Media's picture of Kerry based on RNC distortions

"Like a caged hamster, Senator John Kerry is restless on the road," wrote the New York Times ' Jodi Wilgoren (6/13/04), beginning a piece that promised "authentic insights" into the Democratic presidential candidate. Aside from the banalities (Kerry dislikes wearing suits on hot, humid days, and uses a cellphone more than John Glenn did when he ran for president in 1984), what's most striking about the piece is how closely it mirrors the Republican caricature of Kerry, portraying him as an elitist with "a prep-school cultivated competitive sensibility," whose speeches "are filled with multisyllabic upper-crust phrasing," and as a "contradictory" character who "is anything but simple and straightforward." Even his playing a musical instrument is portrayed as somehow weird and un-American: "And where former President Bill Clinton plays cards and President Bush turns to the treadmill, Senator Kerry strums his Spanish classical guitar in a kind of musical meditation." [more ]