J$P Extra! Matt Drudge speaks out on John Kerry, Mark Halperin, Kendrick Meek, Photoshop, and more!

From The Drudge Report radio edition, October 10 2004:

The adults are at it again, fighting over the quotes. This one started in the New York Times Magazine. John Kerry said he wants to get back to a time when terrorism was just a nuisance. Like the first World Trade Center bombing, that was just a nuisance. The theory is that it was a liberal reporter, and Kerry just opened up to him. At some point here, they just have to act like grown-ups and realize that they’re going to use what they say. Is Kerry going to say now he gave this interview “late at night”? Isn’t that the excuse he gave for one of his other “blunders”? Or it’s taken out of context--that’s the favorite rebuttal now of the DNC. Didn’t Kerry write in that book of his that the number one threat to America was the Italian Mafia?

The way this campaign is working, with Photoshops and the bulge on Bush’s back--it’s growing every time. The latest photo now has Bush with a tumor coming out of his jacket. Whoever came up with the Kerry/Jane Fonda picture did better work than that. Now they claim there’s a bulge in the back in St Louis too. I think there should be a mental health test before you touch your touch screen and go vote, with the balance of this delicate world in your hands. But it is the era of Photoshop, so I don’t believe the first version of anything, especially when someone like Salon comes in on it. Only to counter what we did last week which was raise a very legitimate question, what did Kerry pull out of his jacket that was against debate rules? That’s all this story was; they counter with tumors and tentacles coming out of Bush’s back as legit, and they get it on Stephanopoulos’s show, because we all know how wonderful a journalist Stephanopoulos is, and his tricycle buddy Mark Halperin.

Did you see Halperin’s memo, saying both sides lie, but Kerry’s not using distortions to win? Because Kerry’s right, and my name’s Mark Halperin. According to ABC News, Bush is using distortions to win, and we don’t have to cover both in the same way, because Kerry’s correct on the issues. And the situation is now “quite grave”, because ABC News’s own poll now has Bush back up. Halperin admonishes his staff not to artificially hold both sides equally accountable. This is going to be a fun class at NYU and Columbia Journalism when they dissect this campaign and the media gurus covering it. They’re not going to sanction him, they’re not going to do anything with him, he’s their guy, he’s the new generation, he’s the new school, he’s like Stephanopoulos and Jake Tapper, that whole group over there. Stephanopoulos, who doesn’t want us to remember that he worked in the previous administration. We’re not supposed to talk about that. He’s not artificially holding both sides accountable; he’s just going right after the Republicans.

They went to the churches in Miami, and oh yes, Kerry started preaching. And Jesse Jackson is really laying it on thick: a thousand lives lost, 7000 injured, paralyzed, loss of eye, loss of leg. I love a cheap cry. He knows how to give a speech. US Representative Kendrick Meek told parishioners, and this was said with Kerry nodding: “He’s fighting against liars and demons”. As Kerry nodded. You can get away with that if you’re a Democrat, but you try Bush start having warmup speakers talk about Democrats as demons, and you think it would be like some of this wire copy that doesn’t even mention this quote that Kerry is fighting against demons? Get me Mel Gibson; we need a rewrite. Pastors generally walk a fine line for fear of losing their tax-exempt status, but Friendship Missionary’s Reverend opened the service by introducing Kerry in the church as the next President of the United States. This is a church, ladies and gentlemen. So don’t forget to pass around that plate. Looks like there may be some demons in the church.

