A week's gone by, the election's over, and the spin and kiss-up continues still.

May I direct your attention to MSNBC/Newsweek's "Trench Warfare", a somewhat-more-honest-than-usual piece on the Kerry campaign, yet still notable for it's spin.

To begin, a completely non-political observation about American society:

Kerry's personal aide, Marvin Nicholson, had to grin and bear it. Kerry had met Nicholson, 33, at a windsurfing shop in Cambridge, Mass., where Nicholson was working; he later caddied for Kerry at the Nantucket Golf Club. Now the 6-foot-8 University of Western Ontario grad was, in effect, his valet, serving his personal needs. The two men were close friends, but Nicholson was still the servant.

What a strange world we live in. A guy with a college degree acting as a butler. It's true: With many degrees what you learn is actually of no value at all, the college degree is actually just a signaling mechanism to indicate your general employability.

Another general observation about the article: Cheney was endlessly lampooned for his single known obscene outburst, in which he told Leahy, who had been calling him a criminal behind his back, and was now trying to play nice-nice, to go do something anatomically impossible to himself. The ever-tolerant left, who use such words endlessly, was suddenly shocked -- shocked, I say! -- that the vile epithet had escaped Cheney's lips.

Of course, this article is litterally dripping with Kerry's utterances of the f-word. No problem. Conservatives, even mere fiscal conservatives like Cheney, must be held to a completely different standard than liberals. Fine for me, not for thee.

(Hey, I found Cheney's outburst offensive, too. But by the same token, I find Kerry's general pattern of speech far worse. Whatever ill I am to think of Cheney because of such is multiplied a thousand-fold towards Kerry. And to use a 12-year-old girl to condemn the one who used such a word rarely, and thus adovcate one who used the word frequently, is hypocrisy beyond belief.)

Regarding the bogus intern flap:

Kerry's staff had to feverishly work the phones to newspaper reporters, imploring and bluffing and trying to play on what little shame the press had left. "No one else is doing it. You'd be the only one," the Kerry staffers would say to the reporters and pray that they were telling the truth.

Interesting. No reporter, apparently, wanted to be the only one to run a negative story about Kerry. Isn't this the opposite of the way reporters behave towards conservatives? I mean, isn't the word "exclusive" supposed to be a bonus?

Sure, the story was false, but it's telling that this is the motivation they used to corral the reporters: We're in this together. Don't be the only one to betray the rest of the group.

Regarding Kerry's tardiness:

On the campaign trail Kerry ran chronically late. He did not like to be "handled," and when advance men rushed him, he gave them a "back off" look and proceeded at his own deliberate pace. On the night of the Feb. 3 primaries, Kerry had taken so long to get to the cameras to declare victory that he had permitted Edwards to dominate the airwaves. His chief strategist, Bob Shrum, had ranted and raved that Kerry was going to miss the Eastern media markets altogether if he didn't get onstage any faster.

But with the race over, Kerry was suddenly thrust into the bubble of the Secret Service, which was charged with protecting the Democratic nominee. The Secret Service was usually able to make anyone, with the possible exception of Bill Clinton, run on time, in part because its agents could literally stop traffic.

Wow. Here's a guy who's so undisciplined he's willing to sacrifice his entire campaign so that he doesn't have to obey an order from his staff. No wonder his own campaign staff spoke of Kerry needing "adult supervision". This was a guy we wanted in charge of things?

In 2000, the Gore campaign had been listless all spring while George W. Bush was convincing voters that he was really a "compassionate conservative."

"Was really"? The guy never nixed a single spending bill which crossed his desk. His first actions were to up spending for education and medicare for heaven's sake. What part of "compassion" are we lacking here?

The media doesn't have to supply the details. Sneering snide implications are enough. The proof need never be provided.

Concern Kerry's stance on Iraq, this is what the reader will be told:

Part of his problem was Iraq, which was veering out of control, with uprisings and bombings and kidnappings. Kerry was curiously mute on the crisis. He could urge greater international involvement, but with Iraq still in chaos, why would foreign countries send people who might just be taken hostage? So Kerry mostly talked about doing the responsible thing and staying the course, which was about what Bush was already doing.

