SLIME MERCHANTS AT WORK. Based on what I've heard so far, it sounds like Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge are sliming Globe reporter Michael Kranish. What a surprise.

Kranish reported today that George Elliott - Kerry's former commanding officer, who'd once defended Kerry and had then gone on the attack against him - was defending him again, sort of. Now we learn that Elliott is back to attacking Kerry, and claiming that Kranish misquoted him. A very strange story indeed.

Limbaugh and Drudge think they know what happened with Kranish. They've learned that Kranish wrote the introduction to a book - which they describe as the "official" Kerry-Edwards campaign book - and that therefore Kranish is in the tank.

Limbaugh calls Kranish "a paid Kerry political biographer!" (Gratuitious exclamation point his.)

Drudge writes: "BOSTON GLOBE journalist Mike Kranish has been commissioned to write the foreword of the Kerry-Edwards campaign book - just as he is covering the campaign in an official capacity as a journalist for the BOSTON GLOBE!" (Gratuitious exclamation point and CAPITAL LETTERS definitely his.)

But wait. Drudge triumphantly links to this piece by New York Daily News reporter Paul Colford as alleged proof of Kranish's perfidy. Yet it seems to me that it doesn't say what Drudge thinks it says. Colford reports that PublicAffairs has canceled plans to publish a book called Kerry/Edwards: Their Plans and Promises, which was to include an introduction by Kranish. Instead, Public Affairs will "bring out an authorized edition of the Democratic duo's personal campaign manifesto," to be titled Our Plan for America: Stronger at Home, Respected in the World. There is absolutely no mention of Kranish's being involved in that project.

In fact, on the evidence thus far it seems that Kerry/Edwards was to be an unauthorized book on the Kerry-Edwards campaign. It makes sense. Kranish is the co-author of John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best - which, by the way, is not especially kind to Kerry. That book, too, was published by PublicAffairs. No doubt the publisher saw an opportunity to take advantage of a relationship it already had with Kranish.

I still want to know more. In particular, there's a weird reference in Colford's piece about excerpts of the now-canceled Kerry/Edwards book having been available on the Kerry-Edwards website. But the idea that Kranish would risk his job by taking money to write part of an official campaign book - or even to do it for free - strikes me as preposterous.

MEA CULPA. Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy on Wednesday wrote that he wanted to make it clear he'd never referred to Nomar Garciaparra as a "cancer" on the Red Sox: "Nowhere in this space was Garciaparra characterized as a 'cancer' in the Sox clubhouse. The word 'polluted' was used (which admittedly may be harsher for some), but you won't find 'cancer' tossed about casually here."

Now, I have no idea whether Shaughnessy is a Media Log reader. But on Monday, I did refer to columns written by him and the Herald's Gerry Callahan as concluding that Garciaparra "had become a cancer on the team." I did not directly attribute the word "cancer" to either one of them; rather, I meant it as a summary of what they had written. (And, in fact, neither actually used the word.)

Nevertheless, it was sloppy and insensitive of me, especially given that Shaughnessy's daughter, Kate, is a leukemia survivor. Referring to someone who's a negative influence as a "cancer" is pretty common usage, dating back at least to John Dean's warning to Richard Nixon. It's also a lousy expression, and I'll try not to use it again.

GLOBE SCOOPS UP COLLINS. Former Herald television critic Monica Collins, dropped last November amid a wave of cost-cutting, will soon surface at a new location: 135 Morrissey Boulevard. Collins has been brought in to write an every-other-week essay for the Boston Globe Magazine, and to contribute to the paper's City Weekly section as well.

"It's the proverbial I-couldn't-be-happier-and-I'm-looking-forward-to-the-opportunity," says Collins, who, until recently, had continued to write a weekly column for the Herald, "Downtown Journal," on a freelance basis. Her first Globe Magazine essay will appear on September 19.

Says Globe Magazine editor Doug Most: "We're excited about it, because I do think she has a voice in this town. She's knowledgeable about the people and places that make this city tick."

Collins also appears Fridays at 9 a.m. on WRKO Radio (AM 680) to talk about media issues on The Pat Whitley Show (as do I and the Globe's Mark Jurkowitz), and writes a syndicated column called "Ask Dog Lady."

DOES ROGER AILES KNOW ABOUT THIS? The most entertaining news from the Kerry campaign trail comes in the last paragraph of Anne Kornblut's story in today's Globe:

Some 200 business leaders endorsed Kerry yesterday, including executives from Oracle, Bank of America, and three other companies who flew here to attend the round-table. They decried rising US deficits and what several said was a chilly international business climate under Bush. Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, said that the Bush administration's "isolationist" and "occasionally bellicose" rhetoric was bad for US financial interests and trading abroad.

