have reduced the amount of original news we produce and increased our use of footage supplied by the subjects of our reporting. This gives us more money for Larry King and shows where people scream at each other.

Flacks Take Flak

William Klein — 2005-03-07T17:50:48-05:00

Oh boy. The bad news for the PR industry just keeps coming. As a second generation PR person and past practitioner of “career arson,” I’m enjoying this with relish.

washingtonpost.com
Local PR Firm Caught in Worldwide Web of Bad Press

By Annys Shin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 7, 2005; Page E01

In early February, Scott Johnson, a partner in a small communications firm called Rock Creek Creative, issued a news release touting the company's role in the Orange Revolution -- the public protests that led to the election of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in December.

“Hey, didn’t we have a minor role in that campaign in the Ukraine? Anything we can milk with a press release?”

My late father developed Ted Klein’s 10 Commandments for successful Media Relations. The 3rd Commandment is “Thou shall make the client available to the media—and then leave.” A PR person in the room with a reporter and a subject is, to borrow an analogy from Princess Diana, like three people in a marriage.

Johnson said he hoped the release would lead to "a nice local technology story" about the Bethesda company in one of the local newspapers, perhaps focusing on how a Web site the company designed had become the "virtual freedom plaza for the democracy movement" in the former Soviet state.

Oooo. Bonus points for lying about the lie you lied. Mr. Johnson, no one sends out a press release hoping only for a “nice local story.” Just like no one in politics doesn’t have a plan to be President. And your web site was a “virtual freedom plaza” for the democracy movement? Nice analogy, guys, but you should have compared yourselves to Tom Paine, Gandhi, maybe Jesus .

The release did catch the attention of news editors.

Here comes a joke –drummer,rim shot please!

Just not in Bethesda.

Badda-bing!

Within hours, a Russian government news agency seized on Rock Creek's release as proof that the United States had meddled in the Ukrainian presidential election.
Hate e-mail trickled into the nine-person firm.

It would have a better line if it had been, “caught the attention of editors –in the Kremlin.” I mean, what’s funny about Bethesda? And how does hate mail “trickle” and why is it important in this sentence to say how many people work for the company? Were some of them offended they didn’t get any hate mail of their own?

Russian newspapers speculated about the firm's prior work for such groups as NATO and the CIA.

Yushchenko was quizzed about the company by the BBC, and Rock Creek's local client -- the nonprofit that had hired the firm to develop the Web site in the first place -- disavowed the company's statements.

“Hey Viktor Yuschenko--you just survived poisoning, electoral fraud and two national campaigns –what about this line item on the 43rd page of your budget about a web designer in Maryland?”
(Silence)
“Can we say that’s a disavowal, then?”

For a PR company, it was a PR disaster.

More deadpan wit from the Washington Post.

"People [in Ukraine] were talking about it immediately. . . . The commentary in the Ukrainian media was 'What the hell are they talking about?' " said Taras Kuzio, a Ukrainian scholar who teaches at George Washington University.

Sometimes information wants to be a little too free, and the Internet superhighway moves too fast. What happens when an obscure striver taps into a voracious media? That’s right, you get the Drudge Report. And also, sometimes, an entire nation saying, “huh?” Or in this case, “vot?”

At a time when public relations firms have been under fire for obscuring their affiliations, the incident with Rock Creek stands as a cautionary tale of saying too much at the wrong time, particularly in an era of instant global communication.

Armstrong Williams . Armstrong Williams. Armstrong Williams.
In the wake of revelations that government agencies hired public relations firms to seek favorable media coverage (are you shocked?) we’re seeing the revival of what the Nixon White House called the “modified limited hang out". Also known as the non-denial denial. Watch for the new trend of apparent transparency as news stories start to include more product labeling:

“The New York Times received eleven news releases, three conference call invitations and was sent links to 48 websites and chat rooms in preparation of this story. I’m Arthur Sulzberger, and I approve this message.”

"The policy is do the work and don't talk about it," said Robert Chlopak, a partner with Washington crisis management firm Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter and Associates. "There is no such thing as a local audience anymore."

Such a fine line between fair play and greedy self-promotion. How does any company know where to tread? Can anyone say “code of ethics?” Oh. Guess not.

The company apparently knew the sensitivities involved when it was hired in 2003 by the Global Fairness Initiative, a Washington nonprofit affiliated with former president Bill Clinton, to develop a Web site and strategy for a February 2004 conference in Kiev called "Ukraine in Europe and the World." The company, which says it has led branding campaigns for such U.S. agencies as the CIA and for NATO and the French aerospace company Thales S.A., was paid $15,000 for its work.

How exactly did they demonstrate such sensitive knowledge? There’s nothing in this paragraph that explains what the company knew and when they knew it. Extra points for the Clinton mention –more Google hits will be coming your way!

In its news release last month, the company said that in taking on the contract, it realized the challenge was to create a site that was not only secure from hackers "but that would also not be seen as a vehicle for any U.S.-driven political message."

"Which," the company added, "it was not."

Another bone-headed PR move – the sardonic press release. I know some might consider this impossibly quaint, but effective public relations is a truth business. It’s not good PR to imply that sometimes the government does twist objectivity but this time it isn’t.

At least not until the company's news release was distributed Feb. 8 over the PR Newswire, a publicly accessible Internet service.

Which, by the way, you pay for. It didn’t just appear on the Interent, the company paid to put it there.

"US supporters of 'Orange Revolution' coming out of shadow," read the headline one day later on ITAR-Tass, the Russian news agency. The Tass story said the company provided "propaganda support" for the 2004 conference and made much of the fact that Rock Creek had done work for the CIA and NATO.

What a difference a headline makes! I’m sure Tass could have run the company’s press release under that pointed headline and still made their point. Nice going, comrades.

Rock Creek once helped develop marketing material for the CIA's venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel, according to Johnson. It also created an 18-language summit agenda for the NATO 2002 Prague Summit Host Committee.
But in the Tass story, the affiliations took on a more sinister light. The article said it had interviewed one of the company's employees, who told them that money was "transferred . . . through several intermediary organizations, so that no one would suspect . . . the improper interference in the political process."

In response to the Tass story, Rock Creek issued a "clarification."

I don’t care what these boys say about all this attention ultimately being good for business, but around the PR club they’ll be forever known as the outfit that had to issue a response to Tass.

"By designing the official Web site and contributing to the communications strategy for the conference, Rock Creek helped raise the profile of Ukraine's issues internationally. . . . It was one of many contributions to an atmosphere of change in Ukraine," the statement said. It went on to note that "Mr. Yushchenko deserves full credit for building a political platform that the majority of Ukrainians supported in the election."

