Scrapbook
Scrapbook Gore's "Room Service" for the Press During the mad holiday rush to cease reading all things election related, The Scrapbook worries that many may have missed the 6,446-word peek behind...
...But in sinking Montana's Marc Racicot as George W. Bush's pick for attorney general and replacing him with former Missouri senator John Ashcroft, they operated deftly and quietly behind the scenes...
...Over the course of the campaign, the MDs delivered tidbits to Kurtz, but he couldn't report them till after the election...
...Lehane later dressed down Berke for writing about how Gore's "shading of the truth" had become problematic, perhaps feeling betrayed after serving as the Times-man's taxi service...
...Couldn't have put it better ourselves...
...William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1 (the "Get thee to a nunnery" speech...
...The article quoted Mrs...
...The Scrapbook doesn't have much to add to the Chronicle's self-parodying descent into lunatic multiculturalism, except to wonder: Since when is it an unusual circumstance for candidates in a city election to be judged according to their political positions...
...But The Scrapbook, for its part, wants to congratulate them for innovation in sucking up to the press...
...There are no Asian American women, no black males, no lesbians and not a single Latina...
...They recruited pro-life princeton professor Robert George to draft a paper on Racicot...
...There are two Latinos (Matt Gonzalez and Gerardo Sandoval), one black woman (Sophie Maxwell) and an Asian American male (Leland Yee...
...report critical of Bush's education record (he succeeded with Reuters...
...but those expecting big favors should know that we like our room-service eggs over easy, on white toast...
...Lehane was pushing so hard, that Seelye put him on the phone with her editor, who yelled at Lehane to "leave the room and give her time to write the story...
...This description is effective because it encapsulates the core criticism of Gore in a single, easily repeated sentence...
...meanwhile, Lehane and Fabiani can salve their campaign wounds with the knowledge that their tortured genius didn't go unrecognized...
...Weisbergism of the Day In a December 22 item, part of his running feature "Bushism of the Day" in Slate, Jacob Weisberg ridiculed George W. Bush for describing himself as not a "revengeful" person...
...The Bush White House flacks had better realize that Lehane and Fabiani have raised the bar...
...Two, Tom Ammiano and Mark Leno, are openly gay...
...The most active were religious conservatives, both Catholic and Protestant...
...In its 12th paragraph, the article said that the federal judge who raised the conflict question was an associate of Vice President Al Gore's family, and the 14th paragraph reported that The Times had been directed to that judge by "someone in the Gore campaign...
...The most entertaining passages, however, detail Lehane's and Fabiani's attempts to manipulate and collude with journalists...
...George's dispatch was on its way in 24 hours to Bush political adviser Karl Rove in Austin...
...Well Said Last week, we carped about a New York Times story retailing Gore-camp complaints that Clarence Thomas should have recused himself in Bush v. Gore...
...That leaves the 11-member board littered with enough straight, white males (five) to look like a sidewalk gathering in West Portal after a Rotary Club meeting____ "Unusual circumstances arose in this fall's elections...
...Bush went along, turning out to be more responsive than social conservatives had dreamed possible...
...Make no mistake: Governor Racicot was Bush's first choice...
...In order to upstage Bush's announcement of his prescription drug plan, Lehane tried to secure front-page New York Times coverage for his boss (unsuccessfully, it turns out) by showing up with Gore's book-length treatise on the subject at the Cleveland hotel door of Times reporter Katharine Seelye, where he called out, "Room service...
...No rides are necessary, thanks...
...In a conference call with Rove, nearly every social conservative on the line turned thumbs down on Racicot...
...Kurtz leads with Gore (who staffers took to calling the "Don Cor-leone of candidates") subtly ordering a hit on Florida secretary of state Kather-ine Harris...
...But the most over-the-top courtship saw Lehane driving the Times's Rick Berke to an office to screen a slowed-down version of Bush's allegedly "subliminal" Democ-RATS ad, as part of what a Fabiani memo called "Rat-Gate Rollout...
...The partisan nature of the source should have been made clear more promptly and reflected in attribution in the headline...
...The Scrapbook would suggest it was effective because it was true, but give the Masters points for self-awareness...
...Scrapbook Gore's "Room Service" for the Press During the mad holiday rush to cease reading all things election related, The Scrapbook worries that many may have missed the 6,446-word peek behind the Gore campaign curtain by Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, who produces compelling fly-on-the-wall pieces when he isn't clucking about why the public distrusts the press (memo to public: We distrust you too...
...Kurtz brokered a deal with spokesmen Chris Lehane and Mark Fabiani— the Gore campaign's self-proclaimed "Masters of Disaster...
...The headline said, "Job of Thomas's Wife Raises Conflict-of-Interest Questions...
...The board does boast—if that's the proper term—of seven white males...
...This gave Kurtz access to some great scenes in which Lehane and Fabiani show that they are more than on-message automatons...
...Ashcroft, who lost his Senate seat in November to the late Missouri governor Mel Carnahan, was the clear favorite of the religious conservatives...
...We will be expecting, at the very least, a breakfast mint with our political press releases...
...Lehane and Fabiani (whose final email to Lehane reads "WE WUZ RoBBED") have now left the stage to contemplate their political futures...
...Candidates were judged less on their ethnic identity, or other attributes, than on their political distance from Mayor Willie Brown...
...He still probably could have had the job, but facing strong conservative objections decided he didn't want it...
...The headline's plural reference to "questions" exceeded the facts of the article...
...Kurtz also serves up revealing campaign memos, such as the one where the MDs worried that "The Bush campaign long ago fastened on their mantra: Gore will say or do anything it takes to win...
...Another instance has Fabiani frantically searching for a reporter who will agree to break the embargo of a RAND Corp...
...Gore later reversed himself, as was his custom, telling his staffers to refrain from "using inflammatory language," but not before Lehane had branded Harris a "hack" and a "lack-ey"—a breed Lehane probably became well acquainted with on the Gore campaign staff...
...It's not an everyday usage, but Bush this time is in good company: "I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in...
...But those comments were omitted in editing and appeared only in the latest New York regional editions...
...Rove answered many of the complaints, though hardly all, and the dump-Racicot movement grew...
...How Ashcroft Won Social conservatives aren't known for subtlety in pressing for what they want from their political allies...
...once conservatives advising the transition learned of his tepid record on abortion, gay rights, and other social issues, however, they rebelled, all in the 72 hours before Bush formally announced his nominee...
...What results is a series of snapshots that prove the Gore soldiers were every bit as cynically opportunistic as their boss...
...Great Moments in Diversity From an editorial in the December 19 San Francisco Chronicle: "The incoming Board of Supervisors includes one woman...
...Somehow we missed the Times's own thoroughgoing second thoughts on the story, which it printed in this December 13 editor's note: An article in late editions yesterday reported an assertion that Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court faced a serious conflict of interest because of his wife's work for the Heritage Foundation, which would help staff government posts if George W. Bush won the presidency...
...Thomas as saying that her transition efforts were nonpartisan, not on behalf of the Bush organization...
Vol. 6 • January 2001 • No. 16
