Personally, I think being "grilled" by his fellow liberals is a less-than-perfect way to prepare for a debate with a conservative.

Interesting that we are only now hearing about this. Shouldn't these journalists have reported on the meeting? Clearly it wasn't a "trial," it was a supplication/strategy session.

I remember ABC News doing something like this for Al Gore in 2000 - a "working dinner" where Gore was given advice on how to comport himself and what to expect on the campaign trail. Whole lot of good it did him.

I'm surprised at several of the names at the meeting; I'd have assumed that they were Dean supporters.

The part about the President "flounder[ing] like a gaffed fish", when speaking to reporters without a script, is wickedly funny, when compared to Kerry's recent verbal problems.

What liberal media? I really don't know what you are talking about. There are no liberals in the media. None.

PATRIOT Act--Kerry voted for it

Iraq war--Kerry voted for it

Game face--remarkably pliable for having been botoxed

What were the results of the "trial"? I can't be bothered to click the link.

That's quite a "cabal". Did Jim Kelly have to
leave the room when they got down to real business.

The George Will comparison is not apt. Will helped prep Reagan for the Carter debate, yes, but that wasn't the problem. Afterward, Will appeared on national television to "review" the debate, and proceeded to praise Reagan's performance, without once disclosing his own role in it.

One can easily point to Alterman, Franken and a few others as fellow travelers of Kerry's (I had actually read about this event on Alterman's blog back when it happened), but some of the others aren't so obvious. Regardless, are you sure that this was a case of the media prepping the candidate (one who at the time was a long shot for the nomination), or rather did the media just get what it always wants from political figures, and what it never gets from Bush (i.e. plenty of time and the answers to all of their questions)?

"The crowd I joined in Franken's living room was comprised of:"

Say what? Shouldn't that be "...composed of" or "The crowd I joined in Franken's living room comprised:" ? It certainly should.

This sentence would earn a failing grade in a Junior High English class...Leave no liberal behind!

Will pick nits for food.

M:

You surely arenn't saying that the folks listed have recused themselves from covering Kerry since this meeting are you?

"Shouldn't these journalists have reported on the meeting?"

What meeting? Meeting never existed, except in the Lies and Slanders of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

(i.e. Doubleplusungood crimethink -- Doubleplusungood unevent refs unpersons. llbb.)

M. -

Are you claiming that you would not object to a similar meeting between Bush and Cal Thomas, Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Rush Limbaugh, Brit Hume, Mort Kondracke, Bob Novak, Matt Drudge, Thomas Sowell, Linda Chavez, Tony Blankney, Jonah Goldberg, etc.? Even to complain that no liberals were invited?

I guess now we know who it was decided that turkey was "electable." They sure are out of touch, aren't they.

geez.. it reminds one of the Pauline Kael quote about not knowing 'anyone who voted for Nixon'

talk about an insular group ...

OJ: Why should they? Although I have not seen a transcript, the meeting in question has never been described as a coaching session. Everyone who has written of the encounter described it as a question-and-answer session with Kerry. Kerry was giving the answers, not the media figures. Sounds like an interview to me, albeit a friendlier one than would be expected had some notable conservative pundits been included. The only thing that makes me even slightly uncomfortable is the location; why Franken's living room? Was Kerry so broke that he couldn't afford a conference room in a NY hotel?

Jim Hamlen: As if meetings of that sort between conservative pundits and conservative politicians didn't take place all the time? The analogy OJ wished to make was between the Kerry session and the fuss over George Will's work for the Reagan campaign. To reiterate: the problem was not that Will worked with Reagan, it was that he went on the air as an analyst afterward and failed to disclose the association--in fact, he was allowed to review his own work. Where's the parallel?

JonofAtlanta (and others): The meeting took place before any primaries had been held. At the time, Kerry was well behind both Dean and Clark in every poll, and struggling for recognition among his fellow Democrats. Can you, or can anyone, explain to me what utility he might have found in including any prominent Republicans or conservatives in that Q&A session? Were he to do the same thing now, the "insular" complaint might have some validity, but at the time, he was speaking with exactly who he needed to.

M:

George Will is an opinion columnist and commentator. Here we have editors from the two major newsweeklies, the Times, the New Yorker, etc. Are we supposed to believe that they are aiding Kerry's election effort by night but providing impartial news coverage by day?

I actually favor a partisan press, so I don't mind this, so long as it is publicized and publications like Time, Newsweek, the Times, etc., are admitted to be extensions of the Democratic Party.

OJ: Wrong issue. Of course Will was going to like Reagan's debate performance, regardless of whether or not he contributed to it. The ethical lapse was in evaluating that performance on TV without disclosing his own role. Beyond this, the title for this blog entry was a little ridiculous. It would take little time or effort to put together a similar conservative guest list, and using senior editors, correspondents and writers for the same organizations. This is why _I_ don't trust the media, either.