Oh, very nice. Very magnanimous. The two-byte American company that did one tiny little thing for the Ukrainian president thinks he “deserves full credit.” Yuschenko can get on with governing, now that's cleared up.

In a phone interview, Johnson called the Tass story "a complete fabrication."

"My customer is not the U.S. government, nor has my client been paid by the government," he said. Rock Creek "did what we said we did," he said. "I stand by what's in the [Feb. 8] release."

No, Johnson, don’t! Don’t stand there! Take a step back!

But officials with the Global Fairness Initiative, the nonprofit that hired Rock Creek to help with the Kiev conference, took issue with several of the company's claims.

See, here it comes, your former friends are gunning for you now.

Steven Bennett, the group's executive director, said the conference had nothing to do with the election. Instead, it featured former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, Yushchenko and his future opponent for the presidency, former prime minister Viktor Yanukovych, talking about Ukraine's relationship with Western Europe.
He dismissed the notion that the Web site had become a "virtual freedom plaza" as "ridiculous."

This from the man who signed your checks, Johnson. Aren’t you sorry now you trumped your client? Let them worry about press, you stay behind the scenes. Although now, you’ll be way, way behind the action.

"Until the release, there was very slow traffic to the site," Bennett said.

Just before the conference, a Czech firm took over the Web site, and Rock Creek had nothing to do with it thereafter, Bennett said.

It’s so ironic. A company that lost control over a Web site no one sees this as a contribution to the spread of democracy. As Tom Lehrer said when they gave Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize: “Satire is dead.”

"It was the most successful press release ever released, as measured by the amount of interest -- perverse interest," he said.

No, Johnson, you still don’t get it! Were you absent in flack class when they said watch out for superlatives like “best ever” or “unique” as nothing ever is? The press release was a bad idea that’s getting you bad publicity. Stop saying otherwise.

"What that press release did was fan a lot of flames especially in eastern Ukraine and in Russia where people believe the U.S. was involved in the election. . . . From our perspective, this has been a catastrophe."

Not good enough! It sounds like you’re explaining why the environment was so wired. And who cares about your perspective anyway? You’d be better off saying “oops! –our mistake!”

Public relations experts said Rock Creek ran afoul of one of the most basic principles of the trade.
"Rule number one: You shouldn't embarrass your client," said Helio Fred Garcia, a professor of management and communications at New York University who runs a crisis communications firm. "Even when you deserve credit, you should not crow about it without your client's permission."

You shouldn’t even ask your client’s permission. I asked one public relations professional today how many times he’s tried to get publicity for his own firm, not for a client.

“Never.” Right answer.

But the incident also demonstrates another maxim of the public relations business: Any publicity is good publicity. Johnson said that since the controversy, he has been approached by companies that do business in the Ukraine about working for them. He said he turned down the offers because Rock Creek did not want to be seen as profiting from an incident that embarrassed the Yushchenko regime.
For the time being, Johnson said he does not plan on issuing more news releases. "We don't need to market ourselves," he said. "We have plenty of work."

Tee hee. Always leave them laughing, right Scott? This incident is good for business the way Eddie Murphy is good for movies – not!

Or Is it A Death Grip

William Klein — 2005-02-28T17:13:04-05:00

For Bush, a Long Embrace of Social Security Plan
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

I’m not going to take apart this insightful New York Times story with smart-alecky remarks and critique its adherence to journalistic standards. Well, not much.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - The conservative economists and public policy experts who trooped in to brief George W. Bush on Social Security not long after he was re-elected governor of Texas in 1998 came with their own ideas about how to overhaul the retirement program. But they quickly found that Mr. Bush, who was well into preparations for his first presidential race and had invited them to Austin for the discussion, already knew where he was headed.

"He never said, 'What should I do about Social Security?' " said one of the participants in the meeting, Martin Anderson, who had been a domestic policy adviser in the Reagan administration. "On the day we talked about Social Security, he said, 'We have to find a way to allow people to invest a percentage of their payroll tax in the capital markets. What do you think?' "

According to the Doug Wead tapes, in 1998 Bush vowed, “I want to lead.” This story shows how he got ready.

Mr. Bush had long been intrigued by the idea of allowing workers to put part of their Social Security taxes into stocks and bonds. One Tuesday in the summer of 1978, in the heat of his unsuccessful race for a House seat from West Texas, Mr. Bush went to Midland Country Club to give a campaign speech to local real estate agents and discussed the issue in terms not much different from those he uses now.

Social Security "will be bust in 10 years unless there are some changes," he said, according to an account published the next day in The Midland Reporter-Telegram. "The ideal solution would be for Social Security to be made sound and people given the chance to invest the money the way they feel."

Exhibit A in the case against the case against Bush: remember he first ran for office in 1978. As my mentor in politics told me long ago, “no one who runs for office doesn’t want to be President. The ones who lack ambition only want to be Speaker of the House.” He aint as dumb as he looks.

Two decades later, Mr. Bush's desire to change Social Security intersected with the promotion of private accounts by well-financed interest groups and conservative research organizations, which viewed the concept as innovative if ideologically explosive. What was once a fringe proposal has been propelled to the forefront of the national agenda in one of the biggest gambles of Mr. Bush's political career, and in one of the most concerted challenges since the New Deal to liberal assumptions about the relationship of individuals, the government and the market.

They don’t call Social Security the “third rail” of politics for nothing. Some call it a “giveaway” and some say it’s a guarantee. Washington hasn’t forgotten the image of angry seniors surrounding one of Congress’ most powerful members.

Mr. Bush has told aides that he cannot remember precisely when he was introduced to the idea of individual investing as part of Social Security, and until he ran for president he did not have a high profile on the issue. But he comes from a family with deep roots on Wall Street; his great-grandfather founded an investment bank, and his grandfather later ran Brown Brothers Harriman, one of the most prominent firms in the world of finance. His early political education included exposure to the ideas of Senator Barry Goldwater, the conservative standard-bearer who in 1964 was among the first Republicans to make a national issue of private investing as an alternative to traditional Social Security, and Ronald Reagan, who also took up the idea.

Hey, “aides,” can I make a suggestion? If you’re going to give a New York Times reporter a crumb of behind the scenes color, try not to use the words “Bush” and “cannot remember” in the same sentence,know what I mean guys?

In Texas, before and during his years as governor, aides say, Mr. Bush learned about counties that had opted out of Social Security under an old federal provision and instead offered their employees investment accounts. As governor, his involvement in issues relating to Latin America piqued his interest in Chile's retirement system, which gave workers the chance to invest and became a prototype for other nations.

As he prepared to run for president, Mr. Bush sought the opinions of people who shared his belief in private accounts, including Edward H. Crane, the president of the Cato Institute, a libertarian research organization; José Piñera, the architect of the Chilean system; and even a Swedish official who helped revamp his nation's retirement program.

