Covering the Little Guy

Newsweek columnist and self-proclaimed sympathizer with third party causes Gersh Kuntzman, who provided us with that wonderfully germane diversion into the world of competitive eating in his last column dealing with third party candidates, is proving himself a stalwart fighter for the third party cause. "Because third party candidacies are considered such a joke, most of us would sooner vote for Oprah than for David Cobb," he explains. This week he does his small part by covering the Green Party candidate, David Cobb, on his campaign stop in New York City.

"This recruiting station is taking young people and turning them into fodder for an illegal and immoral war in Iraq! Support our troops—bring them home! We need to end our addiction to fossil fuels, which is driving us to war in the Middle East. We need to build schools instead of prisons. Health care is a fundamental human right! We need a living wage, not a minimum wage! And we need to repeal the Patriot Act!" Again, there was no applause. There was a guy making a cellphone call ("Can you hear me? I'm losing you"). And the beer bum was uninspired. Not even Roosterman, a legendary Times Square figure who crows and makes crude sexual gestures, slowed down to listen to Cobb. A family of four stopped to stay out of the rain. I asked them if they liked what Cobb was saying. They said they hadn't been listening. "We love George Bush," the father said. "Now, we have to get to Madame Tussaud's." (Hmm, isn't that a French name?)

Maybe a first step to making them less of a joke would be to stop writing irreverent, silly articles about them. Just a suggestion. Gersh Kuntzman is also a reporter for The New York Post which, if you don't recall, is the newspaper that brought us the early scoop (ed -- that's sarcasm) on Kerry's VP pick. Today's headline is slightly more factual, but only slightly: "Kerry Bashes Bush in Prez Race Kickoff." I saw Kerry's speech last night and from what I saw I thought it was remarkably free of Bush bashing, not to mention that the Democrats had a carefully enforced no Bush-bashing policy and emphasized an anti-negative campaign message.

Originally published 9/12/04