Fair journalism is sexy? DGergs is a hit with the ladies...

‘Tis the season for political talking heads to babble ignorantly about Joe the faux Plumber and how Wall Street is destroying Main Street.

One man on CNN always seems to cut through the hyperbole to offer candid and tempered analysis. He is a 66-year-old political vet who has worked on the campaigns of Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton. He will never admit to a thrill running up his leg or imply a certain candidate is an Arab extremist.

He is David Gergen.

I admire the guy, and I admit his native North Carolina “aw-shucks” honesty is endearing to this political junkie. However, Jessi Klein, a comedian and blogger for the Web site “The Daily Beast,” takes her admiration to another level when she confesses her passionate love for the man.

I don’t usually include other people’s work in this blog space, because, as is customary for many writers and artists, I simply feel my material is better than all other people’s. But love is the greatest muse, and Mrs. Klein’s white-hot romantic tinglings toward DGergs need to be shared. Enjoy:

The romance began late at night, with a glass of red wine and an episode of The Situation Room.

I can’t hold in the truth any longer. My feelings are too large to live just within the confines of my heart. I need everyone to know:

I am passionately in love with David Gergen.

Our (mine and Gergen’s) love story is in some ways ordinary. We were friends first. I would see him hanging around the channel — sometimes on AC360, sometimes on The Situation Room — and was always vaguely aware of a little pang of happiness whenever his large, wonderful head would appear in some kind of split-screen box.

The moment I realized my feelings were more serious was in late September, right after the first presidential debate. Gergen was on for hours, and I found myself on the couch, riveted, a glass of Cabernet by my feet, hands wrapped around my knees as I leaned forward to capture every word, every thought, every—oh, be still my fluttering heart, was that a little chuckle?

And then all of a sudden my face felt hot. I was blushing. I was loving David Gergen.

How do I love David Gergen? Let me count the ways.

I love his low, quiet voice. That unmodulated buttery whisper that sounds like it’s elbowing its way past a cough drop that’s permanently lodged at the back of his throat. You know how Bed Bath & Beyond sells those white noise machines that help you sleep? And they usually make ocean noises? I want one that’s just David Gergen gently muttering about the economy.

I love the way Gergen makes me feel calm, even when he’s making dire predictions about the future of our country. I love the way he knows everything and then formulates an opinion about everything that’s always right. I love that his eyebrows only move when he gets mad, and I love that he almost never gets mad. I love that he looks like a handsome baked potato. I want him to analyze my life with the same subtle intelligence he uses to analyze politics. How can I make my kitchen brighter? Should I email that dum-dum of a guy I know or just leave it in my draft folder? Should I get a bob or is my hair better long?

I love that his name is Gergen. Gerrrrr-gen. I don’t know the real origin of the name, but it’s a quirky, comforting sound with an onomatopoeic quality to it. Like the little pleasure noise you make under your breath when you’re home in your pajamas and you hear someone on the TV making consistent, rational sense.

Mrs. Klein’s original crush admission can be found at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-15/im-in-love-with-david-gergen/

The Quarter Century Address

One score and five years ago today my father and mother brought forth on this continent a funny-looking creature with a full head of black hair and a propensity to drool and nap.

Some things never change.

Conceiving him in love (suspiciously around Valentine’s Day), they dedicated him to the Mister Rogers proposition that all children are created equal, especially those who enjoy talking to a middle-aged sweater snob through a TV screen.

Now he is engaged in a personal civil war, an inner clash testing whether his boyish idealism and youthful simplicity can endure the Joneses and pressures to sacrifice adventure for stability.

He realizes success is no longer as finite as a test grade, a trophy or a piece of scrolled paper etched with calligraphy. For a few, success means reaching a certain societal status. For some, it means finding The One and starting a family. For others, it means making strides down an envisioned career path. For still others, it means uncovering an elusive truth that sets you completely at ease in your own skin. For him on his Silver Birthday, success is a “To Be Determined.”

Even with the continued uncertainty, 25 years have shown me that age tends to do two things: it installs in us an autopilot button and it instills in us a know-it-all attitude.

It’s easier as you get older to go through the motions at work, distance yourself from friends who’ve propped you up in the past and lose sight of where you came from. It’s also easier to feign omniscience to impress or bloat the ego.

