Fun With The Pun At The Times

Could the honeymoon with Edwards be over so soon? The headline writer at the Times has fun with a pun and Jodi Wilgoren is unexpectedly critical of John Kerry in "Kerry's Celebrity Fund-Raiser Is a Huge Bash".

A huge Bush-bash is what it was, which can not be a surprise. But here is the lead:

A star-studded salute to Senators John Kerry and John Edwards Thursday night at Radio City Music Hall slid into an unsparing skewering of the Bush administration, with actors and comedians denouncing the president as a liar, making off-color jokes about his name, and accusing him of risking soldiers' lives for political gain.

The racy Hollywood humor and harsh attacks were a sharp shift from the relentlessly positive focus on American values the new Democratic ticket has been trying to maintain this week.

A sharp shift! Off message! C'mon, there is no Kerry message with traction other than We Hate Bush (and you should too)! We are surprised by Ms. Wilgoren's surprise. After presenting some low-lights of the evening (including speculation on Jesus' position on megaton bombs), a wave of Dean nostalgia grips the Times and we get this:

After the concert, Mr. Kerry's press secretary, David Wade, said, "Obviously John Kerry and John Edwards do not agree with everything that was said tonight," adding: "Performers have a right to speak their minds even when we don't agree with everything they say. That's the freedom John Kerry put his life on the line to defend."

Apparently it wasn't obvious to Kerry, Edwards, or Ms. Wilgoren, who notes that candidates also have free speech rights:

But unlike one of Mr. Kerry's vanquished primary rivals, Howard Dean, who denounced racial humor and profanity at one of his own fundraisers in New York, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Kerry hardly veered from their script when they mounted the stage at the end of the extravaganza, looking more subdued than they had all week.

This campaign will be a celebration of real American values," Mr. Edwards promised, saying that voters "deserve a president who knows the difference between what is right and what is wrong."

Evidently, what we deserve and what is on offer may differ.

Mr. Kerry, inviting his and Mr. Edwards's adult children onstage for a sing-along of "This Land Is Your Land," told the crowd that "every single performer" on the bill had "conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country."

Campaign aides said the performers would not allow broadcast journalists to record the concert.

The heart and soul of our country? The heart and soul of Kerry's bi-coastal support, maybe. We will put the out-takes in the extended section, and marvel, again, at the poiltical ineptitude of the Dem candidate. He'll stand up to Bush! He'll stand up for America! Just don't expect him to say "boo" to a Hollywood celebrity.

To round out the perfect evening, Captain Ed is very piercing on the subject of Kerry's time management. Quite a night for Tall John. In her one act of mercy, Ms. Wilgoren buried the same detail near the bottom:

The concert capped the second day of joint campaigning by the newly minted Democratic ticket, part of a multimedia effort that included an hourlong interview with Mr. Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, on "Larry King Live." Asked about warnings on Thursday about the possibility of a Qaeda attack this year, Mr. Kerry told Mr. King that he had not yet had time to be briefed on the subject.

Time enough for Whoopi, but not for Tom Ridge. Oh, boy. Could the press honeymoon with Edwards have ended so quickly?

UPDATE: Hmm, this is ugly - the LA Times dipped their pen in, or dropped, the same acid as Ms. Wilgoren:

An array of Hollywood royalty and music stars paid tribute Thursday night to the new Democratic presidential ticket in a $7.5-million fundraising concert dominated by harsh and occasionally off-color denunciations of the Bush administration.

...But praise for the two running mates was overshadowed by angry and mocking comments directed at President Bush. The tone was jarringly dissonant from the sunny message Kerry and Edwards have emphasized on their first few days together on the campaign trail.

...At the end of the concert, when the two candidates took the stage with their wives, neither made reference to the more inflammatory remarks. Edwards repeated the same campaign speech, and Kerry thanked the performers, saying they conveyed "the heart and soul of our country." The closest Kerry came to criticizing anyone was when he chastised Goldberg for referring to Edwards as "Kid," noting that he was a man.

The Kerry Benefit

From the Times:

The racy Hollywood humor and harsh attacks were a sharp shift from the relentlessly positive focus on American values the new Democratic ticket has been trying to maintain this week.

"Texas Bandito, how much money did you put in your pocket today?" John Mellencamp crooned in a country ballad. "You better split from that Texas Bandito, he's made this world unsafe today. Our thoughts are not free from the Texas Bandito, he's just another cheap thug that sacrifices our young."

In a two-and-a-half hour gala that raised $7.5 million, a record for a single event, Chevy Chase poked fun at the president's pronunciation of "nuclear" and "terrorist" and said Mr. Bush had invaded Iraq "just so he could be called a wartime president." Paul Newman decried "tax cuts for wealthy thugs like me" as "borderline criminal."

The comedian John Leguizamo, who is half Puerto Rican, said the notion of Hispanics supporting Republicans was "like roaches for Raid." And Whoopi Goldberg, after joking about refusing to submit her material to campaign censors, made an extended sexual pun on the president's surname.

Then the Academy-Award-winning actress Meryl Streep asked which candidates Jesus might support.

"I wondered to myself during 'Shock and Awe,' I wondered which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our president's personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad?" Ms. Streep said.

...On an extensive bill featuring the Dave Matthews Band and Jon Bon Jovi, Mary J. Blige and John Fogerty, Ms. Goldberg stood out for her brash assessment of the Bush administration, as well as her teasing of the Democratic standard bearers.

"Where's the kid? Where's the young Mr. Edwards?" she said at the start, ignoring the questions Republicans have raised about his age and experience. "He looks like he's about 18," she said later, joking that she would check his identification before serving him a drink.

(Ms. Goldberg's was the only riff Mr. Kerry addressed directly, saying of his new political partner, "I have a man, Whoopi, who through his lifetime of experience ")

Wyclef Jean, the Haitian hip-hop star, broke the Kerry campaigns unwritten rule against uttering French, to ward off Republican caricatures, with a multilingual rap, one of several songs whose lyrics were rewritten for the occasion.

"Instead of spending billions on the war, I can use that money so I can feed the poor," sang Mr. Jean, whose tie bore a donkey in an Uncle Sam hat . "I know some soldiers that sleep but they can't dream, wake up with dreams, sounds of M-16s."

The actress Jessica Lange described the upcoming election as a "question of conscience."

"Are we going to continue to follow a self-serving regime of deceipt, hypocrisy and belligerence?" Ms. Lange asked the crowd. "Or are we after four disastrous years going to take a step toward our true responsibility as leader of the free world?"

Comments

[The Kid]

“Mr. Kerry told Mr. King that he had not yet had time to be briefed on the subject.”

Johnny Boy! Nothing like opening the old mouth and inserting a well-pedicured foot.

I guess he can still pretend that he knows what he’s talking about when the war on terror and homeland security are the topics before him, but doesn’t this just make him look a little aloof, self-centered, and, dare I say, haughty?

[Brainster]

Wilgoren (and Halbfinger too) seems to specialize in the pinprick behind the ear. She emphasized the difference between Kerry and Dean because she started out on the Dean beat. The Dean people absolutely hated her; there was a Deanie-baby blog called Wilgoren Watch dedicated to griping about the subtle digs she put into apparently impartial articles.

Needless to say, we at Kerry Haters have really come to appreciate her byline on a piece. Yeah, it's got the usual Times' bias built into it, but there's almost always something usable in a post.