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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM SEPTEMBER 10, 2008
Arguing against Republican Presidential candidate John McCain's claim that his candidacy represents a change from the current GOP administration, his Democratic opponent Barack Obama insisted: "That is just calling the same thing something different. But you know, you cannot. You know, you can put lipstick on a pig--it is still a pig!" Lipstick! At the Republican Convention last week, McCain's running mate Sarah Palin jokingly described herself, a "hockey mom," as a pitbull with "lipstick." McCain approved an Internet video ad that castigated Obama for calling Palin a pig. Thus lipstick--Lipstick!--led all three network newscasts and was Story of the Day.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR SEPTEMBER 10, 2008: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
LIPSTICK Arguing against Republican Presidential candidate John McCain's claim that his candidacy represents a change from the current GOP administration, his Democratic opponent Barack Obama insisted: "That is just calling the same thing something different. But you know, you cannot. You know, you can put lipstick on a pig--it is still a pig!" Lipstick! At the Republican Convention last week, McCain's running mate Sarah Palin jokingly described herself, a "hockey mom," as a pitbull with "lipstick." McCain approved an Internet video ad that castigated Obama for calling Palin a pig. Thus lipstick--Lipstick!--led all three network newscasts and was Story of the Day.
Obama denounced McCain for running the ad--"spare me the phony outrage"--and the political press for publicizing it: "It is catnip for the news media," he asserted, introducing a third member of the animal kingdom. Yet Obama kept the lipstick line in the headlines by appearing on David Letterman's Late Show. CBS' Dean Reynolds offered a clip as a promo of his own network's talkshow fare. Even if he had he meant to refer to Palin, Obama explained, the Republicans misconstrued his metaphor: "She would be the lipstick, you see. The failed policies of John McCain would be the pig."
So why would McCain run such a trivial ad? ABC's Ron Claiborne pointed to "this current age of 24-hour news and Internet blogging" in which any careless comment, slip of the tongue or ambiguous remark can be seized on to set the tone for a day's news cycle and put opponents on the defensive. NBC political director Chuck Todd had a more partisan explanation: "The fundamentals of this campaign as far as the issues are concerned are going against the Republicans so they need to create these distractions."
FACTCHECKING THE DISTRACTIONS So yes, the networks' campaign correspondents were duly distracted. ABC's Jake Tapper described the lipstick brouhaha and concluded that McCain's webvideo "flatly and falsely accused Obama of calling Palin a pig." CBS' Reality Check had Bill Plante assert that "Obama had not mentioned Palin" when he mentioned lipstick. NBC's Andrea Mitchell was categorical too: "Obama was talking about McCain and the Republican change argument."
Lipstick on a Pig is the title of a book written by McCain's former spokeswoman Torie Clark about the spinmistress' art, NBC anchor Brian Williams reminded us. It was a phrase McCain himself used last year to criticize Hillary Rodham Clinton's healthcare proposal, NBC's Mitchell added. Nevertheless, she noted, McCain would not let go. She aired his soundbite on Telemundo: "Senator Obama's recent comments about lipstick on a pig" was his example of the negativism he "hates most" about campaigning.
CBS checked out two more ads produced by McCain. Chip Reid showed us the visuals of a pack of wolves racing through a snowy forest to illustrate "a mini army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers" dispatched to Alaska to "dig dirt on Governor Palin." Reid quoted Democrats calling that "a flat out, absolute fabrication." Bill Plante looked into the claim that Obama endorsed "comprehensive sex education to kindergarteners" when he was an Illinois legislator. Plante offered Obama's explanation of its "age and developmentally appropriate" provision: "The point was to help parents teach their children how to deal with sexual predators."
WHERE THE ACTION WILL BE The pro-Republican bounce in support for John McCain after his convention, has narrowed the number of states that the networks' political units deem to be actively contested. ABC's George Stephanopoulos put the number at eight: three in the west (Colo, Nev, NM); three in the rust belt (Wisc, Mich, Ohio); one in New England (NH); one in the mid-Atlantic (Va). Tuesday, NBC's Chuck Todd performed the same analysis and came up with nine--those eight plus Florida. Both whittled the contest down to an even shorter shortlist: Todd settled on Colo, Va, NH, Ohio; Stephanopoulos said "it would have to, one more time, be Ohio."
TRIG INSPIRED ABC had Charles Gibson anchor from Seattle, where he stopped off en route to Alaska for his exclusive interview Thursday with Sarah Palin, the governor and VP nominee. In tribute to her state, ABC closed its newscast with Neal Karlinsky in Denali. He showed us how Iditarod sled-racing huskies stay in training during snowfree summer months. CBS anchor Katie Couric used the publicity given to Palin's five-month-old Trig, an infant with Down syndrome, to profile those pregnant women who undergo amniocentesis to search for congenital fetal defects yet decide not to terminate the pregnancy when the test is positive. The "vast majority" have the abortion, Couric pointed out, with only 5,000 children born annually with the syndrome. However, the minority who continue are offered no counseling, support services, information or advice in the wake of the pre-natal screening.
