The Kicker

Richard Cohen in today’s Washington Post: John McCain has “soiled” his “integrity.” And, according to Cohen, “the precise moment of McCain’s abasement came” at the hands of The View‘s Joy Behar. It was always McCain’s “integrity” that Cohen found attractive, not his “being accessible” to reporters (Cohen calls this “the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give […]

Last week? Very “Palin-centric,” according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index, which shows Palin starring as “the focal point of the four biggest media narratives—scrutiny of her public record (14% of the newshole), the ABC interview (10%), the ‘lipstick on a pig’ flap (10%) and general reaction to her nomination (9%).” Yes, ‘PigGate came in second […]

Politico‘s Jonathan Martin describes the trials of the Palin press: Since being selected a John McCain’s running mate on Aug. 29, Sarah Palin has yet to hold a single news conference or take any questions from reporters beyond one network interview and a chat with People magazine. Reporters travelling with Palin see her only when […]

Boston-based hair stylists have had their say. The LA Times‘s fashion critic, too,

There is much to report, from coastal Texas, on what Hurricane Ike wrought. And no shortage of journalists there to tell those stories. (Some incredible images, for example, here. Read a Galveston Daily News reporter’s on-the-scene Twitter updates here.) Harder to come by are reports like Marc Lacey’s on how “the poorest of the poor” […]

Lohan on Palin, at last.

This morning, The New York Times’s Kate Zernike turns in a sillily even-handed paint-by-the-numbers story (“Both Sides Seeking to Be What Women Want”) on the Obama and McCain campaign’s outreach to women. Both campaigns would like to have the support of women. It’s a close election, in case you haven’t heard. They’d also like to […]

“Thanks, but no thanks.” Gov. Sarah Palin is still saying it on the stump. She said it over the weekend while campaigning in Nevada. How did Nevada newspapers report it? Las Vegas Sun: Palin also repeated the line that she told Congress “thanks but no thanks,” for the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere,” a federally funded […]

The Washington Post ‘s E.J. Dionne: I can’t believe how small a role our economic crisis is playing in the campaign coverage and in the back-and-forth between the candidates. Who is at fault here? Am I more worried about our economy than I should be? And do you think the economic discussion will eventually trump […]

Pssst, campaign reporters! Permission to say that the McCain campaign has, perhaps, on occasion, stretched the truth: granted! It’s ok — it’s safe– now! Why? Because even Karl Rove has said as much. Rove on Fox News yesterday: ROVE: [B]oth campaigns are making a mistake and that is, they are taking whatever their attacks are […]

Wall Street brinkmanship. It’s the metaphor that journalists and scotch-swilling brokers use to transubstantiate dollars and cents into bullets and bluster. So this morning, making my way through The New York Times excellent crisis coverage, it shouldn’t have been too surprising to see two metaphors for Uncle Sam and the money-men’s actions that evoke a […]

In remembrance of the American writer, David Foster Wallace, who died on Friday, Time offers a list of the writer’s most memorable magazine pieces. Of particularly note, “The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys And The Shrub,” written for Rolling Stone magazine about John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign. In fairness to McCain, he’s not an orator and doesn’t […]

What do you lead with today? With the sky falling in American finance (and the sky having just barely cleared over coastal Texas)? Wall Street Journal: “Crisis on Wall Street…” New York Times: “..FINANCIAL CRISIS…” Washington Post: “Massive Shifts on Wall Street…” LA Times: “Wall Street scrambles…” USA Today: “‘You cannot live here now.’” (“Here” […]

David Carr imagines a Couric-on-Palin interview: It is telling that when the McCain campaign was looking for a soft place to land Governor Palin’s first interview, they turned to Charles Gibson at ABC, not Ms. Couric. It would have been fun to watch given the implied subtext: “Hey, Governor, I invented spunky; I’ve had a […]

Interesting thought from Zephyr Teachout, one time Dean campaign web guru, current techPresident blogger: …post-modern political reporters and bloggers act as hack theater critics, judging performances not by how they as individuals respond, but by how they believe the mythical “american people,” “independent voters,” and “women” (and most bizarrely “the media”) will respond. The standard […]