Actually commented on this article a couple of weeks ago by Kathleen Parker on the infamous skiing incident. In my previous report of her article I quoted this heart-warming section.
"Then you catch Kerry, who shouldn't need to prove his manhood - he served in Vietnam, you know - engaging in preppy sports that require resorts and expensive equipment: skiing, snowboarding, windsurfing. Not exactly the populist sports of choice.
Can't the man shoot hoops? Or toss a football while, say, not skiing in Aspen? Catch much?"
Well Matt Taibbi, of Rolling Stone, reports that apparently he can toss a football.
"Kerry does the sports-on-the-tarmac thing a lot. It looks great on television, but in person the effect is surreal. The entire press crew will be standing at the ass end of the plane, when suddenly Kerry's gleaming, toothy figure appears out of nowhere and starts performing a photogenic ballet. The cameramen drop everything and run full-speed to encircle him. If he has to run to one side to catch the ball, the entire closed loop of journalists travels with him. From a distance this looks almost biological, like viral cells attacking a drifting mitochondrion.
I had nothing else to do -- what is there to do in that situation? -- so I decided to get in on it. I signaled to Kerry and ran a pattern across the concrete. The candidate turned and gracefully hit me right on the hands. The cameras followed, then moved on as I threw the ball to a staffer.
Back on the plane, I wrote in my notebook: "Throws tight spiral."
Anyway the rest of Taibbi's article is interesting as well, as it covers how the press coverage of a candidate works to distance him from the public or the public from him, depending on how you look at it.
No comments:
Post a Comment