Odd, but searching for "Chernin" at FoxNews.com yields nothing since August 2003. You'd think they'd want to get this up right away, so that they could be fair and balanced and all. In fact, Media Log looks forward to the sight of Sean Hannity interviewing his boss on the depradations of George W. Bush.

NEW IN THIS WEEK'S PHOENIX. An enterprising blogger digs up the unexpected: journalists who make financial contributions to politicians.

RACIAL PROFILING AT BUSH-CHENEY 2004? The Arizona Daily Star reports that the Bush-Cheney campaign demanded to know the race of a photographer that the paper had assigned to cover an appearance by Dick Cheney last Saturday. Managing editor Teri Hayt refused, but the photographer - Mamta Popat, who is of Indian descent - was allowed to attend the Cheney event anyway.

As you'll see when you read the story, the demand came from the campaign itself, and was supposedly related to security concerns. Yet in this follow-up, the Secret Service takes the hit, calling the need for racial identification part of its standard security procedures.

Hmmm ... then how come the Phoenix wasn't asked for the race of reporters who would be covering the Democratic National Convention? We received nine passes for the FleetCenter, including a seat high above courtside, and I guarantee you we weren't asked who anyone's color was. And in case you didn't notice, the Secret Service practically ran the DNC.

I've covered maybe a half-dozen events over the years in which the Secret Service was involved, and I've never once been asked to state the color of my skin. Yes, I know, someone named Kennedy is probably white, but my brother Randall Kennedy shows that's not always the case.

So is the Secret Service telling the truth? If so, then why did the initial demand come from the Bush-Cheney campaign rather than from the agency? And if the Secret Service is not telling the truth, doesn't that amount to partisan flak-catching on behalf of the Republicans?

And why has no one written about this except David Mark?

[Update: D'oh! Click here for just a few of the other folks who've commented on this.]

NOMAR - WELL, MORE. I'm trying to find a way to wrap up the Nomar Garciaparra media war. I'm hoping that this column (sub. req.) by the Herald's Howard Bryant will do it. Bryant has obviously made the effort to talk to anyone who'll talk, and to place it all in some kind of perspective. The result is a piece that makes management look better than Nomar, but that has more nuance and depth than other commentaries I've seen. Bryant writes:

... Red Sox sources say the organization's mindset was to try and win a championship with Garciaparra in the lineup, let the relationship atrophy during the winter and part through the no-fault excuse of being unable to agree on a contract.

Neither side wanted to be the bad guy with the public. The result was an air of insincerity on both sides. The Sox didn't want the responsibility of trading a player of Garciaparra's enormity and the shortstop didn't want to deconstruct his iconic status with the fans by telling them he wanted out.

What made it fall apart, Bryant says, is that Garciaparra, for the first time in his career, was letting "his feelings toward the organization affect how he approached games. For seven years, he had never undermined the team, and now they believed he had." The result: an almost panicked trade in which the Red Sox got the short end of the stick.

IN BED WITH THE EVIL EMPIRE. This can't be good, can it? Never mind the blight of media concentration coming to regional sports networks. If the Red Sox' New England Sports Network and the Yankees' YES Network merge, aren't the Yankees always going to be the senior partners?

Plus, then the New York Times Company - owner of the Globe and the Times - would wind up owning a piece of both teams, not just the Sox.

NOMAR NO MORE. The Globe's Bob Ryan and the Herald's Steve Buckley (sub. req.) have additional perspective on the Nomar Garciaparra trade today. Ryan professes mystification, while Buckley positions himself about two-thirds of the way toward management, more or less siding with Theo and company while giving Garciaparra his due.

But you know what you want. You want The Commissioner. Media Log delivers! The great thing about Peter Gammons is that he always seems to have the inside story, even on those occasions when subsequent developments leave you scratching your head. Anyway, here's Gammons at ESPN.com:

Garciaparra did not hang out with teammates, and this season became increasingly distant as his body language became despondent. That he didn't play in Yankee Stadium in the July 1 classic when Derek Jeter gave up his body for an out got a little exaggerated, but veteran teammates constantly made private comments like "he is the biggest disappointment of my playing career - I never knew what he was like."

...

Nomar was bitter, he was embarrassed to not play as he wanted because of his heel injury (three teams that do statistical ratings of players had him as the worst defensive shortstop in the game, because of the injury). Then, when the Red Sox got to Minnesota this weekend, Garciaparra told trainers Jim Rowe and Chris Correnti that his heel wasn't right and that not only would he have to skip the weekend, he expected to have to go on the disabled list for most of August to be right in September. But when Epstein told Cubs GM Jim Hendry that there is a medical issue, Hendry said he wasn't concerned - which led the Red Sox to believe that Arn Tellem, Garciaparra's agent, was telling the Cubs he is fine. Translated, as Warren Zevon would say, "Dad, get me out of this."

