Howell Raines, then and now
The new Howell Raines, at the Aspen Institute, as quoted by the Aspen Times, thinks that the audience for news has become more sophisticated:
“The World War II model that you write at a sixth-grade level became obsolete because of changes in society,” Raines said. He noted that readers now are more educated and demand a more sophisticated product.
However, when Raines was giving advice to John Kerry in 2004, he characterized the American people as unreconstructed rubes. Examples:
As America’s first war-hero candidate since John F Kennedy, he ought to be leading the national discussion on what went wrong in Iraq….The problem is that speeches that sound right at the Council don’t necessarily work for an electorate schooled to respond to simple messages….
Americans aren’t antagonistic toward the rules that protect the rich because they think that in the great crap-shoot of economic life in America, they might wind up rich themselves. It’s a mass delusion, of course, but one that has worked ever since Ronald Reagan got Republicans to start flaunting their wealth instead of apologising for it. Kerry has to understand that when a cure is impossible, the doctor must enter the world of the deluded.
Despite the blah-blah and the contradictions, we did find one thing in Raines’ most recent talk of particular interest, given all the leaking that the NYT has been the beneficiary of, from scoundrels in the US government:
“Almost all leakers are lawyers. That’s the bottom line.”
Why are we not surprised?