Thursday, July 1, 2004
From 2000 to 2004, The Media Turns On John Kerry...
An interesting piece from The Campaign Desk, raises an intriguing point. The press was enamored of Senator Kerry in 2000, when he was on Al Gore's short list for the VP slot, eventually given to Senator Palpatine of Connecticut. (Huge mistake. Thanks, Al.) Now, in 2004, the press is far less enamored. To say the least...
2000
The campaign press in the summer of 2000 was entranced with John. It tumbled all over itself to describe John as the perfect match for what it saw as the somewhat wooden, robot-like Gore. One newspaper described John as a man with "an easy manner and good looks," a politician whose "charisma [might] rub off on [Gore]," a person who could "bring some charm to the ticket." John's selection, it opined, would signal that Gore "thinks the election will be decided on personality." A television reporter also regarded this John as "charismatic." Another newspaper saw him as "younger and more telegenic than Dick Cheney." Yet a third newspaper called him "handsome," with "a record tailor-made to undermine the standard Republican attack on liberal Democrats."
2004
No longer handsome, Kerry has been compared this election season to "The Addams Family"'s heavy-browed Lurch (by both former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines and by CNBC's talk show host/comic Dennis Miller). The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash sees in Kerry's mug a "long-faced Easter Island mask," while The New Yorker's Philip Gourevitch observes "a long, angular face [that] has something of the abstraction of a tribal mask." Kerry reminds Knight Ridder's Dick Polman of "those long-faced walking trees in 'Lord of the Rings,'" while the Chicago Tribune sees a "droopy, hound-dog look." Kerry, it seems, was repeatedly whacked by an Ugly Stick sometime between 2000 and 2004. (Not exactly a ringing endorsement for Botox, if you -- like the Tribune and other news outlets -- entertain that sort of scuttlebutt).
|
