Well, ok, it was only one tentacle. In this editorial, John Ziegler explains how Kerry's quote almost didn't make the news cycle (via Patterico's Pontifications.
Apparently, Ziegler heard a local reporter from KNBC doing a story on the Kerry speech. The package included the now infamous quote about getting "stuck in Iraq." While the KNBC story treated the remark without fanfare, Ziegler saw immediately what a hot button Kerry had managed to push.
I was immediately thunderstruck by what I thought I had heard. My show plays a lot of sound bites from public people saying really stupid things, but this one appeared to me to be simply off the charts. It sounded to me like he just said that if you are too dumb to be a success you may end up at the bottom of the barrel and held against your will fighting as a soldier in Iraq. Even as low an opinion as I have for John Kerry, I was not totally confident that I had not just misunderstood what I had heard. After all, not even John Kerry is THAT stupid. Heck, everyone knows that Yale graduates aren’t dumb (unless of course they are named Bush).
But, in fact, Kerry did say something that dumb. And even if Kerry wasn't intending to insult the troops, he at least showed he's too stupid to read his own speech.
Ziegler managed to get the soundbite and used it on his show and his audience went crazy for it, wanting it on the web so they could send it to family, friends, and news outlets.
For our lefty friends who love a good conspiracy, here's the best part:
Then, through the efforts of us at KFI and many others who bombarded the Drudge Report with links to the audio on our website, within about four hours of being aired on our show the story went absolutely nuclear when around midnight Pacific Time when it was prominently placed on the preeminent news website in the world.
Getting on Drudge when it did was critical not just because of the massive media play that any link there automatically receives, but because it was vitally important that the story get legs before sunrise on the east coast. Since Kerry had made the statement on Monday evening, had it not made Drudge until after noon on Tuesday it very well may never have caught fire and would have been considered “old” or at least inherently “suspicious,” especially so close to an election. Instead, the entire national news cycle was dictated by John McCain’s very early morning call for an apology from Kerry which NEVER would have happened without the Drudge link to the audio (as well as one of our listeners putting the video up on YouTube.com).
It just goes to show that the modern news cycle isn't anything like it was even 10 years ago. As Ziegler points out, the importance of getting the story out before the early morning East Coast talkshows was paramount. Without the hard work of the vast, right-wing conspiracy, this story might not have grown "legs." Instead, it's just the most recent example for left-leaning folks about how unfair the universe is. And this time, they don't even need to blame Diebold.
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