Preen Monster
The night before last week’s Democratic convention was set to get underway, John Kerry made a “surprise” early appearance in Boston to attend the rubber match of a three-game Red Sox home stand against the New York Yankees. Kerry aides urged reporters traveling with the campaign to focus their next-day stories on how successfully this gambit had been kept a secret, ostensibly for “security reasons.” And many reporters dutifully complied, the trip indeed having been kept a secret from them–if not from the many hundreds of other people necessary to clear Logan Airport’s runways for Kerry’s arrival, block the city’s streets for his motorcade, ready Fenway Park’s infield for his ceremonial first pitch, free up some box seats for his entourage, and map out camera assignments for his “impromptu” mid-game national television interview on ESPN.
“Security” requirements being what they are these days, it was only after Kerry’s scheduled plane trip to Florida had already gone wheels-up in Columbus, Ohio, that he personally informed his press corps that they were actually on their way to Massachusetts. It is not recorded whether the senator apologized for this hijacking.
But it is recorded how he explained the stunt. “The idea of missing a Yankees-Red Sox series right before a convention week was not acceptable,” he offered. “So we changed the policy.” The new “policy” being that John Forbes Kerry, a Regular Guy Just Like You and Me, will undertake to prove as much by ostentatious displays of Regular Guy enthusiasm for hometown baseball. Which turns out not to be a new policy at all, actually.
It also turns out he’s really bad at it. A few years back, for example, guesting on a Boston sports-radio call-in show, Kerry was asked the obvious question–Who’s your all-time favorite BoSock, Senator?–but did not reply with any of the obvious answers. “My favorite Red Sox player of all time,” Kerry instead told his astonished host, “is the Walking Man, Eddie Yost.” Who never played a single major-league game in a Red Sox uniform. At an Iowa campaign event broadcast by C-SPAN last fall, Kerry treated his audience to a purportedly eyewitness account of the infamous Bill Buckner incident in the 1986 World Series–but got the score and the inning wrong. Just a couple weeks ago, Kerry had occasion publicly to discuss current Red Sox All-Stars “Manny Ortez” and “David Ortez,” neither of whom exists.
Last week at Fenway, throwing from Little League distance on the grass, several feet shy of the pitcher’s mound, Kerry nevertheless bounced his toss in the dirt–and was booed. During the seventh inning, when the Fenway Jumbotron fixed its eye on a woman in the stands carrying a professionally printed “Team Kerry” poster, the crowd booed again, with gusto. By that point, incidentally, the senator had already finished his spot on ESPN. They’d wanted to know whether Kerry thought the designated-hitter rule should be abolished. And he’d apparently already gotten all that Regular Guy business out of his system–because he never did manage to answer the question one way or the other.
One Nation, Under the Radar
Like a beautiful woman, Michael Moore never arrives on time. He was everywhere in Boston last week, and he was always late. So his various event hosts invariably found themselves vamping awkwardly onstage while their increasingly irritable audiences wondered what the hell was going on–and while THE SCRAPBOOK was happily writing everything down. Our favorite episode: Tuesday’s “Take Back America” forum at which Moore was scheduled to speak after Howard Dean but, alas, was nowhere to be seen once Dean was done. First, emcee Roger Hickey tried to calm the crowd by announcing that “Michael Moore is on his way!” That kind of thing only works once, though, so before long Hickey had been forced to rush not one, not two, but three lower-billed speechmakers into early duty. Finally, after almost an hour and a half of this, Hickey took the stage to report that “Michael Moore is in the house!” A cheer went up. Hickey formally introduced his star attraction. Another cheer went up. Necks craned. A third round of applause got underway, accompanied by chants: “Mi-chael! Mi-chael!”
But still: No sign of Moore.
Eventually, the place went silent and the mood turned grumpy and Roger Hickey got desperate and started plugging a list of lefty-leaning media outlets and “documentary” productions. He told the crowd to go see Outfoxed. They cheered. He told the crowd to listen to Air America. They cheered. He told them to read the American Prospect. They cheered. “Salon!” someone helpfully shouted from the floor. “And Salon, too,” a grateful Hickey boomed into the microphone. “BuzzFlash!” somebody else yelled. “And BuzzFlash,” Hickey responded.
And then: “The Nation!” cried Katrina vanden Heuvel–its editor–from the back of the room. “The Nation,” she repeated.
But Ms. vanden Heuvel was ignored. Apparently they weren’t that desperate.
Mr. Mischer’s Mishap
You didn’t think we were just going to ignore it, did you? Here, then, a full, unexpurgated transcript of the audio feed CNN broadcast from the Democratic convention last Thursday immediately following John Kerry’s acceptance speech:
Tons of them. Bring them down. Let them all come. No confetti. No confetti yet. No confetti. All right. Go, balloons. Go, balloons. We’re getting more balloons. All balloons. All balloons should be going.
Come on, guys! Let’s move it. Jesus. We need more balloons. I want all balloons to go. Go, confetti. Go, confetti. Go, confetti. I want more balloons.
What’s happening to the balloons? We need more balloons. We need all of them coming down. Go, balloons. Balloons. What’s happening, balloons? There’s not enough coming down. All balloons!
Why the hell is nothing falling? What the f– are you guys doing up there?
We want more balloons coming down. More balloons. More balloons . . .
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. While those balloons are coming down, what you heard was the voice of Don Mischer. He’s the director for the Democratic party–the organizer of this convention. He’s been giving instructions to let the balloons come down, there are thousands, and, in fact, these balloons are about to land on our heads here on the floor of the convention. Don Mischer giving instructions, “Let the balloons come down. Let the confetti come down.” Jeff Greenfield, this has been a very well-organized convention, but the balloons are not coming down as rapidly as they would like.
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Right, the first crisis of the convention, and it’s almost to the close. You’ll remember in 1980 in New York that Jimmy Carter’s balloons trickled down one by one, what was seen to be an omen. We have to be looking at this as obviously not a turning point of the campaign. But these balloons did not come en masse the way Don Mischer [UNINTELLIGIBLE], and we heard him express that feeling somewhat emphatically.
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: We did. We heard–we may have heard a profanity, Wolf. You know, it was an accident to leave the microphone open. But, you know, they are–I’m looking up now, Wolf. There are still a lot of balloons. I don’t know if our camera can show. Could we zoom in a little bit? You can see there are still a lot of balloons that have not come down yet.
BLITZER: This has really frustrated people, that balloons are not coming down as quickly, but–you know what?–they will be down here very quickly, I suspect, and all of us on the floor of the convention will be inundated.
Let’s talk a little bit about the speech, what we just heard from John Kerry . . .
