Hate Inc.: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another

by Matt Taibbi

This was particularly an issue with John Kerry. If you were a reporter following Kerry, you felt like you’d died and woken up in a vat of boiling grease. The man was pure distilled boredom. He had no clue why he was running for president. The only thing Kerry seemed to enjoy on the campaign was “orange baseball,” a game in which he’d roll an orange from the front section of his campaign plane down the aisle into the press section. The vets on the plane explained this was an old tradition (apparently Nancy Reagan was really into it as well). But Kerry bowled more oranges than any candidate they had ever seen. If we were taking off, Kerry would lean his huge head into the aisle, flash a dazed smile, and drop an orange on the carpet. As the plane accelerated upward, the fruit would fly down the aisle, gaining speed throughout, and smack the piles of camera equipment at the back of the plane, if it didn’t first bounce into the face of a sleeping reporter or bash an unsuspecting stewardess in the kitchen. Kerry would smile equally at each of these outcomes.