Caveat lector

NIGHT OF THE LIVING BORGER! Gloria Borger can’t be human. She proved it with her comment on Gore:

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2003

INVASION OF THE PUNDIT SNATCHERS: Readers convince us that we've confused Night of the Living Dead with Invasion of the Body Snatchers. (With cable, who ever sees the opening credits?) We accept one reader's incomparable admonition: "You need to brush up on your cheesy horror films. They're such an apt metaphor for what's going on in our country today."

NIGHT OF THE LIVING BORGER: Always remember: They simply aren’t human. They may have been overcome by pods, as in Night of the Living Dead. They have may come from other planets. But clearly, your zombified Washington pundits aren’t human. And because you know that, you’ll understand the closing paragraph on Gloria Borger’s U.S. News column this week. Like the rest of her scripted cohort, Borger is keeping busy these days saying that Kerry is just like Al Gore. Therefore, the pundit typed this:

BORGER: It is, of course, very early. Kerry, like Gore, is not a natural on the campaign trail. Yet unlike Gore, he listens. “He doesn’t always think that he knows more than anyone else in the room,” says an adviser. That’s a start. “Now all he has to do is try and build his own base,” he adds. “Without looking too calculating.” And without claiming he invented the Internet. [END OF COLUMN]

How zombified is Gloria Borger? We emitted low, mordant chuckles when she sat at her keyboard, arms weirdly extended, and risibly typed up this:

BORGER: Then there’s the question of what to do about Howard Dean. At last week’s presidential debate, Kerry did not go on the attack. Within the Democratic campaign establishment, there’s a feeling that “Kerry waited too long to attack Dean, and now if he attacks him, it looks desperate,” says a Kerry ally. Gore, you may recall, refrained from attacking his only primary opponent, Bill Bradley, until Bradley started gaining real ground. So what’s Kerry supposed to do? “Stop waiting for people to come to you because everyone in Washington thinks you’re really good,” says a former top Gore adviser.

Borger walks with her arms out straight, and she has a glassy stare when she speaks. But she knows the rules for discussing Al Gore. He thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room (alternate: he acts like the smartest kid in the class.) He clearly doesn’t know who he is (he “struggl[ed] to find his true self on the stump”). And most important, Al Gore said he invented the Internet! By now, even the zombified Borger knows how rank that statement is. But Borger is a Grade A press courtier. How long will we let them, with their glassy-eyed stares, make a joke of America’s discourse?

VISIT OUR INCOMPARABLE ARCHIVES: Guesting on CNBC’s Russert, Borger gave one of the most ludicrous interviews in all of Campaign 2000. On July 8, 2000, she appeared on the hour-long show with her Face the Nation co-host, Bob Schieffer. The most ludicrous moment? The pair pretended they didn’t know why George Bush had spoken at Bob Jones University. (“Bad staff work,” Borger said, arms extended.) But the glassy-eyed Schieffer was there at her side, and he engaged in rank clowning too. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 1/13/03, with a link to earlier reporting. No one could read this program’s full transcript and believe that such “people” were real.

A VOICE IN HER HEAD: Then there’s the New York Times’ Elisabeth Bumiller. Yesterday, Dan Quayle’s vice presidential bust was unveiled in the Capitol Rotunda. So Bumiller flipped through the index cards that clutter the pundit corps’ heads:

BUMILLER (pgh 1): Dan Quayle, the politician who will be remembered for his youth, conservatism and mishap in spelling, proudly assumed his place in marble today alongside John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and 41 other vice presidents of the United States.

Meanwhile, get ready for the next marble bust story. According to Bumiller, Senate curator Diane Skvarla “hope[s] that the next one in line, of Al Gore, would not take 12 years” to complete. Uh-oh! A marble bust of stiff old Al Gore? Bumiller’s arms will reach for her keyboard. And you already know what she’ll type.

VISIT OUR INCOMPARABLE ARCHIVES: On April 14, 1999, Quayle formally announced he was running for president. In the Washington Post, David Von Drehle’s front-page “news report” was a startling example of press corps dysfunction. His open mockery of Quayle was stunning (see links below), but he included some screaming factual blunders—in a piece designed to show how stupid Quayle is! (Quayle had said “ddC,” not “DDT,” in discussing the treatment of AIDS years before. The Post had bungled the matter in real time, and then had quickly corrected its error. But years later, on the day Quayle announced, Von Drehle went out and re-bungled the topic—as he told us how stupid Quayle is.) Who could believe that these people are human? To sample Von Drehle’s front-page “news report,” see THE DAILY HOWLER, 9/27/99.

A HUMAN BEING WOULD KNOW TO INCLUDE IT: Your press corps is skilled at reciting stale spin. But they bungle the simplest technical matters. In today’s NYT, David Halbfinger reports on the recently failed Alabama tax referendum. He stresses how deeply the state’s budget will have to be cut. At one point, he writes this:

HALBFINGER: The Legislature must convene in a special session on Monday to write a new budget for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. Mr. Riley has put the budget shortfall at $675 million, and lawmakers said that the governor made clear no one and no program would be spared.

A human would know to include those numbers. But this sort of thing is really quite typical. You’ve heard and heard, again and again, about California’s recent “$38 billion budget deficit.” But readers, how big is the annual California budget? We’ll guess that you never have heard. Pundits are good at reciting stale spin. They forget to include basic numbers.

SCRIBES IN THE HOOD: Finally, we can’t ignore the ridiculous “question” asked by Juan Williams at Tuesday’s Dem debate. Fox News Channel sponsored the session, and they apparently felt they had to showcase their straight-from-the-hood, number-one pundit flunky. Believe it or not, he “asked” this:

WILLIAMS: Ambassador Braun, Governor Dean has suggested that states like Vermont, Montana and Wyoming with overwhelmingly white populations really don’t need gun control, in part because of their rural character. But urban areas, such as Baltimore, Maryland, with large minority populations do need gun control. Do you agree?