THE KERRY AS DUKAKIS MEME seems to be taking off. Jay Reding has further thoughts.

Hey, it’s better to be compared to Dukakis than to Hitler, right?

WHEN, OH, WHEN, WILL WE GET A DECENT PRESS CORPS? Today’s New York Times contains an article by Kate Zernike with this passage:

Like the helmeted Michael Dukakis peeking out of the tank, or the first George Bush bewildered at the grocery scanner, the photo of Mr. Kerry windsurfing played into the negative stereotype his opponents are trying to play up – in this case, that of the out-of-touch, elitist Massachusetts liberal.

Maybe she copped that from Juan Gonzales in the Daily News a couple of days earlier, who wrote: “Can we ever forget the look of utter amazement on Bush, the father, the first time he found himself facing an electronic scanner at a supermarket counter 12 years ago?”

Of course, as Snopes notes, the story isn’t true. And it’s even a famous error by The New York Times itself:

Claim: During a photo opportunity at a 1988 grocers’ convention, President George Bush was “amazed” at encountering supermarket scanners for the first time.

Status: False. . . .

One of the exhibits Bush visited was a demonstration of NCR’s checkout scanning technology, an event New York Times reporter Andrew Rosenthal turned into a chiding front page story about Bush’s lack of familiarity with the details of ordinary life in America. . . . Then the details of the story started to dribble out. Andrew Rosenthal of The New York Times hadn’t even been present at the grocers’ convention. He based his article on a two-paragraph report filed by the lone pool newspaperman allowed to cover the event, Gregg McDonald of the Houston Chronicle, who merely wrote that Bush had a “look of wonder” on his face and didn’t find the event significant enough to mention in his own story. Moreover, Bush had good reason to express wonder: He wasn’t being shown then-standard scanner technology, but a new type of scanner that could weigh groceries and read mangled and torn bar codes.

Dana Milbank has recycled this urban myth, too. (“Recall George H.W. Bush’s wonderment in the 1992 campaign upon coming across a supermarket scanner.”)

Good thing they’re not sloppy, careless, incapable of research, and prone to spout urban legends and bogus reports of events they didn’t even witness, like us bloggers.

UPDATE: In a related development Ann Althouse shows up Joe Klein, through the miracle of counting! “That took less than five minutes to figure out. Come on, Klein!”

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Economist isn’t looking so good, either. What’s going on here?

MORE: Reader Bob Kingsbery emails:

Glenn,

One reason I got a degree in journalism was because it required the fewest math classes.

This explains a lot, actually.

BOI FROM TROY has an article on blog fatigue that’s worth a look.

IF ANYONE GOES TO THE CLUB SPACE hurricane relief party tonight, send me a report, preferably with pictures.

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH would like your help on a movie project involving Neal Stephenson.

WILL HUTTON: “With all eyes fixed on the American presidential elections, the scale of the looming crisis in France and Germany has gone largely unremarked.”

Well, the blogosphere has been remarking on it. But Hutton hasn’t given up yet. And neither (quite) have I, though I suspect I differ from Hutton on many particulars. (Via Custos Morum).

UPDATE: Another election loss for Gerhard Schroeder. I guess anti-Bush sentiment isn’t enough to sustain a party.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Read this article on Europe’s foreign policy problems, too.

And David Carr has more thoughts about Hutton’s article.

INTERESTING PERSPECTIVE from StrategyPage:

American combat losses continue at a historically low level. Since March, 2003, American troops have suffered 7,900 casualties (including 976 dead.) This is an unprecedented killed to wounded ratio of 1:8. In past wars, the ration had been 1:4 or 1:5. American combat deaths over the Summer were 42 in June, 54 in July and 66 in August. There are the equivalent of three American combat divisions in Iraq, each running several hundred patrols and other combat operations each day. Never have combat divisions, operating in hostile territory, kept their casualties this low. The news media, concentrating on any losses as the story have generally missed the historical significance of the low casualties. The American armed forces have developed new equipment, weapons and tactics that have transformed combat operations in an unprecedented way. This is recognized within the military, but is generally ignored, or misunderstood, by the general media.

