On Dukakis

Or, What is the Press On?




Now that everyone is connecting Kerry to the man he served under as Lt. Governor from 1983-1985, I have a question regarding supposedly embarrassing campaign moments. Three are being passing through the meme-sphere:




1. George Bush the Elder's being shocked at a supermarket scanner.


2. Kerry going windsurfing.


3. Dukakis riding in the tank.




Plenty of hay was made about the first and third of these. In '92, Scannergate led our famously unbiased press to "wonder" to the effect that Bush was an out-of-touch blue-blood without a clue as to how the peons got their bread. Snopes.com denounces this as an urban legend, but even if it was true, so what? Presidents and Vice Presidents don't do their own shopping, and Bush had been one or the other for 12 years when this happened, leaving aside his time as DCI and a member of Congress. Besides, as Bill Buckley noted at the time, did anyone really believe that FDR did his own shopping? He came of a family no less wealthy than Bush's, and no one ever questioned his lack of sympathy for the common man. Why is Roosevelt, Kennedy, or Kerry wealth okay, but Bush wealth is somehow eeeeevil?


As to Dukakis on the tank, I saw that clip a thousand times back in '88 and to this day I have no idea what was so embarrassing about it. Sure, he was no George Patton, but it's not like he fell out or lost his helmet or fired off a HEAT round at the press box (if he'd done that, he might have won the election). He popped out of the tank, fired off a civilian's best imitation of a salute, and smiled. What's the big deal?


With that in mind, I'd like to address the subject of John Kerry windsurfing so I can henceforth continue to ignore it. So he windsurfs. So what? Calvin Coolidge liked to play canasta. Was this tacit support for cardplaying, with all the sin it leads to? Can't we talk about something in some way related to how these bobbleheaded schmucks are going to DO THEIR JOB?


It's long past time that we stopped scarfing up every mindless piece of trivia that the media throws at us and examining it like the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the four years that George W. Bush has been President, hardly a soul in our press corps has given the slightest thought to telling the nation what exactly he does all day, who he sees most often, how he makes the decisions that effect us. Beyond snide caricatures of the Boy Emperor Following Cheney's Lead or the Protocols of the Elders of Neocon, we've heard diddly.


Maybe the better question is, what does the media do all day?