"My sense was that he was predisposed to go in that direction," said Mr. Crane, who along with Mr. Piñera discussed the issue over dinner with Mr. Bush and his wife at the governor's mansion in September 1997. "I was surprised by how knowledgeable he was in terms of the questions he asked."
It’s not stupidity, it’s mendacity. Having lost none of his earlier ambition, George W. Bush spent the years between 1978 and 1994 preparing to step back into politics and then from 1994-2000 running for President.

During the 2000 campaign, I heard an NPR report that gave me a klong of awareness why Bush was popular. A reporter interviewed a woman at a Bush rally and asked her if it bothered her that people said Bush wasn't too sharp.

"Oh no, not at all," she said. "You know, smart people don't have all the answers."

Put a fork in us, we're done.

Other visitors to Austin also said they found Mr. Bush serious about the idea, and as the 2000 presidential election approached, increasingly convinced that the issue could be a political winner. In June 1999, Mr. Bush stood on a stage in Amana, Iowa, to announce that he was running for president. At the beginning of the speech, he set out three main goals: cutting taxes, reducing lawsuits and giving Americans "the option of investing part of their Social Security contributions in private accounts."

In addressing Social Security, he waded into an issue that had been the subject of political wars since the system was founded in 1935.

I bet he had Playboy too, but he didn’t end up in the porn business. Oh, I forgot --- he sort of did.

In setting out one of the primary themes of "Conscience of a Conservative," that of individual responsibility in society, Mr. Goldwater pointed to Social Security as an example of where conservatives believed people should be "free throughout their lives to spend their earnings when and as they see fit."

Mr. Reagan clearly grabbed Mr. Bush's attention in 1978, when he backed Mr. Bush's opponent in the Republican primary for the House seat. Mr. Bush won the primary, but he remained under pressure in the general election to prove his conservative values. He ran on a platform of less regulation, lower taxes and other positions similar to those held by Mr. Goldwater and Mr. Reagan, including advocating private investment within Social Security.

Sweet. What an elegant put-down in that “Reagan clearly grabbed Bush’s attention” phrase. When the hero of American conservatives rejects you, it darn well should grab your attention. You don’t even see the knife until it’s firmly between your ribs.

Looking back at the 1978 race, Mr. Bush's aides played down any influence that Mr. Reagan might have had on his thinking about Social Security. Mr. Bush's position, they said, was partly derived from the increasingly urgent problems the system faced- it ran short of money and was nearly unable to pay benefits a few years later - and from a deep belief in private ownership and the wealth-building power of markets.

"It was never a new idea," said Allan B. Hubbard, who attended Harvard Business School with Mr. Bush in the mid-1970's and is now director of the National Economic Council at the White House. "It was always there, like tax cuts."

Cue foreboding music. Does the image of the grim reaper come to mind? What else is “always there” when the right wing is in town?

After Mr. Bush's defeat in the general election in 1978, another 16 years would pass before he ran for office again. During that period, the idea of private investing as part of Social Security all but disappeared from the national stage.

But the concept was becoming entrenched in the conservative agenda. Around the time of Mr. Bush's House race, Peter Ferrara, a student at Harvard Law School, was writing a 600-page paper that examined the general hypothesis advanced by Mr. Reagan and Mr. Goldwater: that in terms of return on investment, Social Security was a lousy deal compared with the stock market.

The paper came to the attention of Mr. Crane, who was then setting up the Cato Institute to promote limited government. Mr. Crane encouraged Mr. Ferrara to turn the paper into a book, which became the intellectual basis of Cato's long push, eventually joined by many other conservative and business groups, to inject private investing into Social Security.

"I wrote about it through the 1980's for every conservative think tank," Mr. Ferrara said. "The idea was to spread ownership of the idea and make it a movement proposal."

Noted with interest: changing society by creating a “movement proposal.” The last movement to emerge from the Democratic coalition was the civil rights movement. Republicans have been better at uniting behind big ideas. Impressive.

But it was not until the mid-1990's that various forces pushed the idea back onto the public stage.
When President Bill Clinton proclaimed in 1998 that it was time to "save" Social Security from the financial pressures of an aging population, he explicitly endorsed using the returns available in the financial markets to help, either by having the government invest some of Social Security's money or allowing individuals to do it.

"If there's any way we can get a higher rate of return in a market economy, while minimizing the risk, whether it's in either one of these approaches, we ought to go for it," Mr. Clinton said on July 27, 1998.

That same day, Mr. Bush met in Austin with a group of advisers that included George P. Schultz, a former secretary of state and treasury secretary; Michael Boskin, who had been head of the Council of Economic Advisers in the administration of Mr. Bush's father; and Mr. Anderson, the Reagan adviser.

That meeting grew from a less formal session Mr. Bush attended a few months earlier in Mr. Schultz's living room in Palo Alto, Calif. The gatherings covered most of the big domestic and foreign policy issues, including Social Security, and led to the establishment of an advisory system to help Mr. Bush delve more deeply into issues as he prepared for his presidential run. Over the next few years, he participated in discussions about the budgetary implications of moving to private accounts and in debates on detailed proposals.

Did you know about this? These two grafs jumped out and grabbed my attention. Don’t you love the image of George “Bechtel” Schultz putting together a mini-Bilderberg for Bush? I wonder whose living rooms John Edwards and Bill Frist are visiting...

And now for something completely different

William Klein — 2005-02-23T15:12:14-05:00

I made a special trip to New York to see Christo's Gates, and I'm glad I did. Now, I know there are a lot of art snobs who think it was too popular, too easy, or not "real" art, but as my friend Inspector Collector says, what are they doing to bring art on such a scale to the people? I've been wondering what the next step in American "people power" was, maybe this is it. As good ol' Bertie Brecht said, "art is not a mirror to hold up to the world, but a hammer with which to shape it."

Pahhk the Caah in Hahvahd Yahd

William Klein — 2005-02-22T22:28:19-05:00

washingtonpost.com
Harvard Chief Again to Face Angry Faculty Over Remarks
By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 22, 2005; Page A01

Lock up your daughters, it’s an angry faculty!

This third wave of stories about Harvard President Lawrence Summers, what he said, what he meant, and how much crow he intends to eat, is great for the national media. It’s the high-brow equivalent of the O.J. Simpson story. Glamorous elites, self-destructing. Boolah Boolah! (Oh, sorry.)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 21 -- In a rare second faculty meeting in a week, set for Tuesday afternoon, critics of Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers are expected to excoriate him again for his leadership style and recent remarks about women in science and engineering.

Ouch. Excoriating’s too good for ‘em. I say. Bring on –the comfy Chair.

But the leader of the nation's oldest academic institution also retains a strong base of support among university officials and increasingly vocal groups of students, professors and former Washington colleagues whose counsel he has sought.

