The Kicker

Polls (polling data in the hands of cable pundits in particular) have earned a particularly bad name this election season. So, what might be more credible or reliable than an actual poll? If not with a poll of a snapshot in time, how might we foretell the future? If not a poll, in what might […]

OMG, Patrick Healy’s “Political Memo” in today’s New York Times? It reads so high school (or to quote a more mature colleague, “a little loose”). Clinton and Obama are so totally not getting together, Healy reports. They are so not right for each other, right? He’s so totally popular; she’d “look like his stern old […]

On CNN just now: “There seems to be a new force in politics: unmarried women.” “New force?” Aren’t these the election-swinging “Sex and the City voters” the press told us all about in 2004? (Minus, I guess, the ones who have since married)? Maybe what’s new this time is that “those under 30 are mobilizing?” […]

How is it that 24 hours have ticked by since it happened and I am just now hearing about WaffleGate? (Have I not been watching enough TV?) As reported by Time‘s Jay Newton Small from the campaign trail yesterday: This morning at a diner in Scranton Obama sat down at the counter to enjoy a […]

Veteran New York Times political reporter Adam Nagourney takes a stab at defending Charlie Gibson’s and George Stephanopoulos’ handling of last week’s ABC-sponsored Democratic debate in an online column headlined, “What Should Be The Purpose of a Presidential Debate?” Nagourney never explicitly answers his own question but he does give some hints (about his priorities, […]

Frequent MSNBC guest talking head, Mike Barnacle, was discussing the Democratic primary on Morning Joe just now and mentioned that he thinks “the luckiest people in the world right now are the Amish. They don’t have TVs.” And therefore they don’t have to suffer through televised Pennsylvania primary-related punditry (Which way will beer drinkers break? […]

On the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, Senators Clinton and Obama each spoke via satellite to what conventional wisdom calls their respective key audiences: Clinton appeared — in between ads for calcium pills — on CNN’s Larry King Live; Obama

What is Wolf Blitzer “watching very closely” in the Situation Room right now? Well, according to his opening tease, he will “ask [Terry McAuliffe] how he expects his candidate [Clinton] will do” in the Pennsylvania primary. Why, Wolf, Why? Can’t we answer that question (Hmm, how might the chairman of a candidate’s campaign expect that […]

Sorry, Time magazine’s Richard Stengel: newspaper endorsements are alive and well in Pennsylvania. “Obama Sweeps Newspaper Endorsements,” reports The Nation today (Pennsylvania’s “largest newspapers are urging voters to consider Barack Obama;” and Obama “has gained the lion’s share of newspaper endorsements” in the Keystone State. ) But Clinton and Obama are “in a dead heat” […]

Was anyone else puzzled by that “Gore-Lieberman” piece by John M. Broder in yesterday’s New York Times “Week In Review”? Yes, the campaign press loves its “what if” stories. But typically they’re at least musing — however speculatively — about something that might actually happen at some point in the future, something that has some […]

MSNBC, you want to catch the ear of a multi-tasking, half-listening cable TV viewer? Forget the shouting kitschy overkill of, say, your “MONSTER SUPER TUESDAY” ad. Instead, try a little earnestness. For example, I just — automatic reaction — gave my undivided attention to the very earnest and optimistic voice emanating from MSNBC. The voice […]

Apparently it’s not enough to employ a “celebrity” news anchor or columnist. You must also seat your celebrity news anchor or columnist next to an actual Hollywood celebrity (C-list will do) at Fête-The-Press-Inside-The-Beltway functions. Why? In order to “seem relevant,” according to “one media pro tasked with wrangling VIPs” for the White House Correspondents ‘ […]

How many “Ha!’s” might Chris Matthews let out during the course of a 10-question interview? I counted eight in Matthews’ Q&A with the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Jonathan Storm (perhaps some were edited out)? When asked why, at age 62 and with his MSNBC contract running out in about a year, he wouldn’t just “hang up the […]

Virginia Heffernan profiles the Onion News Network, “a video series produced by the Onion fake-news empire:” The false news stories manage to seem plausible in a dangerous, “War of the Worlds” way, coming across as only slightly distorted versions of the clichés that appear all day on CNN and Fox News. (Samples: “Delicious Snacks Distract […]

Given Victoria Clarke’s role in creating and carrying out that “military analysts as media Trojan horse” plan the New York Times described yesterday, I thought I’d link to this column Clarke wrote for the September/October 2002 issue of CJR on “the military-media relationship” in general, and media “access to the war on terrorism” in particular. […]