Nomar was a great, great player, and he may be once again. But for whatever reason - and I'm certainly not holding management blameless - his situation in Boston had become untenable. Keep an eye on the off-season and see what he signs for. I'll bet it's for a lot less than the $60 million he turned down from the Sox - or even the $48 million "market correction" offer they later made.

SUN SHINES ON KELLER. Josh Gerstein of the New York Sun profiles political analyst Jon Keller, of WLVI-TV (Channel 56). Gerstein's focus is on Keller's disdain for John Kerry, and he calls Keller "the reporter he seems to loathe more than any other." I'm quoted as well, although Gerstein is quick to point out that I hold "a more charitable view of the senator."

MEDIA LOG MEETS WONKETTE. Almost! I was on CNN's Reliable Sources on Sunday, as was Ana Marie Cox, of Wonkette.com. Only I was in a dark little studio in Watertown, while she was in Washington (presumably; I haven't seen the tape). Anyway, here's the transcript. Don't get too excited - she watched her language.

HARK, THE HERALD. There's a hilarious piece in this week's New Yorker on how the Herald covered the Democratic National Convention. "If I produced a newspaper as boring as the Globe, I'd kill myself," editorial director Ken Chandler told John Cassidy.

I do want to take issue with one of Cassidy's assertions - that the Herald outsells the Globe in the city. He writes:

Although the Globe is a much bigger, wealthier paper than the Herald, its strength lies in the suburbs. Inside the city limits, the Herald, which has a total circulation of about two hundred and fifty thousand, outsells the Globe on newsstands.

Now, that is absolutely true, but it doesn't tell the whole story. The reason that the Herald outsells the Globe in the city is that so few copies of the Herald are home-delivered. According to the latest numbers from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Globe's total Monday-through-Friday circulation is 452,109, and on Sunday it's 686,575. By contrast, the Herald's daily number is 248,988, and on Sunday it's just 152,625.

But look at the difference in "single-copy sales," which basically applies to everything that isn't home-delivered. Here the Herald has a huge lead Monday through Friday, beating the Globe by a margin of 171,689 to 82,157. (On Sunday, the Globe actually beats the Herald in single-copy sales, 177,246 to 98,148.)

Do the math. From Monday through Friday, 82 percent of Globe customers get their paper via home delivery, whereas nearly 69 percent of Herald customers are grabbing it at newsstands, from street boxes, at convenience stores, whatever. Obviously a substantial number of Herald customers are suburbanites who get the Globe delivered at home and who then buy a Herald on their way to work. That's why the Herald experiences such a huge dropoff on Saturday (176,454 total, and 120,063 in single-copy sales) and Sunday.

Of course, Cassidy is right when he says that the Globe's focus is more suburban than the Herald's. But the numbers don't tell the whole story.

By the way, Globe columnist Adrian Walker makes what I'm pretty sure is his debut as a Herald critic today. And here is a good piece by Tom Scocca in the New York Observer on how Globe editor Martin Baron hopes the Kerry campaign will raise his paper's national profile.

NO REAGAN. When Ronald Reagan died recently, George W. Bush's fans tried to compare their man to the Gipper. No, they didn't try to claim he was as gifted a communicator as Reagan. (To put it mildly.) But, like Reagan, they said, Bush is committed to a few big ideas, and leaves the details to others.

Now, I was no fan of Reagan, and am more than a little bemused by the Republicans' largely successful effort at turning him into their Franklin Roosevelt. Nevertheless, Reagan towers over Bush. If you don't believe me, read Strobe Talbott's review of Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended, by Jack F. Matlock Jr., published in this week's New York Times Book Review.

Matlock depicts Reagan as understanding almost from the beginning that Mikhail Gorbachev was a different kind of Soviet leader - and that Reagan responded with a single-minded intensity and engagement aimed at appealing to and reinforcing Gorbachev's best instincts. Talbott writes:

Matlock describes in telling detail how Reagan rehearsed for his first meeting with Gorbachev, which took place in Geneva in November 1985. Reagan assigned the role of the Soviet leader to Matlock who, for maximum authenticity, played his part in Russian, mimicking Gorbachev's confident, loquacious style. Matlock also sent Reagan a series of "spoof memos" that were "interlaced with jokes and anecdotes," based on an educated guess at what Gorbachev's own advisers were telling him in preparation for the encounter.

Shortly before setting off for Geneva, Reagan dictated a long memo of his own, laying out his assessment of the man he was about to meet. The Reagan game plan was to look for areas of common interest, be candid about points of contention and support Gorbachev's reforms while (in Matlock's paraphrase) "avoiding any demand for 'regime change.'" He cautioned the members of his administration not to rub Gorbachev's nose in any concessions he might make. Above all, Reagan wanted to establish a relationship with his Soviet counterpart that would make it easier to manage conflicts lest they escalate to thermonuclear war - an imperative for every American president since Eisenhower.