You have yet to demonstrate that the editors in question are aiding Kerry's election effort. At the time of the meeting, Kerry's campaign was struggling badly. He invited a group of media figres, at least some of whom are liberal pundits, for an extended Q&A session (no word on who was invited and didn't show), and fielded questions for two hours. Not the sort of questions the editors of U.S. News & World Report and Fox News, along with a coterie of talk radio hosts, might have thrown at him (as I said before, he was attempting to speak to Democratic primary voters, not the nation at large), but not a game of slow-pitch softball, either.

The only hint of partiality in coverage subsequent to the meeting that I can think of would be the difference in coverage that Time, etc. gave to Kerry vs. Dean when either one was the front-runner. Dean got the worst of it, but it is difficult to know if this was due to favoritism or to Dean's own actions.

I was unaware that the New Yorker aspired to political impartiality. They publish Seymour Hersh's pieces rather regularly, after all.

I also favor a partisan press. I do think you'd be surprised how many of the supposed liberal media bastions would actually fall on the right side of the spectrum, though. I mean, do you really think Time magazine is an arm of the Democratic party? Newsweek?

M:

Yes, both Time and Newsweek are liberal--Henry Luce has been dead awhile now. But the point is that these aren't pundits but editors who are participating in a campaign that they are managing the coverage of.

M. -

Naivete seems to be in vogue today. If you favor a partisan press, then why object to what Will did 20 years ago? Did he lie about it? If you don't, then the entire prospect of Kerry meeting with all those on the list should horrify you. Which is it?

BTW, when you doubt that said editors are helping Kerry's campaign, compare the coverage given the AWOL charge (re-ignited by Michael Moore and Terry McAuliffe, hardly neutral) versus the Alex Polier story, which was fired up by Wesley Clark and Clinton minion Chris Lehane, and remains fully combustible on a videotape somewhere (an ABC affiliate, I believe). When Peter Jennings runs that tape, then we'll know he is neutral. But not until.

"Participating in a campaign." How? By asking Kerry questions for two hours, and listening to the answers? I only ask because I have yet encountered no indication that the meeting was anything more than that.

Presumably, editors, correspondents and writers everywhere are going to vote for _someone_. Many of them will even give money to one or the other campaign. Are they necessarily disqualified from covering, or managing the coverage, of either campaign as a result?

"Time and Newsweek are liberal." On some issues, perhaps. Politically, they will tend to attack or defend according to whatever is going to sell magazines. Their attitudes toward Clinton and Gore were hardly consistent with either magazine being an "extension" of the Democratic party.

Jim Hamlen: A partisan press only works when the partisanship is fully acknowledged. Will committed a lie of omission; he acted as a commentator on national TV but failed to mention that he was employed by the Reagan campaign. At some point this has to get through.

As for the Alex Polier story, what was that you said about naivete? If you honestly believe that Peter Jennings or anyone in the media would sit on hot evidence of recent marital infidelity on the part of the Democratic nominee for the presidency, then you're beyond my ken. If they have something they're not running, it's because they can't verify it, even by the lazy standards of modern-day "journalism."

M:

"Time has grown short. In an effort to galvanize the message Kerry wants to deliver in the time remaining, he convened a powerful roster of journalists and columnists in the New York City apartment of Al Franken last Thursday. "

M. Bulger: "If you honestly believe that Peter Jennings or anyone in the media would sit on hot evidence of recent marital infidelity on the part of the Democratic nominee for the presidency, then you're beyond my ken."

You're kidding, right? Socialist editors sat on the Monica Lewinsky story for an entire year. And if Lucianne Goldberg hadn't ruthlessly exploited Linda Tripp, by talking her into surreptitiously tape-recording her conversations with Lewinsky, who knows if the story would ever have been reported by the socialist, mainstream media.

As they say on Stargate SG-1:

"SYSTEM-LORD CLINTON IS A GOD! A GOD CAN DO NO WRONG! AND WE ARE HIS LOYAL JEFFAH!"

(Who says all that "sci-fi stuff" is cheap escapism? It's getting more like reality than reality. At least we SF fans are honest about our love for fantasies...)

No one attending that event has ever had a kind word to say about a Republican (other than John McCain), but the key name on the list is the last one, which I think really is the tipoff as to what it was all about. Schlesinger has spent over 40 years flacking for the Democrats and epitomizes the traditionalist faction of the party; i.e., that which is chiefly concerned with a candidate's "electability." For all the author's talk of a grilling, this likely was little more than a thinly disguised stop-Dean rally. His preference for Kerry shines throughout the article (I love the line about JFK's "eyes blazing").

George - I think you hit the nail on the head. But the question to ask all of these people is why they didn't just support Howard Dean? He espoused positions all of them have favorably written about or endorsed. Maybe Dean wasn't European enough.