The real problem was not the subject but the speaker. Kerry's friend Sen. Joe Biden, ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, was far more animated on the Sunday talk shows, comparing the Iraqi uprisings that spring to the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968. There was something soporific about Kerry's style that made his speeches, no matter how considered and reasonable, seem forgettable.

Why were Kerry's speeches "forgettable"? What an amazing mystery. Was it because he vacilliated wildly, both calling Iraq "the wrong war at the wrong time", calling our allies "a coalition of the bribed", and then saying he would get other nations (our real allies, we are to believe) involved (in the wrong war -- a point the Bush team cannily noted and used) by -- in effect -- bribing them?

Was it because Kerry said both that he would stay the course, but also said he would pull out within six months? Was it because he said he had a plan for getting us out, but refused to reveal any of the details? Was it because most of his ideas for "improvement" (such as training Iraqi forces) were simply things the Bush team was already doing?

One simply cannot imagine why his own campaign, and a sympathetic media, would want to "forget" this mysterious "something" about Kerry's speeches.

Not surprisingly, the press seemed to pay more attention to Kerry's occasional testy outbursts. At the end of March he went skiing, an essential outlet for a man who uses vigorous, high-stress sports as a release. "Unbelievable—I didn't think about the campaign the whole time I was up there," he exulted after one particularly grueling day in the northern Rockies of Sun Valley, Idaho, where Teresa kept one of her five houses. Kerry was happy to be slogging up mountains and snowboarding down icy chutes, but he collided with a clumsy Secret Service man and told him off in crude language. A couple of reporters, from ABC and The Boston Globe, were skiing nearby and publicized the incident.

No, it wasn't that Kerry told off the man. The issue was that minutes later Kerry gratuitously berated him to the press, publicly insulting his protector, and claiming he, Kerry, never fell when skiing. The article is simply lying here when it omits this part of the story, and leaves the impression the reporters just happened to be skiing there and reported a private dustup. No, they were the waiting campaign press, and had cameras et al, and Kerry's insult to his protector, to them and the American public, was unnecessary and revealing.

See how the press still continues to attempt to re-write this incident after the fact, removing the campaign-coverage media, and John Kerry's words to them.

Then on "Good Morning America" in early April, the candidate bridled when the normally genial host Charlie Gibson asked him about an old controversy, recently brought back to life by Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush surrogates, over whether Kerry had thrown away his medals (or just his ribbons) at an antiwar protest in 1971. Kerry was indignant about having his honor questioned, and at the end of the interview, with the camera still rolling, he snapped at Gibson, "Thanks for doing the work of the RNC [the Republican National Committee]."

Kerry was indignant about having his honor questioned? How was this reporter able to read Kerry's thoughts? That would seem odd, since at no point did Gibson bring up Kerry's honor. Instead, Gibson had pressed him to explain the 180-degree change in his story, and Kerry seemed irritated that Gibson didn't help him cover, as so many other reporters did. To most observers, it looked like Kerry was flustered to have been caught in a lie.

Not if you're Newsweek, rewriting history for your boy.

Kerry may have been reserved and aloof, but he was a self-improver, and he wanted to do whatever it took to win. With aides he would sometimes say, "Tell me everything you think I'm doing wrong." He always appeared to be listening. But was he really? Were his shortcomings as a speaker somehow hard-wired? It was hard to know.

Hmmmm... When the New York Times talked about the way George Bush walked, they implied he was unwilling to change -- that somehow, George was walking that way to deliberately annoy people. But when we discuss Kerry's apparent unwillingness to take criticism in way that changes his behavior, we use the word "hard-wired", implying the poor fellow had no choice as to what he would say and how.

Bush's faults are stubborn and deliberate. Kerry's, unintentional, and surely due to his moral superiority.

Regarding the Bush campaign's portrayal of Kerry:

By plumbing—and twisting and exaggerating—his old Senate voting record, they were able to make him look like a profligate supporter of big government. In one ad titled "Wacky," McKinnon's ad team suggested that Kerry would raise gasoline taxes by 50 cents.