Can you imagine anyone writing such things about Bush's diplomatic style, say, in 2018? I can't. Bush's entire approach to foreign policy has been disengagement other than the occasional diktat, coupled with almost a pathological need to rub our allies' noses in the reality of American military power.

BYE, BYE NOMAR. If Nomar Garciaparra were determined to leave town after the season, then that alone justified the blockbuster trade. Let's be serious: the Red Sox are not going to the World Series this year. If they could make themselves even a little bit better by not letting Nomar just walk away, then so be it.

But the Globe's Dan Shaughnessy and the Herald's Gerry Callahan (sub. req.) claim it was quite a bit worse than that - that Garciaparra had become a cancer on the team, and that the Sox will be better off without him.

Yes, I realize that Shaughnessy and Callahan are the Negativity Twins. (Although if they were all that negative, you'd think they'd be ripping the front office for botching chances they had to sign Nomar.) Callahan, in particular, seems out of line in all but accusing Garciaparra of faking the seriousness of his Achilles' tendon injury.

Still, both columns have the ring of truth. Shaughnessy writes:

His misery dates back to before this season. After the Sox beat the Oakland A's in the fourth game of the 2003 Division Series, the Sox boarded the team bus for the first leg of their journey back to Oakland for the series finale. Everyone was buoyant and gripped with the prospect of going to Oakland and winning Game 5 ... everyone except for the star shortstop. He got on the bus, turned toward the excited throng, and said, "Why is everyone so happy? As soon as we lose, everyone's just going to rip us."

That was Nomar. The ultimate downer. The wonderful talent who hated playing in a place where people cared too much.

Garciaparra was a great player, and may be again, and I hate to see him go. But the Red Sox have certainly proven over the years that they can lose with him. So it's not as though he was indispensable.

GOOD ENOUGH AND THEN SOME. Everyone seems to think that John Kerry is a lousy speaker. In fact, he's quite a good speaker when he has a decent speech to deliver and is in front of a big crowd, where his old-fashioned, stemwinder style doesn't seem too archaic. His speechifying is not terribly well-suited to television, which is an obvious problem in this, the sixth decade of the television age. That didn't matter so much last night, though, because he was speaking not to the television cameras directly but rather to the Democratic faithful, with TV simply capturing that.

Kerry got exactly what he needed. He got to introduce himself to that segment of the public that hasn't been paying attention up until now. He put himself forward as a more-than-plausible alternative to George W. Bush. And he managed to humanize himself somewhat, even though he praised his wife with exactly the same solemnity that you might imagine he would use to declare war.

The modern style is to talk, not orate, and to smile often. Kerry orates, and he almost never smiles as he's speaking. But he's learned to compensate for that by grinning broadly whenever he isn't speaking, a technique he used quite effectively in the primary debates last winter. The cameras capture him darkly glowering as he delivers his message, which isn't necessarily a bad thing when he's talking about serious issues. But then he comes off as relaxed and smiling during the pauses.

Last night in the FleetCenter, it seemed like Kerry was rushing his speech, stepping on applause lines, plunging ahead inaudibly as the crowd continued to whoop it up. But later, I watched maybe the first 10 minutes on the C-SPAN replay, and it came across differently. Kerry was miked so that the crowd wasn't nearly as loud. You could hear the cheers, but as background. So although I've heard several commentators say that Kerry was rushing, I'm not sure it came through that way to the viewers at home.

One thing that surprised me was the harsh tone of Kerry's speech. I think it may have been a smart move, but it was also a risky one. The rule of thumb in modern political campaigns is that the candidate takes the high ground while surrogates - the running mate, party officials, and the like - slash and smear. George W. Bush has been doing his share of Kerry-bashing, but he's left the heavy lifting to Dick Cheney and Republican Party chairman Ed Gillespie.

Last night, though, Kerry did some of his own dirty work. For instance:

I will be a commander-in-chief who will never mislead us into war. I will have a vice-president who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a secretary of defense who will listen to the best advice of our military leaders. And I will appoint an attorney general who actually upholds the Constitution of the United States.

The reference to John Ashcroft, in particular, elicited the loudest applause of the speech, matched only - and oddly, I thought - by Kerry's promise to boost stem-cell research. I didn't quite get that. Perhaps, to Democrats, the roadblocks Bush has erected to slow stem-cell research are emblematic of a world view based on his particular religion rather than science, and represent the arrogance of a man who places his personal beliefs above the good of the country. (But that would just be a guess!)

The heavy reliance on military symbolism and the strong emphasis on foreign policy were most un-Democratic. It's possible that it will backfire on Kerry, given the lack of specifics he offered in dealing with the war in Iraq. On the other hand, his handling of the war, should he become president, will be entirely dependent on his negotiations with other countries. We all know that the leaders of those countries would rather deal with Kerry than Bush; but Kerry obviously can't negotiate until he becomes president.

