Berkshire Eagle Column 3-20-04
Berkshire Eagle
I, Publius

Mutter out loud

By Alan Chartock
Special to the Eagle


Live microphones can be dangerous. Used correctly, they can really help you. Take presidential candidate John Kerry. The more I see of the guy, the more I respect him. He clearly wants to be president and will do what it takes to get to the head of the pack. Unlike the hapless Michael Dukakis, he clearly understands that when he is slandered or attacked by the other side, he has to respond. As they say in hockey, the lie cannot go unchecked. But even though the Kerry-Heinz (57 Varieties) fortune is substantial, the Bush people have the major advantage. They have $170 million dollars to work with in the campaign and that number will go much higher. It figures.

If you save billions for your rich friends, they will accommodate you by handing over what you need to win an election. When you look at it that way, they see it as a very good investment.

Since, as Kerry says, the Bush people don't have much of a record on international relations (much of the world seems to hate us), the economy (we're broke and getting broker), or the environment (don't even get me started), the Bushies have to go negative. It's already begun, with the Bush forces claiming Kerry is wishy-washy; he's on both sides of the issues; he's weak on defense and so on.

Kerry has to answer these charges but ironically, as wealthy as he is, he doesn't have the war chest to do it with. He needs to take a page from Howard Dean's book and figure out how to get a lot of people's hundred dollars. Dean was able to galvanize those who wanted Bush out of the White House and bring in millions of dollars for his campaign.

Now that it seems his campaign might well be winnable, the money will start to come in. But he needs to get out there fighting now.

That's where my mother's strategy comes into play. I learned it from her and have, in turn, taught it to my children. It is the art of saying something under your breath. It sort of mimics Tourrette's syndrome, where a person will be saying something logical and slip in an out-of-context expletive.

Under the Chartock method, you say something that is not quite discernible so that the other guy thinks he heard something but can't really prove it. For example, if someone in authority says something you don't like, you might, like a ventriloquist, mutter under your breath, "What a bunch of garbage." The other side is reduced to saying something like, "What did you say?" You, of course, innocently reply, "Who me?" Since we now know that John Kerry can trace his own heritage to Jewish roots, we just might be related and he might know the Chartock talking-under-your-breath trick.

You can say whatever you like and not be held responsible for it. Even George Bush, who is definitely not related to me (I wouldn't have it) knows about it. When the president spotted Adam Clymer of The New York Times during the last campaign, the microphone caught Bush saying that Clymer was coming into the room and that he was a real ... expletive deleted. It was an act of genius, since the Bushies certainly weren't relying on the votes of people who read The Times every morning. Nothing like a little scapegoating of the elite crowd. It was a perfect ploy. Bush never apologized and was never held responsible. It worked. On the other hand, it made Clymer into a bit of a national hero, at last among Democrats.

Now we see the latest practitioner of the lost art of muttering. The microphone was supposed to be off but Kerry was heard saying that the Republicans were " the most crooked, lying group I've ever seen." Not bad, if slightly hyperbolic. Just look at what Bush and his cronies have done to the country. They say one thing and do another and they help themselves and not the people.

The Republican phalanx was appalled and accused Kerry of everything under the sun, including being disrespectful. Yet I've always heard in matters of libel that "truth is the best defense." In this case, what Kerry said was true, at least according to his standards. Apparently, the philosophy of the Bushites is that "we hit you and when you hit back, we say you are being disrespectful." Taken to its logical conclusion, that particular scenario would be the equivalent of a boxing match in which your opponent has no restraints while you've got two hands and a foot tied behind your back.

The beauty of Kerry's remark is that it made international news. It didn't cost him one cent of his precious campaign money and showed him as an honest and outraged pilgrim who speaks his mind. It energized the Kerry political base who now know that they truly have a champion who will fight the good fight and not take any incoming.

The problem is, you can't do it every day. My advice to Kerry would be to say on the record exactly what he said off-microphone. As for me, I will continue to use my mom's method. It is a beautiful thing to behold. Try it, it's fun.




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Alan Chartock, a Great Barrington resident, is chairman and executive director of WAMC Northeast Public Radio and a professor of communications at SUNY-Albany. His web site is www.alanchartock.com
- posted by Alan @ 3/20/2004 08:53:00 AM