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July 03, 2006
This is What We Like to Term Nyukraking Journalism
So Harold Ford gave this stump speech on June 24 before a rally at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. And suddenly the race for U. S. Senator got a little more Grand Ole Operatic.
The big phrase that Ford dropped on the Jackson Day crowd was “the Three Stooges,” a moniker he bestowed upon GOP primary candidates Bob Corker, Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary. But Ford said a lot more than that.
“They really need to grow up,” Ford told the Associated Press after his speech. “They should be running a race that is worthy of the intellect, needs and aspirations of the people of this state. I watch them at times, and I'm a little embarrassed to hear them raise their voices, yelling, sounding like children at times.”
The Tennessee Republican Party responded as if it had been poked in the collective eye. “Last time I checked, name-calling didn’t win too many elections in Tennessee," state GOP chairman Bob Davis told the AP on June 26. “Maybe Ford’s immaturity and insulting character assassination works in Washington, D.C., but in Tennessee it doesn’t fly.”
And then, in an attempt to raise the level of discussion, everybody went on Fox News. First Ford appeared on “The Big Story with John Gibson,” telling the host on June 27 that he wouldn’t back down. “Look, the horrible things they've said about me, that was probably the nice thing I said about the level of discourse among the three of them,” Ford said. “The conversation and the debate they're having is beneath voters in our state. The awful and terrible things they're saying about one another reminds you of kindergarten.”
Ed Bryant was not amused when he took his turn with Gibson on June 28. “Certainly it is a spirited contest we have in Tennessee and our primary,” he said, “but I think we have to first acknowledge that Congressman Ford's remarks yesterday are an example of a young man who is certainly eager to go over to the Senate, perhaps a little too eager to go there. Clearly if he's interested in a higher discourse of debate in this campaign, he is not going down the right track talking about the Three Stooges.”
And the snark kept coming. (We recognize that nothing is being accomplished by repeating all this, but it’s so much fun.) “Seems people from Washington have a penchant for calling people names and labeling them and distorting,” Corker told the Knoxville News Sentinel on Sunday, while Ford shot back with one name he wouldn’t call. “If they want me to call them the Three Statesmen, they ought to act like it,” he told the Times Free Press’ Andy Sher.
Meanwhile the Three Whatevers had a chance to prove their gravitas in a televised debate last Wednesday. And they successfully avoided name-calling. For about five minutes. “My Washington friends and lobbyists would have a better view of what that process is all about,” Corker said when pork-barrel spending was brought up. And Hilleary, as is his wont, took the conversation to 11: “If I am your ‘Washington friend,’ you are my pro-choice tax-raising-through-the-roof buddy.” (They don’t sound like friends.)
Perhaps lost in the furor was what ticked Ford off so much in the first place. During his Jackson Day speech, he lashed out at critics of his influential Memphis family. (Ford’s uncle, John Ford, was indicted on corruption charges in last summer’s Tennessee Waltz probe.) “When you figure out the recipe to fix a family, call me,” he said. “Otherwise, let us run for the Senate. When you have nothing else to talk about, you talk about those issues.”
BlogBeats | By mesh | 07:25 AM
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