Well, that last is no surprise. . . .

FRANK RICH WRITES: “Though the major newspapers, including this one, did vet and challenge the Swifties’ claims, aggressive reporting on TV was rare.” Hmm. I don’t remember the Times “vetting” the Cambodia claim. I remember them ignoring it, then burying the Kerry campaign’s admission that it was true.

But now there’s some more serious vetting going on:

The Pentagon has ordered an investigation into the awarding of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s five Vietnam War decorations.

The highly unusual inquiry is to be carried out by the Inspector-General’s Office of the US Navy. Senator Kerry served as a Swift boat captain for four months in 1968, serving two tours of duty in Vietnam.

Hmm. No wonder Doug Brinkley seems to be hedging.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, apparently this counts as “vetting” at the Times.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here. And what happened to the promised Brinkley New Yorker piece?

And more thoughts on Rich’s column here. “Issues matter guys!! That’s what elections are about. . . . It’s not acting or what the stages look like. At the end of the day, it’s issues — and the NY Times hasn’t gotten it for a long time.”

POWERLINE NOTES MORE MISREPORTING from the AP.

UPDATE: Maybe they’re just being “filters for truth!”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom Maguire has more on the AP’s misreporting of Schwarzenegger — which makes it seem as if he lied when he didn’t, by misstating what he said — and is led to observe: “So often I find myself wondering – is this true, or was it just something reported by the Associated Press?”

Harsh, but we’re looking at two serious and inexcusable errors over the course of a weekend, both of which serve to undercut the Bush campaign. Coincidence? Maybe, if you believe that the AP is so sloppy that errors like this aren’t unusual.

THE SLAUGHTER IN THE SCHOOLHOUSE: Mark Steyn writes that being sad isn’t enough.

IT’S DUKAKIS ALL OVER AGAIN: Once Al Gore dropped out of the race in 1988, I became a — not terribly enthusiastic — Dukakis supporter, and I remember that as the campaign looked worse, people were investing a lot of hope in the notion that rumors of an affair involving George H.W. Bush would emerge and deep-six his Presidency. Lots of people tried to give the stories traction, to no avail. I even remember the night of the election, on the way to the ghastly “Dukakis Victory Party” in D.C., passing a crowd of people near DuPont Circle holding up a big banner with the alleged paramour’s name. (Nowadays it would be a MoveOn commercial, which is ironic if you think about it. . . .)

Now, between former Dukakis campaign manager Susan Estrich’s wild threats of dirty tricks and Kevin Drum’s related thoughts, I think it’s fair to say that Kerry supporters are in the same unhappy place.

At any rate, Stephen Bainbridge notes that, this time around, it’s hard to argue that the Kerry campaign’s problems stem from fighting too fair. Bainbridge offers a rather lengthy list of reasons why fairness has not been at the forefront of their efforts to date.

Meanwhile, speaking of Dukakis, Eileen MacNamara of the Boston Globe notes the return of Dukakis henchman John Sasso, now in the capacity of Kerry hitman:

The problem with soliciting contributions to end the “smug and arrogant tactics of misinformation” that Sasso’s letter rightly attributes to Republicans is that it only works when the purveyor holds the moral high ground. That would not be Sasso, he of the attack video that torpedoed the presidential campaign of Democratic Senator Joseph R. Biden of Delaware in 1987, he of the audiotape that ridiculed the physical disabilities of the wife of Edward King, Michael Dukakis’s gubernatorial primary opponent in 1982. . . .

I agree with Prof. Bainbridge that the Kerry campaign’s problem isn’t that it has been too reluctant to sling mud. In fact, I agree with Chris Dodd, who says that Kerry’s real problem is that he hasn’t given people any sort of positive vision of a Kerry presidency.

