Wednesday, November 01, 2006

The O on Kerry's "Stuck in Iraq" Flap: Yawn

To put an Oregon spin on a story the national cable networks are frothing over, but which deserves about as much space as I'm going to give it here, The Oregonian this morning reported on yesterday's comments by John Kerry--both originally at a rally in Pasadena where he botched one of his icebreaker jokes about Bush being dumb (now that's original), and hours later in response to ludicrous calls for an "apology" for flubbing his line.

Since it was the first national story covered by the in-depth (cough) reporters at KGW this morning, I was curious to see how The O handled it. It took me a while to find out, because the way they handled it was to bury it on page A11, at the bottom of the page under the "Election Roundup" column. And it wasn't even the first piece; that "honor" went to Nevada Goobernor Jim Gibbons and his developing sexual assault problems. And I don't see it online at all, although one could look for hours and not figure out the way they sometimes stash stories in obscure locations.

Good for them. Special props for not musing about the theoretical impact on midterm elections. With Karl Rove grabbing like Leo in Titanic for something to keep the GOP politically afloat, that would be exactly what they were hoping for--so it's nice to see The O's editors refuse to grant them the privilege.