What can combat these traps that foster superficiality and distance yourself from your less fake pre-25 self?

Failure.

It’s harder to deal with it when you get older, but that’s when it becomes the most meaningful.

Approach the fun gal at the barbeque and ask her on a date. Suggest your new product idea to the boss. Join that community group without knowing anyone in it. Explore that new career option. The worst that can happen is failure, but out of it comes a risk and a challenge that continually stretches you and keeps you vital and hungry.

Fellow October 18er Mike Ditka, the screws-chomping, WD-40-drinking former coach of the Chicago Bears, once said: “Success isn’t permanent, and failure isn’t fatal.”

Iron Mike wants us to fail.

My Quarter Century resolution is to fail more often and not shy away from situations where failure is possible. How else can you grow, while staying true to who you are, in the next 25 years?

Has Clark Kent degenerated into a blithering idiot?

It’s less than one month until the most pivotal presidential election in recent memory, all you Joe Six-Packs, Change-oholics and coveted ones in between.

With an economy on the brink of a dark recession, with Social Security and Medicare costs guaranteed to skyrocket as the boomers retire (leaving today’s twentysomethings to pick up the tab), with a damaged reputation on the world stage, why is it that our first reflex when digesting political TV news is to grab the popcorn and not the thinking cap?

As a former newspaper reporter, I will admit that I am harder on my journalistic brethren. But we all should be. They shape our opinions of the candidates. What they talk about on camera is what we talk about around the water cooler. And it seems they are more interested in provoking fights, massaging their egos and selling their brands rather then informing voters. TV journalists need to press the candidates on the tough issues, such as how they will afford what they effortlessly promise, not wave poms-poms or hoist high-fives.

When Fox News personality Sean Hannity sat down with John McCain and Sarah Palin recently, the anchor acted like he was shooting a campaign ad:
HANNITY: But think of how this war has been politicized through the prism of your experience in Vietnam. The leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, said, “the surge has failed, the war is lost.” Dick Durbin compared our troops to Nazis. John Kerry said our troops are invading Iraqis’ homes in the dark of night, you know, terrorizing women and children. These are verbatim quotes. And Barack Obama said they are “air-raiding villages and killing civilians.” My question is, you know, what does that — that’s poisonous rhetoric, but it goes on, what does it mean? How do you stop that if you’re elected president and vice president?

The war has been politicized, Mr. Hannity, because you and other biased cable news “reporters” keep framing questions with an “us versus them,” “I know the answer before I ask it” attitude. It’s like crediting a home run to candidates before they have even stepped up to home plate. How does that make them better or keep them accountable?

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, who fluctuates between Jon Stewart fake journalism and Tim Russertism based on his mood, is just as guilty of brownnosing with certain candidates and fostering a toxic perception that journalism divides along political party lines.

OLBERMANN lollipop question to Obama: Let me switch over to Iraq and people's reaction to you and Iraq and Iraq as a subject in general. Your predictions about the surge, your language about the surge, seem to have turned out to be just about 100 percent on the spot. Simple facts: whatever is done to lessen violence against American troops and others in portions of that country, the Iraqis are still not paying for this war fully, either with money or personnel. And Mr. Bush has just been advised not to bring any more of our troops home this year…If you are right, why have the Republicans and the conservative media been so effective in suggesting that you were wrong and somehow you need to atone for that?

Journalists’ mission is not to be chummy or accommodating, but Olbermann and Hannity are among the best at it. How do they even introduce their careers at dinner parties? They’re too newsy to be entertainers, yet not objective enough to be journalists.

Helpful political journalism does not need to wow with intellectualism or amaze with theatrics. Journalists should be persistent and cut through the memorized stump speeches, but they don’t need to quote Socrates or sprinkle in SAT words to do it.

Rob Caldwell of WCSH-TV in Portland, Maine, would not let McCain escape with clichés during the candidate's reasoning for selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate.
NBC’s Matt Lauer proved he is not only good at preparing turkeys and petting kittens when he pushed Obama to be honest about how he is going to pay for improvements to health care, education and energy with an economy spiraling toward Great Depression severity.

To sum it up, valuable journalism that you can take to the voting booth involves firm, common-sense questions. Are they sexy? No. Will they get your face festooned on a Times Square billboard? Unlikely. But they will send the right candidate to the Oval Office.