UPDATE: The Estrich link above was wrong before; fixed now. Meanwhile Polipundit observes: “It has now been one month and four days since John Kerry last answered questions from a real reporter.”

In a non-Dukakis vein, the Los Angeles Times is channeling its Gray Davis coverage. Kerry aides are increasingly confident! But Mickey Kaus isn’t panicking yet.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Is Doug Brinkley abandoning ship? Sounds like he’s at least got a toe in the water.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Trouble for Kerry in Ohio. And now he’s on vacation again. And LaShawn Barber notes bitterness at the New York Times. Hugh Hewitt observes: “When the lefty pundits start bringing up Jerry Voorhis and Helen Gahagan Douglas, you know they are whipped. . . .Today’s New York Times piece is a desperate plea by party regulars for Kerry to play a ‘keep-it-close-so-the-party-doesn’t-get-annihilated’ campaign, like Dole in 1996.” Don’t get cocky, Hugh!

A READER SENDS THIS BBC LINK FROM BRITAIN, with the following observation:

“State of the Union” is the spot which has replaced Alistair Cooke’s “Letter From America”.

Radio 4 provides a listen again function (which you will get if you click on the link above) and ordinarily runs a transcript of the latest talk in the “America” news section of their website.

No transcript this week.

This is perhaps because the 10-minute feature looks at current war heroes, who have not made any brags about their injuries, have not asked to go home, and have more or less no chance for promotion — or, what is more to the point, self-promotion.

Give it a whirl. You’ll be glad you did.

I did listen, and it’s quite good.

ROBERT TAGORDA worries about the future of Harvard undergraduates. Yale people have been doing that for years!

BRIAN GOEBEL WRITES:

Although homeland security appears to be one of the dominant issues in the upcoming election, there has been relatively little meaningful debate between the candidates or the two parties on most issues.

True enough. And too bad.

N.Z. BEAR HAS A POST on 527 money and where it’s going next.

UPDATE: Some interesting related stuff here.

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The most-wanted Saddam Hussein aide in Iraq, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, was captured in the town of Tikrit on Sunday, Iraq’s defense ministry said.

The ministry said Ibrahim was captured by members of Iraq’s national guard backed by U.S. forces. Tikrit was Saddam’s hometown and one of the powerbases of his regime.

Iraqi Minister of State Wael Abdul al-Latif told Reuters it was “75 to 90 percent certain” the captured man was Ibrahim. He said 70 of the man’s supporters were killed and 80 captured when they tried to prevent him being seized.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Wizbang: “I question the timing.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Izzat him? Maybe not, according to this report. But it must have been somebody important, if they put up that much of a fight, I’d think.

MORE THOUGHTS ON CHECHNYA AND TERROR, over at Winds of Change.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here:

Obviously, we must eliminate terrorists wherever we find them, but we must also provide an example of moral leadership and devote resources to transforming education in the Muslim world, replacing the odious madrasahs that are the breeding grounds for hate. These so-called religious schools are often financed by Saudi Arabia, which has halfway awakened to the fatal disease it has incubated, but Shiite Iran remains the greatest threat. It is radically ideological, seeks nuclear weapons, and sponsors Syrian terrorism as well as most of the terrorism in Iraq. If that weren’t enough, it also sponsors and arms most of the face cards in terrorism’s unholy deck–Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah. Iran, truly, is the problem of the future. So we must promote political democracy whenever we can in the region. Remember what Abu Musab Zarqawi, the ruthless terrorist leader in Iraq, wrote in his memo to al Qaeda? “Democracy is coming. There will be no excuse thereafter for terrorism in Iraq.”

Perhaps we can start democratizing Iran next.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger Simon notes the politics of Pirandello at the New York Times.

DONALD SENSING has an interesting roundup of news.

UPDATE: Lots of interesting stuff at Brothers Judd, too.

