Archived Writing

<< back to the search results

Running against the clock

Thursday, February 28, 2008

THE CANDIDATE LOOKED like he was desperate for a bathroom break. At the first, somewhat delayed, interruption for commercials Barack Obama leaped up at lightning speed – though I suspect he really just wanted to escape the ring for a few moments of relative quiet in his seconds’ corner.

And it was Hillary Clinton who was late back when Part Two of the Cleveland debate was about to start, having evidently been psyched up by her handlers for more kind-of polite, but ceaselessly insistent slugging at her opponent.

 

Time, or more specifically the regulating or deregulating of time, was the overwhelming determinant in this finally under-satisfying mano a mano contest - maybe the last - between the Democratic pair, conducted under the auspices of MSNBC. The production team from NBC News, the power behind the cable network, operated under agreed rules that were much less interventionist than previous encounters, and was hoping that what it called “reasonable” lengths of time taken by the candidates to answer questions would work better than strict light-flashing time-limits. Well … some hope, as it turned out.

 

After repetitive claims and counter-claims over the details of rival health-care plans had taken up a full sixteen minutes at the very outset, the rest of the proceedings seemed skimpy, even more notable than ever (in such encounters) for what important issues were left out - especially among international policy matters.

 

The almost languid dissertations from an ever-more-confident Obama - plus the on-again, on-again harrying from Clinton - would have benefited from some crisper interventions from Brian Williams. (His cohort Tim Russert was a lost cause here, contributing endless stretches of his own time-wasting grandstanding.)

 

It was fascinating, though, to hear the careful, plodding (and self-protective) language that Clinton’s team had clearly impressed upon her for discussing how Obama’s image, dressed in traditional Somali garb, had come into the public domain on the eve of the debate.

 

Consider her response to Williams voicing the charge, originating with blog-raker Matt Drudge, that the picture’s distribution had come from “inside the Clinton campaign”:

 

H R Clinton:  “Well, so far as I know, it did not. And I certainly know nothing about it and have made clear that that's not the kind of behavior that I condone or expect from the people working in my campaign. But we have no evidence where it came from.”

 

That’s my added emphasis on the super-cautious phraseology, of course. How many lawyers did it take to mint it, I wonder.

 

 

 

**DISCUSSION OF THIS COLUMN IS AIRED WEEKLY BY WHDD - ROBIN HOOD RADIO**

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST by clicking HERE

 

 

 

THE COST OF BITTER ELECTORAL DISPUTE CAN ALL TOO OFTEN be measured in human lives lost.

 

Though the American mass media didn’t pay much close attention, Kenya teetered again this week on a knife-edge, as talks between government and opposition were dramatically suspended by their broker, ex-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (above right) in a rare display to the local media of exasperation. He said the talks had become “acrimonious”.

 

I’ve reported previously on the kind of “citizen journalism” contribution that’s been made to our understanding of this conflict by the Ushahidi.com site (meaning “witness” in Swahili) since December’s disputed national elections sparked riots and over a thousand reprisal killings. Ushahidi’s compilers, and much of Kenya’s mainstream media, too, are expressing relief that the opposition Orange Democratic Movement has called off all its numerous protest rallies previously planned for today.

 

Nairobi’s leading daily The Nation had said these scheduled demonstrations “raised fears countrywide that they could result in fresh violence and lead to deaths and destruction of property”.

 

The cancellations followed an appeal from Annan to the movement’s leader Raila Odinga, who during the talks has achieved the prospect of becoming Prime Minister to the unconvincingly re-elected President, Mwai Kibaki. It’s the exact extent of such a Prime Minister’s powers, in the unprecedented power-sharing arrangement now being proposed for Kenya, that’s proven to be the rock on which the talks have foundered. (Though let’s hope not terminally. Annan is a past-master at persistent, and even interrupted, dialogue - and has pulled successful agreements out of the jaws of failure before now. And indeed since I began this column news has broken that an agreement is being signed between the two rivals.)

 

How I wish much more tracking of this story were appearing in America’s mainstream news outlets. Kenya retains its potential as a vital hub for stability in a troubled region and, though shaken hard by the recent chaos, its economy acts as a powerhouse among its neighbors.

 

And if Americans just want to be self-centered, it’s also a country judged essential to that quaint old, much-battered concept, “US interests”.

 

 

 

ASSAULTS ON LANGUAGE ARE TWO-A-PENNY in the advertising and marketing world. Sometimes though, they can be funny. I like the leap-year campaign for tomorrow’s extra, 29th day in February that’s been mounted by the Papa John’s chain.

 

They chose this singular day to launch their new “Perfect Pan Pizza”, and they describe the innovation as “A Giant Leap for Pankind”.