Couric did not explain why a pro-life woman, who has no intention of terminating a defective pregnancy, would have the amniocentesis in the first place.
ALPHABETICAL DISORDER Hurricane Ike has left Cuba and is over the Gulf of Mexico on its way to Texas. Mike Seidel of the Weather Channel, the cable outfit recently acquired by NBC-Universal, briefed anchor Brian Williams on the storm track. ABC's Mike von Fremd was prepositioned in Dallas where the Red Cross, cash-strapped from its recent flood relief along the Mississippi River, is setting up shelters for evacuees from the Houston area. NBC filed a rare report from Havana on the floods and power outages as Ike hit both the east and the west of Cuba. Mark Potter told us that the western storm damage came hard on the heels of destruction left by Hurricane Gustav: "Ike blew away the few repairs that had been made."
VANITY, VANITY, ALL IS VANITY Vanity Fair magazine has reporters embedded with a USArmy battle company fighting in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan. Last November, ABC's Brian Ross narrated videotape from Tim Hetherington on the mistrust of village elders for the American troops. Now Ross updates us with Sebastian Junger's conclusion to the 15-month mission fighting Pakistan-based guerrillas: "Despite the massive amount of US firepower in the valley, the enemy is everywhere." New-York-based Ross was unimpressed. They came "to win this valley but left without anything approaching a clear victory. Their gains were measured not in miles but yards."
IN BED WITH THE INDUSTRY Had sex not been part of the Inspector General's report--along with trips, gifts, parties, drugs and rigged contracts--it is hard to believe that all three networks would have assigned a reporter to cover the ethical failures of a dozen-or-so bureaucrats in the Minerals Management Service of the Department of the Interior. But it turned out that some of the inspectors, whose job it was to check that royalties were paid on oil extracted from federal lands, had slept with some of the employees of the firms they were monitoring. Voila! "Big Oil is absolutely in bed with the government," was the soundbite used by NBC's Tom Costello…"literally and figuratively in bed with Big Oil," was the quote for CBS' Sharyl Attkisson…and for ABC's Lisa Stark: "literally in bed with the industry."
No evidence was found that the fraternization led to underpayment of royalties.
ADVANTAGES OF BEING AN ENVIRONMENTAL CORRESPONDENT In April, NBC's Anne Thompson landed a trip to Costa Rica to file a feature on efforts to conserve the tropical rain forest. Now, for Our Planet our lucky correspondent reports from Mato Grosso, in the Amazon watershed, "the very lungs of the Earth," where 22% of the forest has been converted to soybean and ranching. Have a caipirinha for us while you are there.
Obama denounced McCain for running the ad--"spare me the phony outrage"--and the political press for publicizing it: "It is catnip for the news media," he asserted, introducing a third member of the animal kingdom. Yet Obama kept the lipstick line in the headlines by appearing on David Letterman's Late Show. CBS' Dean Reynolds offered a clip as a promo of his own network's talkshow fare. Even if he had he meant to refer to Palin, Obama explained, the Republicans misconstrued his metaphor: "She would be the lipstick, you see. The failed policies of John McCain would be the pig."
So why would McCain run such a trivial ad? ABC's Ron Claiborne pointed to "this current age of 24-hour news and Internet blogging" in which any careless comment, slip of the tongue or ambiguous remark can be seized on to set the tone for a day's news cycle and put opponents on the defensive. NBC political director Chuck Todd had a more partisan explanation: "The fundamentals of this campaign as far as the issues are concerned are going against the Republicans so they need to create these distractions."
FACTCHECKING THE DISTRACTIONS So yes, the networks' campaign correspondents were duly distracted. ABC's Jake Tapper described the lipstick brouhaha and concluded that McCain's webvideo "flatly and falsely accused Obama of calling Palin a pig." CBS' Reality Check had Bill Plante assert that "Obama had not mentioned Palin" when he mentioned lipstick. NBC's Andrea Mitchell was categorical too: "Obama was talking about McCain and the Republican change argument."
Lipstick on a Pig is the title of a book written by McCain's former spokeswoman Torie Clark about the spinmistress' art, NBC anchor Brian Williams reminded us. It was a phrase McCain himself used last year to criticize Hillary Rodham Clinton's healthcare proposal, NBC's Mitchell added. Nevertheless, she noted, McCain would not let go. She aired his soundbite on Telemundo: "Senator Obama's recent comments about lipstick on a pig" was his example of the negativism he "hates most" about campaigning.
