MILWAUKEE, Sept. 14 -- Forget soccer moms and NASCAR dads. The most important demographic in these parts transcends gender and geography -- it's Green Bay Packers fans.
Both candidates are targeting them with the ferocity of a Brett Favre bullet, but only John F. Kerry has fumbled the name of the hallowed grounds on which the Packers play, the frozen tundra of Curly Lambeau Field.
PHOTO CAPTION: John Kerry stumbled in Wisconsin by botching the name of the Packers' field. (Laura Rauch -- AP)
At a campaign event last month, the Democratic presidential nominee called it Lambert Field -- a slip of the tongue carried on television, in papers throughout the state and on ESPN's Web site.
That's akin to calling the Yankees the Yankers or the Chicago Bulls the Bells. This is a place where Packers jackets often outnumber sports coats in church and thousands of fans wear a big chunk of yellow foam cheese atop their head with the pride of a new parent. President Bush's warning to terrorists is apropos to the passions of Packers fans -- you are either with 'em or against 'em.
"I got some advice for him," Bush told Wisconsinites a few days after the Lambert gaffe. "If someone offers you a cheesehead, don't say you want some wine, just put it on your head and take a seat at Lambeau Field." Vice President Cheney made the obligatory pilgrimage to Green Bay last week to pile on. "I thought after John Kerry's visit here I'd visit Lambert Field," Cheney told a crowd at a Republican fundraising dinner Thursday night. Then he went in for the kill. "The next thing is he'll be convinced Vince Lombardi is a foreign leader."
Yes, this article in all of its inanity is currently on the front page of the Washington Post's website. In the print Post, it's on Page A9. But on the web, front page news.
And given the SCLM's penchant for "this, and on the other hand, that" coverage, do they give us the obligatory paragraph about a) Bush's misstatements on the campaign trail, or b) The fact that this is NOT AN ISSUE, and since the Bushies can't win on the issues they are flogging the trivial & the nonsense for all they're worth. OF COURSE NOT! It's the Washington Post & they don't have to play fair.
Faux Journalism at its lowest.
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