Once again, Newsweek attempts to deceive its readers. During the 90's, Kerry, did, in fact, support a 50-cent raise in gasoline taxes in order to make people drive less. The argument revolved around whether such an idea was "wacky" or not.

But rather than report the actual controversy, Newsweek carefully words its statement to make it sound like the Republicans falsely accused Kerry of supporting gas tax increases.

And you continue to buy this "news" magazine ... why?

In order to make Kerry's team look good, Newsweek singles out a Bush staffer and paints him as poorly as possible:

The director of rapid response for the Bush-Cheney campaign, Steve Schmidt, fit the part. Chunky, with a shiny bald head, he looked like an artillery shell. When he talked, his small blue eyes darted around the room at the flickering TV sets. As he spouted rapid-fire talking points, sometimes a hint of a crooked smile would creep across his lips, as if he pitied anyone on the receiving end of such a high-velocity, hard-hammering spin machine.

Wow. A "hint" of a "crooked" smile would "creep" across his lips? A "shiny bald head" shaped "like an artillery shell"? His build is "chunky"? And he has "small blue eyes" which "dart"???

Observe how the left revels in the personal denigration of unchosen physical attributes. (And you really believe they're less prone to racism?)

Given their portrayal of this guy's physical characteristics, you can almost sense the eeeevil radiating off this guy.

And being told that this vertiable Dr. Evil "fit the part" of a Republican press correspondant tells us all we need to know: Republican press liasons are evil, Democrats, are ... well, apparently they don't even have such people in their campaign, they're so good. (Indeed, there is no similar portrayal of James Carville's small darting eyes and shiny, bald, missle-shaped head.)

Next, concerning Kerry's "I voted for it ... before I voted against it" gaffe, guess what? Yep. It was all Bush's fault. I kid you not.

First, the reader is set up with this:

The Bush-Cheney campaign knew about Kerry's vulnerability from the outset. "If the rabbit runs, he'll chase it," said campaign manager Ken Mehlman. Possibly, Mehlman thought, Kerry had overlearned the lesson of the 1988 campaign, when Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis was sluggish about responding to the barbs and provocations of the Republican dirty tricksters. But Mehlman and the others didn't realize, at first, just how self-defeating Kerry's rational process could be. As a matter of routine, the Bush operatives tried to goad Kerry. And when he reacted, they were ready.

Note: "Bush operatives" and "dirty trickers" will goad Kerry. Into being "rational". Now that the reader has been primed, we'll feed her this, our main target to defuse:

That noon, when Kerry addressed a veterans group in West Virginia, a heckler kept demanding to know why he had voted against more funding for the troops. In his considered but long-winded fashion, Kerry tried to explain that he had wanted to vote for the funding, but only if the Senate passed an amendment that would whittle down President Bush's earlier tax cut for the rich. Kerry voted for the amendment, but when it failed, he voted against the funding. The heckler pressed, and Kerry, losing patience, fell into senatorial procedural shorthand. "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it," he said.

Missing, again, from this narrative, is the reason the topic came up in the first place: Kerry was criticizing Bush for sending troops in with insufficient body armor, but he himself had voted against the appropriations bill to fix that situation. Can't let the readers know that. That would make Kerry's position (holding the troops hostage for class warfare) even more egresious, so that data must be omitted, no matter how important it was to understanding the situation.

Instead, our attention is directed to the nefarious "heckler", who dared ask Kerry to explain this apparent contradiction. Given that priming, we are supposed to think this "heckler" was a "Bush operative", a "dirty trickster" who was prodding Kerry to be "rational" -- as if denying body armor to soldiers if you didn't get a tax hike was obviously the "rational" thing to do.

In case we missed it, we're again prompted to be suspicious of this "heckler":

Kerry himself realized he had made a mistake, but at his headquarters, most of the chatter was about the "weird heckler" who had asked him the question. The Kerry campaign would later insist that the Bush campaign had spent millions that spring to smear its candidate without much effec, but in fact Kerry's "negatives" climbed in some key swing states....

Rather than just admit Kerry was stupid, and handled the question badly, it's painted as a Bush plot against Kerry, to goad him into being "rational". We're to believe "millions" were spent trying to get him to slip up. This was a "dirty trick", we are to believe, not a foolhardy attempt to rationalize the rather indefensible position of holding equipment for the troops hostage as a way of getting tax hikes.