Not only, but also, or is that? In two short paragraphs the stage is set for this stroll through the ivy. Until the writing’s clearly on the wall the newspapers won’t take too strong a stand. Expect a lot of “could be trouble, unless it isn’t.”

Conspicuous by their relative public silence during a month-long onslaught of criticism from within the university and beyond, many backers of the former Treasury secretary agree he made a major blunder at a Jan. 14 meeting of the National Bureau of Economic Research by referring to differences of "intrinsic aptitude" for science between men and women.

Oh stop the presses. An influential person makes a gaffe. Headlines are written, rewritten and recycled. Where have you gone, A. J. Leibling?

But they also point out that he has taken tangible steps -- such as creating two task forces on women in academia, meeting with students and faculty members, and apologizing at every opportunity -- that demonstrate his commitment to change.

Remember the hoo-hah over whether Bill Clinton would apologize about Monica Lewinsky? Whether Colin Powell and Tony Blair would apologize over false claims of WMD in Iraq? Not to mention (please!) Martha Stewart. You’re nobody until somebody apologizes.

"I think we should acknowledge that he made a mistake, learn from it and move forward," said economics professor David Laibson, who along with a colleague has gathered more than 180 faculty members' signatures on a letter that praises Summers's "lifetime of public service" and "remarkable energy" and says he "will continue to make positive and significant contributions" to Harvard.

And further, I think he should crawl through Harvard Yard pausing every other step to genuflect and read the Book of Lamentations.

Others believe that Summers's bluntness has been just what the university needs, and some support his right to say what he thinks -- even undiplomatically -- in the tradition of allowing wide-ranging freedom of expression on campus. Faculty in Harvard's many professional schools have expressed more support for Summers than colleagues in the arts and sciences.

Yes, you must dare to be equivocal.

On the same day last week that he bowed to pressure to publish a full transcript of his January remarks, Summers received the full, written backing of the Harvard Corp., the university governors at whose pleasure he serves.

In the somewhat rambling January address, Summers repeatedly said that he was trying to "provoke" his audience and that although he had read the academic literature seeking to explain why women are underrepresented in certain disciplines, he was not an expert in the field.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time with academics, and wonder of wonders, they tend to spend a lot of time on what others might call intellectual abstraction. They think, talk, write, think some more, drink and think, think about what they once thought, drink some more, or even Speaker of the House of Representatives.

He attributed the fact that men more often excel on science and engineering tests -- though median scores are comparable -- to "innate aptitude" and the fact that women are more likely to choose family over 80-hour workweeks.

Societal factors such as discrimination and discouragement that women receive in school seem to play a lesser role, he said, adding that he hoped to be proved wrong.

It’s pretty clear to me that this was an academic discussion which was perhaps impolitic at times but never mean-spirited. There was a time when presidents of Harvard had exotic names and evoked mystery, distance and authority. None would mock Derek Bok! Nathan Pusey aint no… scardey-cat. Now Harvard has a president named Larry. A big man who makes a big target.

The remark sparked outrage among several women in attendance and catalyzed a more comprehensive debate about his leadership style and vision for the university's future.

How many is several, anyway? Enough to get in the A section of the Washington Post, I guess. And how exactly do you “catalyze” a debate? Must be one of those colorful words editors put in to keep readers awake.

Only one professor defended Summers at a contentious 90-minute faculty meeting Feb. 15, after which a second meeting was added. Several of Summers's prominent defenders said they will, including psychology professor Stephen Pinker and members of the economics department. Students supportive of the president have formed a Web site, www.studentsforlarry.org, while those opposed plan to protest outside Tuesday's faculty meeting.

There’s that amount of several again. Are the several defenders the same number as the several women? Are they in fact the same people? Now I suspect a conspiracy.

A weekend survey of professors by the Harvard Crimson found the faculty deeply divided, with a slim majority of respondents expressing disapproval of Summers's leadership and a greater percentage indicating he should not resign. About 40 percent of the faculty responded to the e-mailed poll.

I hate to spoil a good statistic, but it’s kinda important to know who that 40% were, how “slim” that majority was, etc. Newspapers in the future will come with the ability to filter out nonsense, b.s. and hype, but for now, we must bear this lonely burden ourselves.

Initially Summers's support came from unlikely bedfellows: conservative pundits, such as writer Andrew Sullivan and radio host Rush Limbaugh, who accused the Harvard community of stifling free speech.

"Now, a more sensible middle ground is emerging that acknowledges -- as Larry has -- that his comments were off the mark and potentially harmful, but that also recognizes that he is a very open-minded leader with a lifetime of walking the walk for greater economic and social opportunity," said Gene Sperling, the chairman of President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. Sperling and Summers are close friends. Sperling noted a 1994 paper in which Summers, then chief economist at the World Bank, argued that "investment in girls' education may well be the highest return investment available in the developing world."

“Walking the walk,” does he? Gene, you’re a swell guy, but save the clichés for Knight-Ridder. This is the Washington Post -- what would Mary McGrory say?

In Washington, Summers earned a reputation as an analytically gifted policymaker who sometimes struggled with the art of diplomacy. On one occasion, he attached his name to a World Bank memo that seemed to endorse the idea of developed countries exporting pollution to the developing world.

Where did that one come from? “Might as well use something from the files,” the journalist says as he checks the number of hits his last story got on the Web. “This one’s at least got a little sizzle.”

"We used to call it 'throwing darts,' " said Stuart E. Eizenstat, who served as the former Treasury secretary's deputy. "He would walk into a room, armed with ideas that challenged people to think more rigorously about their fundamental assumptions."

Throwing darts –how exciting! I once new a consultant who complained "I come in here once a month, throw out a bunch of ideas, and I never know which ones they're going to like. Sometimes they pick my worst idea, and then I'm stuck. Until next time, when I distract them with something new."

In choosing a new president after the retirement of Neil Rudenstine, known mainly for his fundraising prowess, the Harvard Corp. selected Summers at least in part to reinvigorate the office.

"His temperament was a source of concern, but they wanted to restore some prestige and vibrancy to the presidency," said Richard Bradley, author of a recently published book critical of Summers's tenure.

No, my bet is that a Harvard president can have all of it – prowess in fundraising, prestige, vibrancy, the whole shebang. But no one, not Increase Mather Cornelius Conway Felton or Charles William Eliot, could run a place like Harvard without running his mouth, or even putting the occasional foot in it.

A Real Killjoy--Updated

William Klein — 2005-02-15T15:26:42-05:00

Long time readers of the Washington Post still miss Captain Airwaves, who made the TV Column the most entertaining corner of the newspaper's real estate. His successor hasn't yet made that kind of mark, but she sure nailed the network suits with their own words. They should be ashamed of themselves, but of course, they have no shame.