CBS checked out two more ads produced by McCain. Chip Reid showed us the visuals of a pack of wolves racing through a snowy forest to illustrate "a mini army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers" dispatched to Alaska to "dig dirt on Governor Palin." Reid quoted Democrats calling that "a flat out, absolute fabrication." Bill Plante looked into the claim that Obama endorsed "comprehensive sex education to kindergarteners" when he was an Illinois legislator. Plante offered Obama's explanation of its "age and developmentally appropriate" provision: "The point was to help parents teach their children how to deal with sexual predators."
WHERE THE ACTION WILL BE The pro-Republican bounce in support for John McCain after his convention, has narrowed the number of states that the networks' political units deem to be actively contested. ABC's George Stephanopoulos put the number at eight: three in the west (Colo, Nev, NM); three in the rust belt (Wisc, Mich, Ohio); one in New England (NH); one in the mid-Atlantic (Va). Tuesday, NBC's Chuck Todd performed the same analysis and came up with nine--those eight plus Florida. Both whittled the contest down to an even shorter shortlist: Todd settled on Colo, Va, NH, Ohio; Stephanopoulos said "it would have to, one more time, be Ohio."
TRIG INSPIRED ABC had Charles Gibson anchor from Seattle, where he stopped off en route to Alaska for his exclusive interview Thursday with Sarah Palin, the governor and VP nominee. In tribute to her state, ABC closed its newscast with Neal Karlinsky in Denali. He showed us how Iditarod sled-racing huskies stay in training during snowfree summer months. CBS anchor Katie Couric used the publicity given to Palin's five-month-old Trig, an infant with Down syndrome, to profile those pregnant women who undergo amniocentesis to search for congenital fetal defects yet decide not to terminate the pregnancy when the test is positive. The "vast majority" have the abortion, Couric pointed out, with only 5,000 children born annually with the syndrome. However, the minority who continue are offered no counseling, support services, information or advice in the wake of the pre-natal screening.
Couric did not explain why a pro-life woman, who has no intention of terminating a defective pregnancy, would have the amniocentesis in the first place.
ALPHABETICAL DISORDER Hurricane Ike has left Cuba and is over the Gulf of Mexico on its way to Texas. Mike Seidel of the Weather Channel, the cable outfit recently acquired by NBC-Universal, briefed anchor Brian Williams on the storm track. ABC's Mike von Fremd was prepositioned in Dallas where the Red Cross, cash-strapped from its recent flood relief along the Mississippi River, is setting up shelters for evacuees from the Houston area. NBC filed a rare report from Havana on the floods and power outages as Ike hit both the east and the west of Cuba. Mark Potter told us that the western storm damage came hard on the heels of destruction left by Hurricane Gustav: "Ike blew away the few repairs that had been made."
VANITY, VANITY, ALL IS VANITY Vanity Fair magazine has reporters embedded with a USArmy battle company fighting in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan. Last November, ABC's Brian Ross narrated videotape from Tim Hetherington on the mistrust of village elders for the American troops. Now Ross updates us with Sebastian Junger's conclusion to the 15-month mission fighting Pakistan-based guerrillas: "Despite the massive amount of US firepower in the valley, the enemy is everywhere." New-York-based Ross was unimpressed. They came "to win this valley but left without anything approaching a clear victory. Their gains were measured not in miles but yards."
IN BED WITH THE INDUSTRY Had sex not been part of the Inspector General's report--along with trips, gifts, parties, drugs and rigged contracts--it is hard to believe that all three networks would have assigned a reporter to cover the ethical failures of a dozen-or-so bureaucrats in the Minerals Management Service of the Department of the Interior. But it turned out that some of the inspectors, whose job it was to check that royalties were paid on oil extracted from federal lands, had slept with some of the employees of the firms they were monitoring. Voila! "Big Oil is absolutely in bed with the government," was the soundbite used by NBC's Tom Costello…"literally and figuratively in bed with Big Oil," was the quote for CBS' Sharyl Attkisson…and for ABC's Lisa Stark: "literally in bed with the industry."
No evidence was found that the fraternization led to underpayment of royalties.
ADVANTAGES OF BEING AN ENVIRONMENTAL CORRESPONDENT In April, NBC's Anne Thompson landed a trip to Costa Rica to file a feature on efforts to conserve the tropical rain forest. Now, for Our Planet our lucky correspondent reports from Mato Grosso, in the Amazon watershed, "the very lungs of the Earth," where 22% of the forest has been converted to soybean and ranching. Have a caipirinha for us while you are there.
