All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Stephen Colbert, like savoir faire, is everywhere.

It’s no news that the host of “The Colbert Report” is running for President. It’s been the talk of the political world and blogosphere ever since he announced two weeks ago.

But today’s New York Times piece got me wondering. Former TVNewser Brian Stelter wrote:

Stephen Colbert’s presidential candidacy may be phony, but his supporters are very real…

One of them — a group created by Raj Vachhani and titled “1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert” — has grown to more than a million members in just over a week, making it the most popular political group on Facebook by far.

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October is a month for arguments – Where’s the best foliage? Who’s going to win the World Series?

And, of course, the perennial: Should newspapers endorse political candidates? A couple newspapers in Iowa entered the debate in recent days.

The Sioux City Journal weighed in on the matter earlier this week, pointing out that USA Today founder Al Neuharth is strongly opposed to the idea – calling it “dictatorial” and “kingmaking” – before then defending their practice of backing candidates:

A good editorial or endorsement isn’t the end of the conversation, rather the beginning. It spurs conversation and thought among the readers of the paper, many of which will be printed in the form of a letter to the editor in the days following that editorial or endorsement. It is anything but a directive.

Then, as if on cue, the Storm Lake Times jumped into the fray on Saturday with the first Iowa newspaper endorsement of a candidate, the not-quite-cryptically entitled “Biden For President."

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Sure, we all get a bit overwhelmed when it comes to keeping track of just who’s running for president. Just as soon as Tommy Thompson leaves the race, Fred Thompson jumps in.

But in MSNBC's promotional website image for tonight’s New Hampshire debate among the Democratic presidential candidates, Delaware Senator Joe Biden is not featured in a collage of all the participants. (And no, the photo is not limited to three frontrunners – Gravel, Kucinich, Dodd and Richardson are all in the collage.)

A phone call to Biden’s national press secretary Mark Paustenbach confirmed the senator will be taking part in tonight’s event, even with the campaign’s reported focus on Iowa. (A voicemail left at MSNBC's press office has yet to be returned.)

I know for a fact that Joe Scarborough had a great chat with Biden two weeks ago on "Morning Joe" -- I was there, man -- and that the graphics MSNBC is using on-air include Biden, but still ... it's an omission worth noting.

So, uh: Does anyone else have debate fatigue?

We sure have had a lot of these things so far. And they're early. For a little context, consider this: Bill Clinton didn't even formally enter the race for President until October of 1991; Republican Fred Thompson, expected to be a serious contender for the nomination next year, still isn't in.

And yet we seem to have a new debate just about every week, if not more frequently – this week has brought us two, with the Logo debate about gay and lesbian issues and the AFL-CIO debate on MSNBC, both featuring Democrats. Master of understatement Newt Gingrich, complaining that the campaign season is now much too long, recently said the debates have become “almost unendurable” -- "a cross between ‘The Bachelor,’ ‘American Idol’ and ‘Who’s Smarter than a Fifth-Grader.’”

Is there a better way to do this? The ratings for the debates have been relatively high this time around, but the key word there is "relatively" – even the much-hyped YouTube debate, certainly the most publicized debate thus far, only attracted 2,622,000 viewers, and Tuesday's debate attracted less than a million. There are legitimate concerns emerging that we may be getting too an overkill point: As Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, told the Times: “Most of us worry that doing all this so early on will wear out the electorate."

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It’s a common complaint from frustrated media consumers: Why don’t journalists just point out the truth? When a politician says something fishy, why don’t they call them on it? The facts are easy enough to track down, after all. So why won’t Mr. Talking Head just use ‘em?

Perhaps because the “facts” aren’t always as straightforward as we’d like to think. Consider John Neffinger’s criticism of MSNBC’s David Shuster and his fact checking of last night’s debate. One of Neffinger’s examples: After Hillary Clinton said she would "put somebody in charge who actually cared about the people of New Orleans" – making a clear implication about the present administration – Shuster said that "To say that the Bush administration doesn't care about New Orleans - that's a leap."

Neffinger also notes that Shuster went after Joe Biden for taking about “how much [Bush] has ruined” the country. Shuster cited the dictionary definition of "ruin" as causing "irreparable damage" and said Biden’s comments were "a bit of a stretch."

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What is the sound of one voice debating? We may find out this fall.

Yesterday, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson became the latest Democratic presidential candidates to decide that they will not participate in this fall’s Fox News Channel debate, which is co-sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus.

According to the AP article:

The debate exodus began two months ago when John Edwards became the first candidate to announce that he would not attend the Sept. 23 debate in Detroit. A week later, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama announced they also would not participate.

This leaves only Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel as the candidates who haven’t yet backed out of the event, making America rethink whether good things come in threes. Why are the candidates voluntarily withdrawing from a chance to get their message across to the largest prime-time audience in cable news? Pressure from two online organizations – ColorForChange and MoveOn – who accuse the "Fair and Balanced" news network of being “hostile to the interests of Black America.”

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By now we all know about Joe Biden's "oops" moment. But what if it wasn't an oops at all? The New Republic's "The Plank" points out that National Review's Bill Kristol suggested on "Special Report with Brit Hume" that Biden's "clean" comment was actually a shrewd move. Really. Here's the quote:

I think it's a very clever move by Senator Biden. . . . if he had just announced his candidacy, he'd be like the ninth Democrat in the race, who would care? He'd be on page A-7 in the papers, we would not be discussing him here…

That's true, I guess, as far as it goes. But still: All publicity ain't good publicity, is it? Is Michael Richards, for example, really all that better off these days?

The Skinny Today: Biden kicks off his campaign with a no-no. Plus, Senate compromises, Rudy may have social problems, and daylight saving time is kind of like Y2K. The Skinny is Hillary Profita's take on the top of the news and the best of the Web.

Joe Biden has had better days.

The Delaware Democrat and presidential candidate said this to New York Observer reporter Jason Horowitz: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

"Articulate?" "Bright?" "Clean?" Ouch. Cable news, a number of blogs, and the Drudge Report have all jumped on the comments, and Biden is already explaining himself. It'll be interesting to see where this goes from here: Will Biden see his presidential hopes derailed by a press corps unwilling to look past the perceived racism of the comments? Or will he be able to explain them away as an inarticulate moment and leave the taint of racism behind him?

Former Senator George Allen, of course, couldn't get past the implication that he was a racist, thanks in large part to his ill-advised "macaca" comment – he referred to a 20-year-old of Indian descent by the slur at a campaign event. Allen, you might remember, had a "race problem" even before the gaffe, something that certainly didn't make it any easier for him to play the macaca comment down as an isolated incident. Unfortunately for Biden, he has race problem of his own – he said "You CANNOT go into a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts without an Indian accent," a comment that some complained was offensive.

Is Biden a racist? I have no idea. What is becoming increasingly clear, however, is that he is prone to comments that get him in trouble – and in a media environment in which every gaffe can be endlessly replayed, discussed and analyzed right up to Election Day, that's not going to make his path to the White House any easier.

UPDATE, 6:10 PM: The following statement from Biden just landed in my inbox: "I deeply regret any offense my remark in the New York Observer might have caused anyone. That was not my intent and I expressed that to Senator Obama.”

UPDATE, 10:20 AM: How could I have forgotten this?

The Skinny Today: Congress gets skeptical, threatens to legislate. Condi heads to the Hill, Senators get hostile. Posh and Becks relocate to L.A., U.S. tabloids rejoice. The Skinny is Hillary Profita's take on the top of the news and the best of the Web.

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