the kicker

The Balls on the Bus

If a reporter from McCain’s traveling press corps gave a reporter from Obama’s press bus one of her cojones, they’d both have … none, apparently. There...
September 10, 2008

If a reporter from McCain’s traveling press corps gave a reporter from Obama’s press bus one of her cojones, they’d both have … none, apparently. There are no balls at all among journalists on the campaign trail; neuters, all.

As I noted earlier, Matt Taibbi describes Obama’s press corps as “castrated.” Read TNR’s Eve Fairbanks on how McCain has “neuters[ed] his press.”

“It’s great, right?” one reporter who travels with the campaign told me in the balcony, summing up the prevailing it’s-evil-but-it’s-brilliant view of the new McCain press strategy. “I mean, it’s smart. Why should they talk to us? What’s in it for them?”

Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.