Late last night, I graded Kerry's speech as an A-minus for content and a B for delivery. Now that I've seen that he didn't appear to be rushing things on TV as much as it seemed in the arena, I'll upgrade the latter grade to a B-plus. Not bad. In fact, quite a bit better than not bad.

JULY SURPRISE. The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reports that the White House waited to announce the arrest of a major Al Qaeda figure in Pakistan until yesterday at 3 p.m. Kurtz notes that the New Republic had outlined precisely this scenario a few weeks ago.

The only surprise is that this didn't get major coverage the night of Kerry's speech. Either the media were too geared up to change directions, or they're not falling for this garbage anymore. Maybe both. (Correction. It was not the White House that announced the arrest. My error, not Kurtz's.)

IN THE HOUSE. I don't have an Internet connection inside the FleetCenter, so I can't do any real-time blogging. But I thought I'd bang out a few observations for later upload. I'll skip Kerry's speech tonight and deal with that in the morning.

8:10 p.m. I've been here for about 15 minutes, high above courtside, stage left and slightly behind the main podium, surrounded by folks from Slate and the New Republic. If anyone tries to leave, he or she won't be able to get back. Slate's Tim Noah has already tried. I am trying to limit my liquid intake.

Wesley Clark is speaking, and he delivers a speech heavy on militarism and patriotism. "The flag!" (Wild cheers.) "Enough is enough!" "Under John Kerry ... we're going to attack and destroy terrorist threats to America!" "America! Hear this soldier! Choose a leader! ... Protect our liberty! Renew our spirit!"

8:18 p.m. Joe Lieberman arrives, to the strains of Neil Diamond's "Coming to America." He manages not to say, "Is this a great country or what?" He does say of Kerry and Edwards, "They're not just going to win the popular vote, as Al Gore and I did. They're actually going to get to take office."

8:39 p.m. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is speaking: "Hope really is on the way." Groan.

A few minutes ago we got an advance copy of Kerry's speech. It's l-o-n-g.

I thought it was funny when they played "Mr. Big Stuff" for Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell last night. But why are they playing it for Pelosi?

8:42 p.m. Willie Nelson and an African-American choir sing a song that appears to be called "The Promised Land." No, not the Bruce Springsteen song of that name.

Kerry's speech is embargoed, but I'm not posting this until after he delivers it, so what the hell. It looks like his refrain will be "America can do better. And help is on the way." Gee, what happened to "hope is on the way"? Has it already arrived?

8:46 p.m. Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright is speaking: "He [Kerry] will use intelligence to shape policy, not twist intelligence to justify policy."

9:02 p.m. Kerry's speech is good. And harsh! If his delivery passes muster, it's going to give him a big boost. Check this out: "I want an America that relies on its own ingenuity and innovation - not the Saudi royal family." Look for Prince Bandar to start spinning on the No-Spin Zone, like, tomorrow.

9:06 p.m. Carole King comes out to sing "You've Got a Friend."

9:11 p.m. John Kennedy on the video screen while his voice crackles over the PA system: "Let the word go forth from this time and place ..." The reaction is pretty tepid, and it occurs to me that the whole JFK thing is starting to sound like my parents' invoking Franklin Roosevelt. Except that FDR had only been gone 20 years when I was 10. If you're 10 today, JFK has been gone for nearly 41 years.

No wonder Bill Clinton got a bigger hand than JFK when Clark started rattling off a list of "great Democrats."

9:12 p.m. They're projecting on the screen pictures of Republicans who are planning to vote for Kerry-Edwards.

9:17 p.m. The late Texas congresswoman Barbara Jordan appears on the big screen.

9:21 p.m. Out come Andre Heinz, Chris Heinz, Vanessa Kerry, and Alexandra Kerry. Of the two daughters, Vanessa goes first. "There was not one moment when he doubted his ability to win," she says. Really? Not even in November and December? It's probably true. Politicians are a different breed.

She also says that when he told his dying mother that he would run for president, her response was, "It's about time."

Alexandra tells the now-familiar story of her father administering CPR to Vanessa's hamster its cage had fallen overboard during a boating trip. "The hamster was never quite right after that, but he lived." She also recalls what he told her when she was an angst-ridden 19-year-old: "Remember that you're alive and that you're an American. Those two things make you the luckiest girl in the world."

9:36 p.m. The video begins to play. Fortunately, I can watch it on a TV in the press row in front of us. It's short - less than 10 minutes. Your typical gauzy bio with vaguely patriotic music in the background.

It accomplishes the important task of going over his war record and anti-war activism, since Kerry himself is only going to talk about that a little. But wait! Network coverage hasn't kicked in. But wait again! They probably wouldn't have carried it anyway ... on Tuesday, I had to switch to C-SPAN to watch the Teresa video. What can I say? I like videos.