Talk about your PR challenges...

New York Times
February 15, 2005

NBC Reality Show Contestant Kills Himself
By BILL CARTER

A contestant in "The Contender" a new NBC reality series about boxing scheduled to start next month, committed suicide yesterday in Philadelphia, network executives said last night.

NBC executives said that the show would go on as planned, starting March 7.

Wow, what a downer. Can you imagine what the scene was like at NBC yesterday? Did anyone dare to suggest the network take some time to consider the propriety of the show going on?

The contestant, Najai Turpin, 23, a middleweight boxer from Philadelphia who was known as Nitro, took his life, NBC executives said.

They offered no other details about the suicide, though they said they thought it had nothing to do with events on the television show.

Right. It had nothing to do with the guy's life being changed, his friends and family filmed or the complete surrender of his privacy. We think.

"The Contender" chronicles not only the boxers' efforts to win the television tournament, which carries a prize of $1 million, but follows their personal lives, including their relationships with spouses and children. Mr. Turpin's girlfriend also appears in the series, NBC said.

Mr. Turpin, who entered the series as a well-regarded young fighter with a 13-1 record, had a 2-year-old daughter with his girlfriend.

If this sad slice of reality were fiction, this would be called foreshadowing; In the next day or so, expect to hear more about the girlfriend.

Except for a planned live championship, set to take place in May, all the bouts in the "The Contender" have been completed and are on tape. Because the show, like all other reality shows, depends on the suspense of not knowing the outcome of each week's episode, no results of the bouts have been released.

NBC executives said they were saddened by the news and were setting up a fund to help Mr. Turpin's family. But they said they were convinced the network would be able to broadcast the show as planned.

What a relief--the network will "be able" to air this now beyond tasteless exercise. Nothing like "scruples," "ethics" or "judgement" will stop NBC!

Mark Burnett, the show's executive producer, said: "Nothing changes. I'm not even going to make any edits because it's real." Mr. Burnett said that at some point, the series will make a mention of Mr. Turpin's death, probably in an onscreen message at the end of an episode.

It's a question of artistic integrity, right Mr. Burnett? You have a creative vision, and a master plan. Oh good for you.

Still, the suicide presents NBC and the show's producers with the quandary of how to deal with Mr. Turpin's death without disrupting the show. Each week two boxers are selected to fight and become the central characters in that week's episode. Mr. Turpin would thus be a principal character in at least one show and if he won his first fight and continued on the series, he would be an even more significant factor.

Here's how they'll solve this "quandary" wait and see. A network star, maybe The Donald himself, will tape a special announcement expressing regret, and also resolve do to what Mr. Turpin "would have wanted." Everybody wants to be famous, even if they're dead.

NBC has more invested in "The Contender" than any previous reality series, having made a commitment to spend more than $2 million an episode for the 13-episode series. "The Contender" is produced by Mr. Burnett, the most accomplished producer in the reality genre. A principal in the DreamWorks studio, Jeffrey Katzenberg, is also a producer on the series.

The two men conceived the series as a way to help resurrect the sport of boxing. They have made deals with all 16 boxers involved to promote their careers. The fighters agreed not to pursue any other matches until the series was completed this spring, and the show is paying them $1,500 a week to stay in training in the interim, Mr. Burnett said.

Mr. Turpin's suicide recalled an incident that almost derailed "Survivor," Mr. Burnett's first hit reality show and the one that ignited the reality trend in American television. A contestant in the first version of the show, which was made for Swedish television and was not produced by Mr. Burnett, committed suicide after he was the first person voted off the island.The incident stirred concerns about the risks of reality television, and led Mr. Burnett to conduct extensive psychological tests on his contestants.

What I find interesting is that in all this time no one else has snuffed it after being through one of these ordeals. It's typical of network "weasels" to think they can handle any bad news within minutes. In this case, it would have been smarter to let the shock wear off before deciding to give into greed. This story is going to get bigger before it gets better for NBC. The peacock is going to lose some feathers.

Politics Ain't Beanbag

William Klein — 2005-02-14T12:47:10-05:00

It used to be fair to say that "you'll never get rich" in politics. But today campaign consultants can earn bond-trader size bonuses on what's called the "buy." Caveat elector -- let the voter beware.

From the Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio - The battle for Ohio in last year's presidential campaign came with a huge price tag: $100 million for television advertising alone, according to a new study.

Ohio residents saw "a level of campaign activity unprecedented in modern times," according to the study released last week by five political science professors from the universities of Cincinnati and Akron.

Thank goodness for the AP. They sue for information, pursue investigations and dare to quote five political science professors from Ohio.

"Everyone had the sense that this was the most intense campaign ever and, by gosh, it was," said one of the authors, John Green, of the University of Akron.

Golly gee, see what I mean? If you want homespun news, stick with the A.P.

The election turned on Ohio's 20 Electoral College votes. Not until preliminary results were available early on Nov. 3 did Democratic challenger John Kerry concede.

Yes, we remember. Tim Russert and his silly little whiteboard, the exit polls that proved to be wrong, which led to the eight hours of the Kerry administration, when Terry McAuliffe thought "I was Secretary of Commerce, I was Ambassador to England."

Kerry and his Democratic allies spent $61 million on television ads compared with $39 million by President Bush and Republican groups. Together, the two campaigns spent as much on television ads as Bush spent nationwide to win the 2000 Republican nomination, the study said.

$100 million in Ohio, $4 billion nationwide, pretty soon election spending adds up to real money.

Memo to Headline Writers: Try not to get your knickers in a twist over gay marriage

William Klein — 2005-02-07T22:30:34-05:00

NY Mayor Bloomberg in a Bind Over Gay Marriage

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, OK? I’m sure no one, no one at all, thought twice about the use of the word “bind” in a headline about gay sex. NTTAWWT!

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg faced pressure from both sides over gay marriage on Monday after saying the city would appeal a court ruling overturning a ban on gay unions even though he supports them.

Gay unions? Is that a new pressure group within the AFL-CIO? Here we have a classic “conflict first” lede graf. In the old days, journalists were told to start with the “five W’s”—now it’s if it bleeds it ledes. And if there isn’t any actual blood,action-oriented words like “pressure” and “bind” are worth mentioning up front. Let’ s see how many paragraphs in the story below include this kind of colorful language, or as the 2000 year old man used to say, “my peppy words.”

Bloomberg was called a coward by a state senator who advocates gay rights while a Catholic opponent of gay marriage accused the Democrat-turned-Republican mayor of a lack of principles.

“Called a coward,” that’s a good one. And how about the way “Democat-turned-Republican buttresses the “lack of principles” accusation. State of the art example of piling spin upon hype, with a cherry on top.