We’ve all been preoccupied with terror from abroad, when it appears that here we’re going to be fighting each other on this election. I’ve got some good sources in the Kerry campaign, and I said when are you going to start responding to these Bush campaign headquarters getting ransacked, and the urination on the Bush sign? What is it going to take for Kerry to go public and say please stop the violence? He said, the second someone is actually physically hurt. It’s going to take a stabbing or a shooting for them to come out and start condemning these actions. I think they think it’s cute: 100 people storming the Bush/Cheney headquarters. Now if it was the other way, if the Bush/Cheney people started doing it, you’d never hear the end of it. It would be the lead on every broadcast, growing violence against the Kerry headquarters. We’re not hearing it. Mark Halperin is too busy with his intellectual exercises on what should be bias, who’s telling more lies, and how we should give 10% of the coverage to this lie, and 3% to this lie. Insanity at the broadcast house. If Bush wins, the Bush haters--well, urinating on a campaign sign is going to be for breakfast. Orlando, ransacked. Ohio, ransacked. Other locations, ransacked. I don’t know why it’s not a story; it’s intimidation.

Remember that eloquent, eloquent point from John Kerry on why we should do stem-cell research, from St Louis?:

KERRY: Curing, uh, uh, a, you know, some kind of a, a, of a, uh, you know...

Oh yes, eloquence. Keep him out of the lab, please. Now if that was Bush, we’d have a whole website: Bush can’t speak, Bush can’t read words, Bush is mispronouncing. And you’re talking about something that is so Frankensteinish, at least some of us believe it is. I know we’re all supposed to be worshipping at the altar of science. The Greens and the Teresa Heinzes of the world, and the earth-lovers--I love the earth and I respect the earth, but I’m not going to sit here and put “earth” over reality to me. And I don’t do ketchup rituals. Did you read about the ketchup ritual? When they got married Chris Heinz put a dot of ketchup on John Kerry’s forehead, saying welcome to the family. Is that part of Teresa’s New Ageism?

Back to St Louis, when they were talking about the tax cuts:

KERRY: Looking around here at this group here, I suspect there are only three people here who are going to be affected: the President, me, and Charlie, I’m sorry, you too.

A little condescending there. Nobody makes any money in St Louis, do they. Is he out of touch or is he out of touch? That quote even scared some of the Dems. Now it was late at night so maybe he has an out on that one. Or did we take that out of context too, Mr McAuliffe? I have been told that they vetted that audience out there, but I think there’s some reporting to be done. How many people in that audience do make that kind of money? We’ll see how far off Kerry was. But I’m glad Charlie Gibson actually asked half a question on taxes; it was a landmark moment for the media.

I was disappointed to see the ratings; it was half the viewership of the first debate. Even less than the VP debate, and we all loved that VP debate. And we’re dealing with such ignorance, on the part of Gwen Ifill, of Jim Lehrer, and Charlie Gibson, because there’s no comeback. Why can’t they come prepared with a quote like this from Edwards? He said this last year on CNN:

EDWARDS: I think Iraq is the most serious and imminent threat to our country, and I think Iraq and Saddam Hussein present the most serious and most imminent threat.

It wasn’t Bin Laden, it wasn’t Al Qaeda, it was Saddam Hussein. All right: taken out of context, said late at night, what other qualifiers do we have?

Jacques Chirac warned of a catastrophe for “global diversity” if the United States goes unchallenged. The world’s cultures will be “choked” by US values. He cited Hollywood’s stranglehold over the film industry. Who did the Cannes Film Festival give their Palm D’Or to, Mr Chirac? Michael Moore. Stop giving awards to these creepy Americans if that’s bothering you.

Did you see Team America, the puppet show that mocks the war on terrorism? The creators called in because I was headlining that some in the White House were a little upset that they were mocking the war on terrorism. And they said, we’re not doing that, we’re pro-America. That movie is not pro-America. It shows us destroying the Eiffel Tower for laughs, and destroying the pyramids for laughs. It just makes us look ridiculous. The first ten minutes were hilarious, and it was funny to see them trash Hans Blix and Alec Baldwin, but it felt a little dated for a movie that just came out of production. It’s really kind of bizarre, and not very funny. And a lot of the characters didn’t look like who they were supposed to be. I didn’t think Michael Moore looked like Michael Moore, and that’s hard to do.

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