Mirroring the
Ryan’s rebranding effort — sorry, his heartfelt interest — is inevitably described as “quiet.” Ryan “has spent the past year quietly touring impoverished communities across the country,” reports Coppins. A similar reported piece in National Review last June detailed “Ryan’s quiet pitch to the poor.” As did a Washington Post story last month(“Ryan … has been quietly visiting inner-city neighborhoods”). Coppin’s story quotes a skeptic, but adopts an almost perfect credulous tone.
It might seem odd that Ryan’s determination to keep his love of the poor quiet would nevertheless leak out in the media, over and over again. “Ryan has deliberately left the cameras behind during his excursions to poor neighborhoods this year in places like Indiana and New Jersey,” reports Coppins, “but the stories of his interactions with the poor somehow find a way of leaking into public view.” Somehow. The stories find a way. Because stories, far from being inanimate human creations, as you might think, actually have minds of their own and a willpower so fierce they can defy even the most secrecy-minded spinmeister.Is there any politician who gets more undeserved attention than the "zombie-eyed granny-starver" from Wisconsin (o.k., but Grampypants McCain is at a whole different level of media obsequiousness)? Is there any other politician who can get away with supporting cuts to the food stamp program and cutting off unemployment insurance and still be portrayed as having concern for the poor? Is there more credulous a person than a reporter dutifully "exposing" the
(Photo: Ryan washing already-washed soup kitchen dishes in a photo-op during the 2012 campaign.)