"I think people have the right to love, to live with and to marry whoever they want, regardless of their sexual orientation," Bloomberg told guests at a benefit dinner on Saturday.

If he said it at a dinner on Saturday, does that make it not part of his administration’s policy on Monday? If this were a story about Donald Rumsfeld’s opinion about female mud-wrestling among the troops, don’t you think they would have put his words in a more official context?

State court Judge Doris Ling-Cohan ruled on Friday that the rights of five same-sex couples were violated when they were denied new York City marriage licenses last year because the state's constitution guarantees equal rights to everybody.

Bloomberg said he would appeal because he did not want a repeat of what happened in San Francisco last year when the mayor issued thousands of marriage licenses to same-sex couples only to have a state court nullify them a few months later.

We can all save ourselves a lot of trouble reading this story and future coverage by imagining this scene: Bloomberg awakes to read of the State court ruling. He calls for his lawyers:

“Get me Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel. Hello boys, what do you think I should do?”

Lawyers: Mayor, this is a hot potato you don’t need.It will only cause you tsouris. Don’t be a schlemiel, file an appeal!

Gay marriage was an election year issue after Massachusetts legalized it last year, and Friday's ruling raised the prospect that New York could be next.

Of course, Bloomberg probably couldn’t care less, but he has to let the Neanderthals in the Party he chose win this argument. Did anyone notice the “oops, sorry, guess I was wrong” admission from the leader of the opposition to Bloomberg’s ban on smoking in New York city bars? The Mayor was right, the bars aren't hurting, and New York is marginally healthier. Chalk one up for the political system, I'd say.

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said the mayor was "trying to have it both ways and pleasing no-one."

Some people go this way, and some people go that way, but according to the Catholics, you can’t go both ways, not even in New York.

"That's not a principled response whether you're for or against same-sex marriage," Donohue said, adding that there were many Christians in New York opposed to same-sex marriage.

So it’s a civil rights issue? Christians for closed minds?

But state senator and gay rights supporter Tom Duane also slammed Bloomberg. "Mayor Bloomberg is a coward," he said. "He should not file those papers to appeal. He should stand with us during this, the most important civil rights battle."

Finally, that coward quote is attributed. Now everyone’s happy, the politician who came up with a fiery quote, the reporter who was grateful for the ammunition, even Bloomberg who gets to look conservative to moderates, moderate to conservatives, and radical to gays, (to whom he can say on the sly, “you’re right to hold my feet to the fire.”)

ELECTION LOOMING

The ruling is a major test for Bloomberg as he seeks a second term at the end of this year.

"To forgo an appeal would have been to pave the way for a wave of gay marriages in New York City, which would certainly hurt Mr. Bloomberg ... in a likely primary against two conservative challengers," the New York Times said.

If a primary opponent of Michael Bloomberg’s gets more than 15 percent of the vote, I’ll eat his poll. More artificial hype to a story that should have been three sentences long.

Maurice Carroll, director of Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said Bloomberg's ratings were unlikely to suffer seriously because he could argue his response was practical.

"Even people who favor gay marriage, people in the gay community, will see the practical thing is to get ourselves a decision," Carroll said. The institute's most recent poll in New York state put support for same-sex civil unions at 52 percent but support for gay marriage much lower at 37 percent.

Get “ourselves” a decision? Odd…is Mr. Carroll making policy decisions now? Åre there people in the gay community who see other decisions and aspects of this debate?

Republican New York Gov. George Pataki differed from Bloomberg, saying the judge's decision was wrong.

"New York's marriage laws are clear that marriage is between a man and a woman and any changes to our laws should be made through the legislative process, not by a judge or local officials," said Kevin Quinn, spokesman for Pataki.

At least Pataki is comfortable in the Republican party, enough to have delusions of national office. (If ever there was a man with the soul of a Vice President…)

Judge Ling-Cohan stayed Friday's ruling for 30 days and the city's decision to appeal will put off any prospect of the city performing gay marriages until the legal process is exhausted.

Exhausted! Me too.

With the backing of President Bush, opponents of gay marriage are seeking a national constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Oh very good. This story looked like it was going to fizzle out into another “he said, he and he said” standoff but now you’ve gone and put Bush and the national amendment in. In just a few words, this story became another red state/blue state, politics of fear/moral values thesis. Where did this last sentence come from? Can’t anybody here edit this game?

And now, back to me

William Klein — 2005-01-30T18:02:14-05:00

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, 2005

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)

G ood 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 calle d?

Bob Forehead Lives!

William Klein — 2005-01-25T10:21:48-05:00

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.

Armstrong Strong Arms

William Klein — 2005-01-23T21:44:32-05:00

washingtonpost.com
Firms Fear Backlash From Williams Case
Public Relations Industry Takes Offensive To Protect Lucrative Federal Contracts

By Christopher Lee and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 18, 2005; Page A15

PR firms have nothing to fear but fear itself. Or so they hope. The Armstrong Williams “case” is more than a potential headache for the public relations industry. It’s a can of worms that won’t go away. Although it’s quite possible that everything you know is wrong.

Public relations firms that are paid millions of dollars a year by the federal government to promote programs and policies are worried the money might dry up because of the Armstrong Williams flap at the Department of Education.

Worried? Panic is a better word for what’s surging through the PR industry. Government contracts are the anchor of a notoriously fickle business. PR and ad agencies get fired almost as often as radio hosts and athletic coaches – but government contracts are a shelter in the storm.

A deluge of government business in recent years has helped make Washington a growing market for public relations firms. To protect that market, PR executives are voicing their objections to that kind of deal, in which the commentator was paid to tout Bush administration education policy in television and radio appearances.

“In recent years,” in past years and in future years, as noted above. How many PR agencies does it take to fill out a RFP? Every last one of them.

Judith T. Phair, chief executive of the Public Relations Society of America, said in a statement that her organization "strongly objects to any paid endorsement that is presented as objective news coverage and is not fully disclosed. Such practices are clearly contrary to the PRSA Member Code of Ethics."

There’s many a slip ‘twixt the jaw and the law. What constitutes a “paid endorsement” to most people might be Standard Operating Procedure to a PR person. Prepare yourself to be shocked: news outlets frequently pursue stories that began with a news release paid for by a professional interest. Sometimes, even, footage from a “video news release” is aired under the guise of home-grown coverage. Or a soundbite you hear on the radio from a politician might have been “placed” with a news service.

I wonder if Judith is related to Liz?

Louis Capozzi, chief executive of Manning Selvage & Lee, said federal contracts "are an important part of our firm's business and an important part of most large public relations firm's businesses. There are a lot of multimillion-dollar contracts out there."

