With the 2004 presidential election already turning
nasty, let’s get one
thing straight. Before it’s anything else, an
American presidential campaign
is a TV show. As such, it’s governed by the same
immutable laws of bad taste
and shameless pandering that have given us Jerry
Springer, professional wrestling,
"The 700 Club," " The McLaughlin Group" and the
"Bill & Monica Show."
Hey, if there were no other reasons to love the
U. S. A., it must be the funniest
country on Earth. A generation after Dallas Cowboys
cheerleaders started
bumping and grinding like Las Vegas hookers,
five years since the "Starr Report’s"
bureaucratic porn, and half the country gets
the vapors over a Super Bowl
hoochie-coochie show?
Please.
(Standing ovation for Gene Lyons)
But back to the presidential campaign. Like the
Super Bowl, the quadrennial
contest to select the "leader of the free world"
offers vicarious excitement and
melodrama to millions who couldn’t find Iraq
on a world map or identify their
U.S. senators at gunpoint. As such, it’s conducted
in crudely symbolic terms:
good guys vs. bad guys, heroes vs. hypocrites.
Although most voters aren’t tuned in yet, the
Democrats are getting the better
of the symbolic contest so far. Last week, three
well-choreographed efforts to
smear presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. John
Kerry fell apart while the
White House was still struggling to prove that
President Bush showed up for
National Guard duty 30 years ago instead of taking
a playboy’s leave of absence.
Internet gossipmonger Matt Drudge began the best-publicized
smear on
Thursday, Feb. 12. According to Drudge, whose
fact-free "reporting" gets
cited by journalists who ought to know better,
Kerry had an "intern" problem
like Bill Clinton’s. Supposedly, retired Gen.
Wesley Clark said so in off-the-record
remarks to reporters, although that part seems
as phony as the rest to me. Drudge
named several big-time news organizations as
busy tracking down a 27-year old
woman who’d allegedly "fled" to Africa as part
of an attempted coverup by the
Massachusetts senator.
Nobody Drudge named ran the story, but right-wing
radio talk stars Rush Limbaugh
and Sean Hannity went nuts over it. So did the
Web sites of the National Review and
The Wall Street Journal editorial page. British
newspapers owned by FOX News
mogul Rupert Murdoch contributed spellbinding
accounts of the fugitive intern hiding
inside a walled compound in Kenya.
Internet rivals Slate and Salon weighed in on
opposite sides of the rumor: Slate ran a
satirical piece pretending to deplore the "scandal"
while wallowing in its seamy details,
and a bizarre column by Mickey Kaus dredging
up a tabloid article about a "shapely,
22-year-old blonde" dropping off her resume at
Kerry’s Boston home. In Salon, Joe
Conason criticized the conservative media’s propensity
for bed-sheet sniffing and
keyhole peeking "whenever Republican poll numbers
sink into the red zone."
By Friday morning, Kerry assured radio host Don
Imus that the rumor was
categorically false, which gave the New York
tabloids, ABC News, CNN,
the wire services and The New York Times an excuse
to report exactly
what it was the Democratic front-runner was denying.
On Monday, however, it all went up in smoke. The
supposed intern, actually a one-time
Associated Press reporter, gave her former employers
a statement from her fiance's
former home in Kenya. "For the last several days,
I have seen Internet and tabloid rumors
relating to me and Senator John Kerry," Alexandra
Polier said. "Because these stories
were false, I assumed the media would ignore
them. It seems that efforts to peddle these
lies continue, so I feel compelled to address
them. I have never had a relationship with
Senator Kerry, and the rumors in the press are
completely false. Whoever is spreading
these rumors and allegations does not know me,
but should know the pain they have
caused me and my family."
From their home in Pennsylvania, her parents added
that they appreciated Kerry’s
handling of the incident and supported him for
president.
Shameless as ever, Drudge posted a churlish item
blaming the victim: "Polier’s flippant
remarks and flirtatious manner, according to
friends, fueled the intrigue."
Elsewhere, a faked photograph of Kerry and Jane
Fonda sharing the podium at an
anti-Vietnam war rally was circulating on the
Internet, while a RNC ad calling Kerry
a hypocrite for accepting "special-interest"
money got short-circuited by news stories
showing that the Bush campaign has taken in between
five and 28 times as much
dough, depending on the special interest in question.
Meanwhile, the White House’s
efforts to prove that President Playboy showed
up for National Guard duty during
1972-73 had taken on the quality of Elvis sightings.
"Witness" stories conflicted with
the scant documentary evidence, and the press
corps showed signs of turning surly.
Whether Bush went AWOL is a purely symbolic issue
after 30 years. But during an
election campaign, that’s precisely the point.
• Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient
of the National Magazine Award.