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Saturday, August 25, 2007

Is it time to set up the "Jodi Kantor Watch" blog?
Posted by Jill | 10:03 PM
Different Jodi, same bullshit. In 2004, the blog Wilgoren Watch was set up to deconstruct the New York Times' coverage of the Howard Dean campaign. During that race, reporter Jodi Wilgoren could always be relied on to write some kind of crap full of innuendo and allusions to insanity, loose cannonism, or some other Crime Against the Punditocracy that in her mind disqualified Dean from the highest office in the land.

Now the Times has a new Jodi sharpening her knives -- but once again, only for Democrats. In recent weeks, this particular hack has done hatchet jobs on Chelsea Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Barack Obama's pastor. Now, in tomorrow's paper, she all but accuses John Edwards of child abuse:

Emma Claire and Jack Edwards, 9 and 7, were on their umpteenth campaign trip earlier this month, this time through small towns where their father was decrying rural poverty and the power of lobbyists.

The two children barely listened. They scampered away from speeches as fast as their parents would allow, to vending machines and arcade games and swimming expeditions, a campaign bus stocked with Oreos and DVDs, and for a glorious half hour, a trampoline next door to a speaking event.

And they treated an interviewer the way politicians surely wish they could at times, refusing at first to remove their iPod earphones for a discussion of life on the trail.

“I don’t want to do this,” Jack protested to his father, John Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidate and former North Carolina senator.

“I don’t care whether you want to do this,” Mr. Edwards replied.

A moment later, Jack hid his face in his hands.

“Mr. Jack, do we need to go in the back and have a conversation?” asked Mr. Edwards, lifting his son’s head.


Horrors! A presidential candidate is demanding that his child behave instead of doing whatever the hell he wants! Someone call Youth and Family Services!!

Now, if you read the rest of this article, in which Kantor goes on to talk about the logistical problems of running a presidential campaign when you have pre-adolescent children, you might be tempted to think she's just doing this as an illustration of the special challenges faced by today's candidates. But you'd be wrong:

Mr. Edwards, who lost his oldest son in a car accident 11 years ago, is determined to avoid regrets like the one Mr. Brownback described, even if it means dragging Emma Claire and Jack through thousands of miles and stump speeches.

Back in North Carolina, the Edwards family lives in a 28,000-square-foot pleasure palace, with a basketball court and a room dedicated to arts-and-crafts projects. This fall, the children will not be there much; instead of their routine of school, sports and friends, they will travel with their parents, spending days on buses and nights at Comfort Inns. Their mother and a tutor will school them on the road, a plan hatched, Elizabeth Edwards said, even before she learned that her breast cancer had recurred and would not be cured.


Inflammatory language much, Jodi? And just for emphasis, at least online, those two paragraphs are repeated on page 2.

What's so dangerous about the so-called "lifestyle" articles about the candidates penned by Ms. Kantor is that she finds a way to skewer all of the Democrats. She'll attack Michelle Obama in one article, then compare the Obamas' leaving of their daughters at home favorably to the Edwards' decision to bring their chidren with them on the campaign trail. And yet only the child-handling practices of the Democrats are open to question, despite the fact that Sam Brownback and Fred Thompson also have young children.

There is a very unpleasant and pervasive tone in the press that John and Elizabeth Edwards are supposted to just go home to their mansion, get out of sight, and sit and cry until Elizabeth's cancer gets the best of her. That this couple is going on and living their lives and doing what they had planned to do before Elizabeth's cancer returned ought to be an inspiration to the many, many Americans with cancer. But refusing to hide cancer makes people like Jodi Kantor uncomfortable. Or perhaps it's the threat that John Edwards poses to the corporate interests that pay Jodi Kantor's salary.

I have no doubt that as low-key and friendly as this couple is, they are tough enough to deal with what is certain to be escalating second-guessing and innuendo from the press, particularly if Edwards ends up winning one of the early primaries. You don't get to where John Edwards is by crumpling like a cheap car. The question is whether the American people are smart enough to hear his message around the din of second guessing of the Edwards' decisions about their family life.

Accompanying the article is a video about the Edwards children's experience on the campaign trail. In the video, John Edwards reminds his son Jack about how in 2004, he caught the reporters on the campaign bus teaching him how to play poker, and when he pulled Jack away, the boy said "I want to go back with my friends." Edwards' response? "They're not your friends."

He was right then, and he's right today.

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