A "lot" of contracts? There is a lot of blue in the sky and also a big yellow ball. Here we see a classic example of formula journalism – get an “expert” to restate what the reporter is writing, to lend credibility and authenticity. I’m not saying this is wrong, but maybe a little lazy.

PR shops have federal contracts to promote some of the government's most familiar programs. Manning Selvage & Lee, a New York-based unit of Publicis Group, for instance, is paid for a nationwide program that encourages preteens to become physically active and to help recruit soldiers for the U.S. Army and Army Reserve.

I’m assuming this graf was included to acknowledge that MS&L has a vested interest in this story. Government contracts are like, um, opinions. Everyone has them.

PR executives do not want to see those government dollars disappear. And they should not, they argue, because two industry ethics codes forbid paying journalists to advocate a point of view on news programs. They say such infractions are rare.

Ethics codes? We don’t need no stinking ethics codes. While it’s true that every PR agency would discourage a client from trying to get a commercial endorsement from, say, Peter Jennings, that is not what the Armstrong Williams case is about. Paying a news reporter to take a position is wrong. Buying ad time on a pundit's show and then expecting a little bit more for your investment is considered a gray area.

That is the sort of deal that the Education Department, through a contract with Ketchum Inc., had with Williams, a conservative black commentator who is a frequent guest on CNN and has his own syndicated radio show.

Right – he’s a commentator. By definition, he has strongly held views. But this doesn’t let him off the hook.

Williams was paid $240,000 to promote President Bush's No Child Left Behind law and did not disclose the contract when talking about the law during cable television appearances or writing about it in his newspaper column. He has acknowledged "bad judgment" but has declined to return the money.

Pardon my “bad judgment” Mrs. Lincoln, said Booth. Pardon mine too, said Martha. And me to-Oh, thanks, Gerry.

"The idea of paying a journalist to make a statement for a client is misleading at best, if not downright deceptive," said Stanley Collender, general manager of Financial Dynamics in the District. "I wouldn't do it."

Somebody google this guy. He’s had a bunch of different jobs in and out of government and is almost as quotable as the King. Notice his expert application of the “Hail Me” pass in which the source’s lofty and quotable pronouncement just happens to cover themselves in glory. “I wouldn’t do it” he says. But insert the word “for” between “paying” and “ a journalist” and see if he denies that one. If a news release, press conference or three martini lunch brings about a story, is that deception?

"Our business is much more ethical than that," Capozzi said. "I'd hate to see our profession tarred by this brush."

Good quote – “our” “ethical” business shouldn’t be “tarred.” On one side, the warm, friendly PR profession, on the other, vicious liars.

Already, however, the industry is caught in the sort of political firestorm that one of its member firms might typically help a client in crisis deal with.

Cute. That was just a moment of levity, I guess. Or irony.

The Williams controversy was magnified by earlier revelations that the Education Department had paid Ketchum to rate journalists on how positively or negatively they reported on No Child Left Behind and to produce a video news release on the law that was used by some TV stations as if it were real news.

OK, now we’re rolling. Here is the part I’d underline on the blackboard.

It’s almost impossible to measure the effect of public relations. You can “count clips,” conduct endless focus groups or rate coverage by journalist or media outlet, but none of that can truly measure shifts in attitudes, habits or consciousness. The big picture is still dependent on intuition, instinct and luck.

As for video news releases (VNRs) consider this. Unless you live in New York or Los Angeles, the odds are that when a Hollywood star appears on the local news in an “interview” with the station’s reviewer, odds are the footage was paid for by a studio. Politicians, corporations and charities do the same thing. Are you shocked?

Other government agencies, including the Census Bureau, the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Department of Health and Human Services, have distributed such prepackaged videos, a practice that congressional auditors have described as illegal propaganda in some cases.

Here’s one of the personal experiences I’ve had with this issue. You tell me if it was unethical, I can take it.

My father was a PR consultant who was hired to pave the way for the introduction of the first smoking cessation method using nicotine replacement –Nicorette, the nicotine gum. Big tobacco got scared when we started publishing a smoking cessation newsletter for health professionals, among other actions.

A drug company’s money helped fund a global conference on nicotine replacement therapy, which at the time was unknown here. Government researchers and health policy makers attended. No product name was mentioned, just science. VNRs were prepared that promoted the idea of working with a doctor to help quit smoking. Stations ran them as news. Newspapers ran press releases as articles, with only a few words changed.

Were we guilty of “illegal propaganda?” If so, take a good luck at your newspaper today. You can find the touch of pros like me in just about every story. Ask yourself, who is benefiting from this article? Who is quoted, who supplied the architecture of this narrative. Here’s a reform for papers trying to sell their internet editions: promise full disclosure to your readers by posting the press releases that informed a story alongside the text.

The news about the Williams deal, coming on top of the other incidents, triggered a slew of accusations and investigations last week. Michael K. Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, ordered an investigation Friday into whether Williams broke laws against payola by not disclosing the contract in his broadcast appearances.

Powell waited too long before he took action. First rule of scandal – get the truth out, get it out early, and get it out yourself. The reference to payola could be a mark of the standard this affront will be asked to meet – the famous pay for play radio scandals of the 1950s.

Two Senate Democrats, Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota and Ron Wyden of Oregon, asked the Government Accountability Office Friday to determine whether the Williams contract violated a ban on the use of government money for propaganda, and whether other agencies had struck similar deals with journalists, commentators or talk-show hosts.

Does anyone remember back when the Government Accountability Office was called the General Accounting Office? I’m sure someone did a focus group, someone else crunched some numbers, and with much fanfare the proposition was put forth that Americans like “accountability” more than they liked accountants.

Their request followed one Tuesday by seven House Democrats, who asked Comptroller General David M. Walker to examine all federal departments' contracts with PR firms and media organizations, including an assessment of whether they violate the propaganda ban.

"The federal use of covert propaganda is unethical, damaging to our democracy and open society, and, as you know, illegal," wrote the lawmakers, led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). ". . . [I]t would be abhorrent to our system of government if these incidents were part of a pattern of covert propaganda funded with taxpayer dollars."

I happen to like the word, “propaganda.” I define it as targeted communication to influence behavior. The target could be negative (hate your neighbor) or positive (love your neighbor, or at least vote for him). Covert propaganda is another word for advertising.

A Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday asked Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige to turn over records concerning the payments to Williams. The panel also asked for information about any similar arrangements between 2002 and 2004. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has said that he plans to introduce legislation requiring federal agencies to report their advertising spending to Congress and to disclose their role in producing ads.

Democrats in Congress can do little more these days than hold hearings, demand investigations and stir up sound and fury destined to signify not very much under Republican rule.

Senator Harkin is one of my favorite Democrats, but if he thinks ad agencies can’t hide waste, fraud and abuse in a simple budget he perhaps thinks McDonald’s is popular because of its food.