The Bush "Troops-Fog" act blew enough fog to unsettle voters, to make them wonder about Kerry's consistency and the depth of his conviction.

See? It was Bush's "act" which unsettled the voters, not Kerrys own doomed attempts to explain his many contradictory positions.

We didn't question Kerry's conviction because he'd vote against funding the troops if he didn't get his way on a tax hike. No, we questioned Kerry's conviction because -- because Bush made us do it. By confusing us. With Kerry's quotes. Which Bush made him say.

It's all so simple when Newsweek explains it.

And, if tricks from Bush weren't enough, it's Kerry's inherant goodness which also doomed his campaign:

The Kerry campaign continued to drift, unable to break through. Kerry himself was flummoxed. Paging through a speech draft in early April, he wondered aloud, "What is our message?" Kerry's caution, his fondness for nuance and his essential sense of responsibility kept getting in the way.

Gosh, Kerry was just so honest, so responsible. His only faults were his wonderfulness, apparently. He was just too wonderful for us voters.

So responsible that he has relentlessly criticized the very allies we will need to depend upon in the future. So responsible, he was willing to run with the "missing explosive" charge long before the facts were in. So responsible, that he talks endlessly about "secret meetings" with unnamed foreign leaders, and then says he can't say more because leaking information about such meetings wouldn't be "responsible."

And "nuanced", which is a fancy way to say that Kerry contradicted himself left and right, but imbeciles like myself couldn't see -- for example -- that saying he'd pull the troops out in six months and saying he'd stay the course were really the same policy position.

That's a suck-up criticism if ever I heard one.

And of course, although this is a story obtensibly about the Kerry campaign, we can't let the opportunity to make Bush look like an idiot pass, no matter how we must distort the record:

Somehow, though, the long-awaited Bush collapse wasn't happening, at least not yet. Iraq seemed to be in flames...

Yes, "seemed to be" was the right term. Translation: We in the press portrayed Iraq as being in flames and hid positive news. How come this wasn't working against Bush?

At a press conference in mid-April, Bush told a reporter that, try as he might, he just couldn't think of a mistake he had made since 9/11. The press and the chattering classes hooted in derision. But Bush actually went up in the polls. Most voters seemed to like the president's show of resolve. But Bush actually went up in the polls. Most voters seemed to like the president's show of resolve. Kerry was baffled. He said with a sigh to one top staffer, "I can't believe I'm losing to this idiot."

Yet the question put to Bush was actually:

In the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you'd made in your life, and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa. You've looked back before 9/11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have you learned from it?

This is a classic no-win question, on a par with "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" Of course Bush refused to identify going into Afghanistan or going after Saddam as mistakes, though the press dearly wanted him to. So they did the next best thing, and portrayed him as incapable of admitting error, because he wouldn't agree with them these two policies were wrong.

Now contrast this with Newsweek's earlier treatment of Charlie Gibson's question about Kerry's contradictory stories about throwing/not-throwing his medals away. (One would note Kerry did not admit error here either.) Merely asking the question was portrayed as an "insult to Kerry's honor" where Bush's refusal to give the reporters what they wanted here shows he was an "idiot".

And Americans, of course, are ignorant and stupid for noticing this is going on:

Most voters seemed to like the president's show of resolve. Kerry was baffled. He said with a sigh to one top staffer, "I can't believe I'm losing to this idiot."

Given the narrow set of facts presented in the Newsweek article, this does appear to make no sense. But this just serves to highlight the difference between the liberal echo chamber and the larger playing field called "reality."

Interestingly, after reveling in more obscenity (wrong for Cheney, but makes Kerry just an average Joe), the article ends on a portrayal of such a disconnect:

"And if you lose," Heinz continued, "I'm not even going to tell you how f---ed up that is."

Kerry's cheeks, perched plump above a toothy grin, sank into an empty expression. "That's it," he said. "That's enough of that."

There were some places you didn't go with Kerry.

Nor, apparently, with with his ever-supportive apologists in the press.