9:47 p.m. A video on the Worcester fire, and Kerry's involvement in the aftermath.

9:50 p.m. The crews of Kerry's two swiftboats come out. The biggest hand is for Jim Rassmann, whose life Kerry saved - and who, in turn, saved Kerry's campaign when he surfaced in Iowa last January. "Nobody asked me to join this campaign. I volunteered," says Rassmann, a Republican.

Rassmann introduces Max Cleland, who receives a hero's welcome.

9:56 p.m. Cleland begins speaking from his wheelchair. He talks about being elected to the Georgia state senate in 1971, a young veteran missing three limbs, and seeing Kerry on television. "He put everything I was feeling into words," he says. "Even before I met John Kerry, he was my brother."

10:02 p.m. Cleland has entered the main part of his speech, just as the networks join us. Tells a story about pressing a Bible into Kerry's hand at Kerry's South Carolina campaign kickoff. "My fellow Americans, John Kerry has never let me down, and he won't let you down, either."

Kerry will be at the podium in a few moments.

11:34 p.m. Just made it back to the filing center. Instant grades: A-minus speech; solid B delivery. Much more tomorrow.

KERRY'S LIBERAL APPEAL. It's 5:30 p.m. as I finish this. In just a little less than six hours, John Kerry will deliver his acceptance speech - the proverbial most-important-speech-of-his-life, and one that will go a long way toward determining whether he can defeat George W. Bush this fall.

My Phoenix colleague Kristen Lombardi and I have stopped by a WiFi-enabled Starbucks after spending a good part of the afternoon in Cambridge with the Campaign for America's Future - an umbrella group that brings together various lefty and progressive causes and organizations. Al Gore was a no-show. His former top campaign strategist, Donna Brazile, had still not arrived by the time we had to leave. So the highlight turned out to be the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who delivered a rambling but occasionally moving speech. (You'll be able to read Lombardi's account here once she's done with it.)

One thing I want to address in these final hours of the convention is the notion that John Kerry is nothing but a centrist weenie, and that the left will have to push him continually if he's elected president. Jackson said as much today, telling the throng, "When Kerry wins, the anti-war movement will just have to get bigger the next day."

Texas populist Jim Hightower, at last Sunday's tribute to the late senator Paul Wellstone, got at much the same thing. Speaking of Kerry, Hightower said, "I don't care if he's a sack of cement, we're going to carry him to victory" - and, afterwards, be "in their face" to get Kerry and John Edwards to toe the line.

What spurs a lot of this talk, of course, is the experience with Bill Clinton. But Clinton really was a centrist with a lot of conservative impulses. Kerry is not the most liberal member of the Senate (click here to find out why), but he is an actual living, breathing liberal. As David Corn explained (sub. req.) recently in the Nation:

Kerry did support NAFTA, and he has proposed corporate tax cuts to spur investments. He once raised questions about the political costs of affirmative action (while still backing such programs). He's not a Wellstone Democrat. But compare Kerry with Bill Clinton, who still captivates the Democratic faithful. When Clinton ran for President, he burnished his centrist credentials by pushing welfare "reform" and advocating highly punitive crime legislation. This year, Kerry's post-primary lurch to the center entails cooling down the populist rhetoric (which he borrowed from his Democratic rivals) and emphasizing his "values." He has done nothing as crass as when Clinton left the campaign trail in 1992 to return to Arkansas for the execution of a mentally disabled convict. Kerry, a former prosecutor, opposes capital punishment.

Outside the Wellstone service Sunday at the Old West Church, Corn told me, "Progressives are going to vote for Kerry. Bush energizes the base enough that he doesn't have to worry about that." Corn's analogy is the Republican Party's extreme right wing in 2000, which swallowed its doubts about Bush's moderate rhetoric out of a burning desire to recapture the White House. (Of course, few knew that Bush would actually govern from the extreme right.)

Corn added of Kerry: "He is not a DLC Democrat," referring to the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist faction that Clinton once headed. "I don't think progressives have to swallow too hard to see the positive aspects of a Kerry candidacy," Corn said.

We all know how maddening Kerry can be - the nuances, the grays, the reluctance to take a clear stand and to stick with it. But when it comes to broad themes, Kerry is a true liberal - the first to win his party's nomination since Walter Mondale in 1984, if you subscribe, as I do, to the theory that Michael Dukakis in 1988 was more of a proto-New Democrat.

There's been a lot of talk this week that the American people are much more liberal than is generally thought. "Most Americans in their hearts are liberal and progressive," filmmaker Michael Moore told the Campaign for America's Future crowd on Tuesday.

Tonight, Kerry has a magnificent opportunity to bring those liberals back into the fold - to appeal to them not as a centrist looking for liberal votes, but as a liberal who is able to explain himself in mainstream, centrist terms.