Paige defended the contract as a standard "outreach effort" to minority groups, maintaining that the money "went exclusively" to the production of advertisements. He said the department's inspector general would investigate the matter.

That’s what it said on the budget – “outreach.” Readers are invited to submit their favorite budget euphemisms for questionable expenditures. “Travel” and “Administrative” are too obvious to be accepted by the judges.

Despite the recent flaps over Williams and prepackaged videos, other federal contracts with PR firms are more typical, agency officials and industry executives said.

PR firms have been paid to push the introduction of the "golden dollar," to urge teenagers not to use illicit drugs, and make the public feel comfortable with the country's new, colored currency.

The “golden dollar?” Did I miss something? Are we talking William Jennings Bryan here? Or is this just another iteration of the earlier theme that PR is OK. Never mind a few bad apples, or strong-arming techniques, you can trust the people who are lying to you.

Government agencies have also turned to the PR industry to help manage crises, such as when the U.S. Postal Service hired Burson-Marsteller in 2001 to help deal with a crush of media calls in the aftermath of the anthrax attacks. Five postal staffers had been fielding as many as 400 calls a day, said Gerry McKiernan, a postal spokesman.

Anthrax? Are we saying now it’s unpatriotic to question Uncle Sam’s need for a helping hand from the hidden hand?

"Exhaustion begins to set in, and there was a need for someone outside of our immediate sphere to be helping us with strategic thinking," McKiernan said. "When should we have that press briefing? Is the information we're giving out being received? Do we need more detail? We needed someone . . . to just give us some guidance."

No, what you need is someone to blame when your boss says, “whose dumb idea was that?” An expert is someone to take the fall.

Ketchum, the firm at the center of the Williams storm, announced last week it had begun a review of its federal contracts and has retained an outside firm to recommend ways to increase the transparency of those contracts. A company spokeswoman declined further comment, referring questions to the Education Department.

A classic defense. Appoint a respected commission or auditor (George Mitchell, Paul Volcker, God) and make sure they take a good long time to make their recommendations.

Media organizations and advocacy groups have launched their own reviews. They have filed dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests with federal agencies seeking information about their contracts with Ketchum and other PR firms.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group that has filed FOIA requests with 22 agencies, said it is unlikely that the Williams deal was the only one of its kind.

"If the government wants to tell us something, then the government should just tell us," Sloan said. "They can't pretend that . . . some objective third party is telling us something. Because, in fact, it's the government, and that's propaganda."

Propaganda? Or public relations? Armstrong Williams may be a fool, but his greed shouldn’t put a stop to government using professional public relations services. Deceit is a no-no, but I say yes to honest communication. Mark Twain said it best: “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

HeadlineUpdate

George Allen goes (Ma) Ca Ca**Updated Again!**

White House Office of Rebuttal and Denial

L'Shanah Tovah Tengo

Politicians' Egos

Say It Aint So, Joe (Already)!!

Wal-Mart is Smart (and the Post is dumbing down)

Armey's Army

O Condi! O Mores! (and Maureen)

Me and Kinky Friedman

"Weather Porn" and the Boy King with all the Bling

Bush Being Bush? Or Bush Being a Buffoon? We Report: You Decide

The Conventional Wisdom is (Almost) Always Wrong

Grover Norquist Ha Ha Ha

The Democrat We Don't Need **Updated**

Ralph Reed Ha Ha Ha*Updated*

What's Wrong with Tim Russert

Kos Is Wrong About Hillary

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

Stop Feeding the Hand that Bites You

Why We Blog

We're Busy Making Plans for Niger*

The Hammer Gets the Axe*Updated*

To War with Wal-Mart

The Issue is Still Privilege

Reading Obituaries

Cheney Blasts Hunter, Wounds Bush

"If You Tell the Truth, You Don't Have to Remember Anything"

Newspapers: Tactile or Virtual?

Is this the end of Gorgeous George?

The Meaning of Messages

In praise of Gorgeous George **Updated**

Jack Abramoff's Shoe

New Jersey New Jersey New Jersey!**Updated Again**

Doug Bandow, Armstrong Williams and me

R.I.P. Eugene McCarthy

HeadlineUpdateWeekendUpdate

Holy Astroturf! *Updated*

Turning Safavian

Buy Citgo (You Go, Hugo!)

Sunday Brunch

Woodward, We Hardly Knew Ye

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics?

F*!@ the South???

Elections Post Mortem (Delayed)

When Presidents and Trustees Fight: Bad Behavior Behind the Ivy Walls*Updated Again*

Inside Baseball or Dizzy Dean's Revenge

Oh Harriet, Poor Harriet

Who'll be Indicted? *Updated*

When It Says Libby Libby Libby...*Updated*

O Guardian! My Guardian!

Don't Tread on Me, Arthur

Please, Mr. Fitzgerald

Ooops!

Blame Plame Game Fame Flames Same

Armstrong Williams Is Doing It, The Pope's Doing It, Now the EPA is Doing It**Updated**

Dumb DeLay Dum*Updated*

Going out on a Limb, V.2

Got to Revolution, Got to Revolution!

This is Funny

Welcome to the Spin Machine

Live (sort of) from New York! It's the Democratic Party!

Bush Family Quote of the Week

10,000 Dead?

Bush Can Count

Naral Crumples, Democrats Dither**Updated**

Have You Heard Hem?

Not Virgins. Grapes. D'oh!

The Message is the Message

Push the (NY) Primary Up!

Taking a Break from Politics: A Teenage Fanclub Fan's Notes

Quote of the Week

You Can Scare Me, I'm Sticking with the Union

I Felt It Was Felt *Breaking News Update*

The Rich are Different from you and me...

War-gate

Yes, Virginia Will be the First State to Honor Tibet

Green doesn't grow my iPod *Updated*

Bernie Bernie Bernie ** 2nd Update**

Nervous Nellies at NPR

George Allen goes (Ma) Ca CaUpdated Again!

The Democrat We Don't Need Updated

Ralph Reed Ha Ha HaUpdated

The Hammer Gets the AxeUpdated

In praise of Gorgeous George Updated

New Jersey New Jersey New Jersey!Updated Again

Holy Astroturf! Updated

When Presidents and Trustees Fight: Bad Behavior Behind the Ivy WallsUpdated Again

Who'll be Indicted? Updated

When It Says Libby Libby Libby...Updated

Armstrong Williams Is Doing It, The Pope's Doing It, Now the EPA is Doing ItUpdated

Dumb DeLay DumUpdated

Naral Crumples, Democrats DitherUpdated

I Felt It Was Felt Breaking News Update

Green doesn't grow my iPod Updated

Bernie Bernie Bernie 2nd Update

Yip Yip Hooray! Updated