Howard Dean's scream may well have been the beginning of the end for the candidate's candidacy. The vocal harangue helped prove two of his competitors' primary points: Dean is un-presidential, and Dean is not just a left-winged loony but a pied piper of hot air. I got a kick out of seeing Dean's infamous "I have a scream" speech 687 times. Talk about overplayed. But what you see isn't what you get. In an in-depth look at the speech, ABC News concluded that the room in which Howard was speaking was so loud that one could barely hear the speech. We often complain about the media controlling the discourse of the nation. Folks, if you knew all the facts about the "I have a scream" speech, you'd be surprised, perhaps even you may have even voted differently. Don't gulp down everything you see.
God bless Dianne Sawyer. In a recent story on ABC News, she discovered that what was heard on the air was "not a reflection of the way it sounded in the room." Dean was yelling into his hand-held microphone, to be sure. But hand-held microphones only pick up the person's voice, not the surrounding noise, like the deafening noises erupting from the audience. In the ABC story, many people commented that they couldn't hear Dean. Garance Franke-Ruta, senior editor, American Prospect: "As he spoke, the audience got louder and louder, and I found it somewhat difficult to hear him." Another reporter said: "What the cameras didn't capture was the crowd." Diane Sawyer concludes, "And what about the scream as we all heard it? In the room, the so-called scream couldn't really be heard at all. Again, he was yelling with the crowd."
Want to see the "real" speech, the one where you can barely hear Dean? Log onto http://www.deanforamerica.com, and click on the "ABC: TV news misrepresented Dean's speech" link in the top right corner. I showed the video to some Dean, Kerry and Lieberman supporters. They may not agree on which candidate should get the nomination but they agree on one thing: The media severely damaged Howard Dean. And the sad thing is that only a fraction of people who saw the "I have a scream" speech will know the real circumstances of the situation. One super-delegate even defected from Dean's campaign to endorse another candidate because of the speech. That's the grisly power of the media.
You can fault Dean. He should have been more seasoned and not screamed into the microphone, even though he couldn't even hear himself. He shouldn't have looked so angry on television, controlled his emotions. His facial expressions played into his caricature of an angry ex-governor from Vermont, a loony pied piper. There's a way to demonstrate a victory even when you have lost.
Dean didn't learn one of those quintessential rules of politics: Act; don't react. In other words, when something bad happens (like you spend nearly $10 million in Iowa and come in a distant third place), don't react emotionally -- at least not in front of people. Think of the sensible way to act, the proper way to act, and follow suit. Dean has learned this the hard way, and look what it will probably cost him: the Democratic nomination.
History is littered with misrepresentations. Remember that quote from GM President Charles Wilson? "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." Misquote. The actual line: "for years I thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa." Dean's demise will arguably be tracked back to the media's misrepresentation. It's unfair and shouldn't have to be this way. But the dustpan of history and broom of misrepresentations could erase Dean.
While I can shove blame onto the media and Dean, the ultimate blame falls upon us. Why do we accept this stuff? Why do we believe what we see and hear all the time? Why don't we take it upon ourselves to seek out the truth? Wouldn't it be refreshing to see the Times print a front-page story on the shoddy job the media did on reporting the speech? Not going to happen, so the burden falls on us to either believe or think independently.