NEW IN THIS WEEK'S PHOENIX. George W. Bush has united the Democrats. But where do John Kerry and John Edwards go from here? Also, please check out the Phoenix's continuing coverage of the Democratic National Convention.

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF EDWARDS. I'm afraid that I'm developing a John Edwards problem. Last night was only the latest example. Let me explain.

My first exposure to Edwards came four years ago, at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, where the North Carolina senator spoke at a breakfast gathering of the Massachusetts delegates. He struck me as a phony - a slick huckster who'd succeeded in aping every move and mannerism from Bill Clinton except the ability to seem genuine.

I liked him better during his presidential run. Mrs. Media Log loved him, although perhaps that's a problem of a different sort. Still, the stories crept out about his robotic repetition of his "Two Americas" speech at appearance after appearance, his creepy insistence on staying on message no matter what. Yes, you could say that's what he takes for a politician to succeed. But Edwards, uh, lost, you know?

Last night's speech was okay, sort of, although it seemed like he managed to say very little, wrapped up in a lot of bland generalities. And how icky was it that the party had passed out "Hope Is on the Way" signs to delegates so that they could wave them whenever Edwards mouthed the words?

I'm sorry, maybe it's because he's such a pretty boy, but I nearly burst out laughing when he looking into the camera and said, "And we will have one clear unmistakable message for Al Qaeda and the rest of these terrorists. You cannot run. You cannot hide. And we will destroy you." What are you going to do, counselor? Sue them?

And don't you think he should have referred to "John Kerry" rather than the overly familiar "John"? Even Teresa called him "John Kerry."

I watched Edwards's speech at Harvard's Kennedy School amid maybe 60 or 70 students and other onlookers. By far the biggest reaction of the evening was for the Reverend Al Sharpton's speech, which was so moving that you could almost forget what a dubious figure Sharpton really is. Check out how Sharpton closed:

I often hear the Republican party preach about family values, but I can tell them something about family values. Family values don't just exist for those with two-car garages and retirement plans. Family values exist in homes with only one parent in the household making a way against the odds.

I stand here tonight, the product of a single parent home, from the depths of Brooklyn, New York. My mother was a domestic worker who scrubbed floors in other people's homes for me. And because she scrubbed those floors, I was proud to stand as a presidential candidate.

Those are family values.

I recall that a few days after the September 11 terrorist attacks I was in a radio station that played "America the Beautiful," as sung by Ray Charles.

As you know, we lost Ray several weeks ago, but I can still hear him singing: "Oh beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountains majesty, above the fruited plain."

We must leave here committed to making Ray Charles's song a reality and to making America beautiful for everyone.

Good night, God bless you all, and God bless America!

As Sharpton walked off, the sounds of Brother Ray singing "America the Beautiful" played over the PA system. It was a genuine, shivers-up-your-spine moment, akin to Patti LaBelle singing "A Change Is Gonna Come" after Bill Clinton's speech on Monday. Which only served to emphasize how flat Edwards's effort was.

Maybe Edwards didn't want to overshadow John Kerry's big speech tonight. He certainly succeeded. And you can't help but admire his and his wife's resilience following the worst thing that could possibly happen to a parent.

But if you're looking for a running mate who'd bring substance and gravitas to the table, who could unquestionably step in as president on a moment's notice ... well, boring old Dick Gephardt is starting to look pretty good right now.

RACE, RAPE, AND IMUS. This one's for you, Philip Nobile. For several years, the former New York magazine media critic has railed against the racist content of Don Imus's New York-based syndicated radio program. I always thought Nobile had a tin ear and just didn't get the humor. And I haven't changed my mind - at least not generally.

But this morning, sidekick Bernard McGuirk said something that ought to get him suspended for, oh, I don't know, six months - or six years. I was driving and not taking notes, so bear with me. (Imus in the Morning is heard locally on WTKK Radio, 96.9 FM.) At about 9:15 a.m., the gang started talking about the Kobe Bryant rape trial. McGuirk called Bryant's accuser a "skanky ho." Some discussion ensued as to whether Bryant might actually be guilty, the morals of his accuser aside.

Then, incredibly, McGuirk asserted that regardless of Bryant's guilt or lack thereof, this was obviously not a "classic" rape - which he proceeded to define as a black man in a hood assaulting and raping a white woman. Imus did his usual, acting half-bemused, half-appalled, and complaining that McGuirk and another sidekick, Sid Rosenberg, were behaving badly.

A commercial break followed. I sat in the parking lot, waiting to hear what would happen when they returned. Imus again chuckled about McGuirk and Rosenberg's behavior, then started talking about New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd's new book. No apology.

In the past year in Boston, WEEI Radio (AM 850) hosts John Dennis and Gerry Callahan were suspended for comparing an escaped gorilla to black schoolchildren, and WTKK host Mike Barnicle apologized for using the phrase "jungle fever" to describe the marriage of former Boston television personality Janet Langhart, who's black, and former secretary of defense William Cohen, who's white.

