the kicker

Campaign Plane Follies

July 21, 2008

So The New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza writes a long, unsentimental story about Barack Obama last week, and then, wouldn’t you know it, there’s no room for him on Obama’s campaign plane. Who else in the press corps is on the verge of having to fly commercial?

Joe Stephens: WaPo reporter dug deep into Obama’s Hyde Park home mortgage for a gotcha story that wasn’t. God knows what he’d do if found out that Obama is the kind of passenger who reclines his seat.

Carol Marin: Refusing to buy into Obama’s hope-change-magic! campaign narrative, the tough-as-nails columnist/news anchor from Chicago is not afraid to criticize a candidate whom she has called an “elegant practitioner of political pragmatism,” which is basically the same point that Ryan Lizza took 15,000 words to make. They can compare notes together in coach.

Eli Lake: In an article in The New Republic last week, New York Sun reporter Lake compared Obama to Ronald Reagan. Dems resent the implication that Obama died four years ago.

David Broder: The Washington Post columnist, while generally even-handed, has nonetheless called Obama opaque, an engima, and a one-trick pony. Also, he smells of Old Spice.

Skip Bayless: Nobody likes Skip Bayless.

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Justin Peters is editor-at-large of the Columbia Journalism Review.