SEE, THEY COULD HAVE LEARNED THIS sooner (and cheaper) by reading the right blogs:

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, an influential Democrat from Connecticut, said his party’s standard-bearer had “a very confused message in August, and the Republicans had a very clear and concise one.”

Mr. Dodd was one of several Democrats who said they now thought Mr. Kerry had made a mistake at his convention in July by talking mainly about his history as a Vietnam War veteran and criticizing Mr. Bush’s policies, without offering a vision of what a Kerry term would be like.

“We did not adequately lay out the contrast, compare and contrast what a Kerry administration would do and what the Bush administration has done,” Mr. Dodd said of the Democrats’ convention in Boston. “That was a mistake. Vietnam, in terms of John Kerry’s service, that was a good point to make, but making it such a central point sort of invited the kind of response you’ve seen.“

Gee, do you think? Check out this timeline for more perspective, though it doesn’t include the Thursday night debacle. (Emph. added).

UPDATE: More blog wisdom for the Kerry campaign, here. And here.

THE FOLKS AT CLUB SPACE IN MIAMI tell me that they’ll be having a hurricane relief party tonight. Wish I could be there.

FROM Rockwood.

QUEER EYE for the Bush guy.

MARK STEYN writes that Kerry can’t take the heat:

There was an old joke back in the Cold War:

Proud American to Russian guy: ”In my country every one of us has the right to criticize our president.”

Russian guy: ”Same here. In my country every one of us has the right to criticize your president.”

That seems to be the way John Kerry likes it. Americans should be free to call Bush a moron, a liar, a fraud, a deserter, an agent of the House of Saud, a mass murderer, a mass rapist (according to the speaker at a National Organization for Women rally last week) and the new Hitler (according to just about everyone). But how dare anyone be so impertinent as to insult John Kerry! . . .

Sorry, man, that’s not the way it works. And if he thinks it does, he’s even further removed from the realities of democratic politics than he was from the interior of Cambodia. Instead of those military records the swift boat vets are calling for, I’d be more interested in seeing his medical ones.

I don’t think a Kerry administration would work out well.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here:

By now, much of the sturm und drang of the Swiftboat controversy has passed. Yet, one man seems intent on keeping it alive. His name is John Kerry and he’s from Massachusetts. At a rally here in Ohio, Kerry denounced Bush for questioning his patriotism, and mocked Cheney for not serving in Vietnam (in contrast to, say, John Edwards?). Beyond sounding petty in light of the larger campaign issues, this tirade reveals some fundamental flaws in Kerry as a presidential candidate. These flaws range from the personal, to campaign strategy, to larger misunderstandings about America’s cultural dynamic.

Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ouch: “The only thing that was bad about the convention week was that it kept Kerry out of the public eye. Thanks to the Kerry Magic, the more the public sees of him the better we do. Answering our desperate pleas Kerry made an unprecedented midnight appearance last night, holding a rally to answer the charges hurled at him by the Republican Convention speakers.”

MORE: Still more Kerry pans here.

BELDAR offers first impressions on Mike Kranish’s Kerry book. Kerry was “severely wounded in combat?”

ROGER SIMON IS OUTING NEWSDAY:

An interesting (but small) example is how I have been distorted. In tomorrow’s Newsday there will be a number of quotes from those who blogged at the Republican Convention. . . . They asked permission to excerpt my blog, without providing the excerpts they had in mind (a normal and professional thing to do – I would have). I smelled a rat, but gave them permission to do so as a test. And guess what? They chose the most anti-Bush remarks I made, highlighting my firm opposition to the President on the social issues. You would have to read these excerpts very closely to realize that I unequivocally support Bush in the election and would no more vote for John Kerry for President in an era of terrorism than for a protester on Seventh Avenue.

Stuff like this just keeps happening, and yet people in the media seem surprised and offended when that pattern is noted.

UPDATE: David Adesnik says he had a different experience.