The journalistic values of Jodi Wilgoren

Jodi Wilgoren, covering the Kerry campaign for the Times, continues to astonish with commentary so insightful, unexpected, fair, and considered that you really begin to understand the man behind the politician and where Kerry stands on the important issues of the day.

Or, not.

CHICAGO -- Forty-eight minutes into a rambling speech about education, health care, jobs and equal opportunity here the other morning, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts went off-script to sum up his White House quest in a simple sentence. "In the end it's about values," he told a conference of the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.

Unfortunately, Wilgoren doesn't go "off-script" while covering the Kerry campaign. Rambling? How so? Jodi doesn't tell us, other than to mention that he talked about "education, health care, jobs and equal opportunity...in other words...issues, Jodi.

Nope, Jodi spends another 10,000 or so words riffing on Kerry's invoking of "values" in the speeches he's been giving around the country, as though this were a surprising thing; after all, after Slick Willie, Al the Internet-inventor, and, now, Kerry the rich, elitist, bad Catholic, Democrats aren't allowed to talk about "values" during "rambling" policy speeches. Political reporters like Jodi Wilgoren have, on behalf of Democrats everywhere, ceded the moral high ground to Bush, whose vision of Motherhood (and, oh, what a mother!) and Apple Pie (or is it making apple sauce out of Iraq?) endlessly repeated bear little scrutiny by the stenographers covering his campaign.