"The Gore-ing of John Kerry." Media Log has been a bit under the weather for the past two days (and thus hopes for dispensation from Charlie Pierce's anti-third-person rant; scroll down). But I do want to call your attention to an excellent analysis of the media's animus toward Senator John Kerry as he ramps up his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Written by Spinsanity.org's Ben Fritz for Salon, the piece argues that the media -- with a big assist from the Boston Globe -- are turning Kerry into the Al Gore of 2004.

On matters such as Kerry's "regime change" remark, the late discovery of his Jewish roots, even his haircuts, the media, Fritz writes, have adopted "the key tropes built into the media's coverage of Gore and turned them against Kerry: the assumed phoniness of everything he says, the assumed cold political calculation behind every move he makes, and the belief that individual gaffes demonstrate deep, fundamental character flaws."

Good and important stuff.