Meet Senator John Kerry's chief of stuff

[RoyGBiv]

Part Butler and Part Buddy, Aide Keeps Kerry Running
Jodi Wilgoren NYT

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio, April 27 — The man who would be president takes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches — on whole wheat, strawberry jelly preferred to grape — twice a day on the campaign trail. He wears $15 reading glasses, off the rack at CVS. Before bedtime, he starts but rarely finishes movies like "Seabiscuit" and "The Blues Brothers" in his hotel suite. Come morning, he leaves $20 for the maid.

Voters do not learn these tidbits about Senator John Kerry, the all-but-crowned Democratic nominee for president, from his campaign Web site, his public speeches or his television advertisements. These and other details make up the portfolio of the man literally behind the man, ready with an uncapped bottle of water whenever Mr. Kerry's throat runs dry.

Meet Marvin Nicholson Jr., chief of stuff.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/28/politics/campaign/28CHIE.html

[MSgt213]

1. Please see Daily Howler for a counter point to this article

THE BUTLER DOES IT: Readers, sometimes you have to throw back your head and enjoy a good laugh! On the front page of today’s New York Times, Jodi Wilgoren pens a profile of Marvin Nicholson, a campaign assistant to Candidate Kerry. How absurd is Wilgoren’s piece? Let’s use a standard we’ve used before: If such work appeared in the Washington Times, observers would laugh at the way the conservative rag was pimping those RNC spin-points.

Who is John Kerry in the RNC spin-book? As we all know, he’s a man with “a proclivity to fall on both sides of every issue”—a man who can’t give a straight answer. But he’s also a man who has too much money—a man who attended a fancy school among the troubling, French-speaking Swiss. That’s why we see RNC shills like Katharine Seelye and Nedra Pickler working such images into their stories (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/27/04). When Seelye reviewed Kerry’s military records, she managed to cite the young soldier’s “patrician manner”—a point which only she, among living humans, could find in the documents under review. Meanwhile, Pickler used her first paragraph to remind AP readers that soldier Kerry “spoke fluent French…the fruits of a privileged upbringing.” Anyone with an ounce of sense will know where these oddball spin-points come from. They come straight from the RNC; propagandists cram them into “news reports” in service to Karl Rove’s machine. Of course, Seelye performed this service for over a year in her coverage of Candidate Gore. She “made no attempt to hide her contempt for the candidate,” the Financial Times eventually observed.

And so you really have to laugh at Wilgoren’s profile this morning. In the headline, we see the first spin-point—Nicholson is described as Kerry’s “butler!” And as we read the report, the image develops. In paragraph two, we learn that Nicholson is “the man literally behind the man, ready with an uncapped bottle of water whenever Mr. Kerry’s throat runs dry.” In short order, we learn why Kerry has this “butler”—this “former caddy”—at his beck and call:

WILGOREN (pgh 6): Mr. Kerry is comfortable being catered to. He has his moods and his myriad personal needs. A social loner, he is happy with an aide half his age.


http://dailyhowler.com/dh042804.shtml

[RoyGBiv]

3. I saw that first, actually...

I posted the article referred to because I didn't get out of it quite what the Daily Howler did. It was sort of a humanizing piece the way I read it. I don't know what Wilgoren's intention was -- probably not far off what the Howler suggests, and maybe that's the way it will be taken, but personally I think that's silly.

I'm not well off and come from a poor background, but it doesn't at all strike me as odd or offensive that someone running for President has a personal assistant, which is basically what this guy is.

Anyway...

[MSgt213]

5. Jack Osbourne has a personal assistant. So does every general in the

armed forces and have high level official in government. Think about it the demands on these people's time, minus Jack, are extreme. They don't have time to pick up dry cleaning and stand in line at the DMV. You know what Karen Hughes is and was, even though they gave her a fancy title of advisor? She is a personal assistant.

[RoyGBiv]

6. Hughes

I have other suggestions for what Karen Hughes actually is, and since my daughter is in the next room, I don't feel comfortable even typing the words at the moment.

GAWD I hate that .... thing that looks like a person named Karen Hughes.

[displacedtexan]

2. We discussed Wilgoren's crap story yesterday.

Butler, my ass! Anyone who watches "West Wing" knows what an aide does. For whom would you rather work: Bush* or Kerry?

[RoyGBiv]

4. Headlines

I think a lot of the reaction to this involves the headline.

I read this originally from a source that reprinted it from the NYT, and the headline for that was "The Indispensable Man," so I wasn't predisposed just by that to reading this as a Kerry slam. I had seen the discussion yesterday, so I recognized the story after I started reading it, but it just struck me differently.

I just see this as a profile piece. How it's taken or spun by different people is something else.