Yesterday Callie Crossley, a television producer who's African-American, cited those incidents as evidence of Boston's improved-but-still-troubled racial climate. Read it. (Disclosure: Crossley and I often appear together on WGBH-TV/Channel 2's "Beat the Press" edition of Greater Boston, on Fridays at 7 p.m.)

But will anything happen to McGuirk, or to his enabler, Imus? This isn't a Boston problem - it's a New York problem, exacerbated by conglomerate radio ownership that brings this into cities across the country. What McGuirk said was far worse than Barnicle's utterance, and at least as bad as Dennis and Callahan's exchange.

I would say "where is the outrage?", except that this only took place two hours ago. Will New York take action? If not, will WTKK general manager Matt Mills do anything locally? I'll be watching. You should too.

INSTANT ANALYSIS. More on Edwards tomorrow, but my first reaction to his speech: a hodge-podge of meaningless clichés, punctuated in the middle by a few specific bullet points. Maybe I'll feel differently in the morning, but there's a contrived quality to Edwards's public utterances that I've never much liked. Maybe he was trying too hard not to overshadow Kerry.

BRASS KNUCKLES. I'm watching the convention at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, which is holding a convention party every night. There's free WiFi, so I figured I'd post a quick item. Al Sharpton got a huge reaction from the students. But obviously the most important message of the evening - other than John Edwards's upcoming speech - is the military.

Not only did retired generals John Shalikashvili and Claudia Kennedy speak, but they trotted out a bunch of military officers ... right after 10 p.m., to make sure network coverage had kicked in. Smart. If Bush and Cheney are going to turn this into a war election, you've got to have some brass on your side.

Cate Edwards is speaking now. Good Lord ... she's as pretty as her father. Going to post this quickly, because Elizabeth Edwards is walking to the podium.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, TOURIST ATTRACTION. It was time for a commercial break. While Chris Matthews waited to go back on the air, he asked the crowd of several hundred people who were gathered around the MSNBC tent what they thought of Teresa Heinz Kerry's speech the previous night. Cheers went up. Matthews kept pushing.

"You're all sophisticated city people. Do you think she'll play in Peoria?" he asked. "Yes! Yes!" came the response.

Among the curiosities that the Democratic National Convention has brought to Boston this week is Hardball, which has set up operations right outside Quincy Market. MSNBC may be the least-watched cable news channel, but the fascination with television is universal. The program is blasted out of loudspeakers so the crowd can hear, punctuated by the sound of military helicopters overhead. (Read Mike Miliard's no-bullshit account about what happened on Tuesday night.)

"Coming up, Congressman Charles Rangel of New York," Matthews announces. And there, near the barrier separating the set from the crowd, is Rangel, resplendent in a dark suit and red tie. He hands out MSNBC ballcaps as the crowd cheers - but not quite loud enough for a producer, who strides briskly along the barrier ordering louder applause.

When they come back, Rangel - a combat veteran of the Korean War - offers a sharp critique of the war in Iraq. He blasts Bush for sending young soldiers into Iraq despite having "no plan at all." Rangel blames the war on a host of familiar names - "Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Kristol, Cheney."

Matthews interjects: "How come we never hear your candidate speak like you are now? He waffles, he hedges."

Rangel parries the question and runs out the clock. Soon enough, it would be time for another commercial.

NO-READING ZONE. Four years ago - I think it was at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, but it might have been at the DNC in Los Angeles - my then-Phoenix colleague Seth Gitell and I were walking through the media center. A little while earlier we'd been writing pieces for BostonPhoenix.com. Now we were checking out the media circus before doing whatever it was we were going to do with the rest of the day.

But rather than having a few casual conversations with other journalists, we saw that everyone was chained to his or her keyboard, pounding away. I stopped by the Washington Post's space so I could say hello to media reporter Howard Kurtz, whom I know slightly. We politely exchanged a few pleasantries before he returned to his seat and started typing again. He was writing twice a day for the Post's website plus once for the paper. He looked like a haunted, exhausted man.

"Everybody's writing," Seth said, shaking his head. "Nobody's reading."

Seth is now the spokesman for Mayor Tom Menino, but I'm still here, writing more than ever. For those of us in the print media, especially, technology has drastically changed the way we do our jobs. When I covered my first convention, the Republican gathering in San Diego in 1996, I had one story to write for the Phoenix, one short piece I'd contracted to do for Salon, and that was it. I could actually relax and take it all in. At the conventions of 2000, I was up to one Web piece a day in addition to my piece for the print edition. Now I'm updating Media Log several times a day. Many journalists I know are doing the same.

Everybody's writing. Nobody's reading.

My heart sinks when I grab the Boston Globe and the New York Times from my doorstep in the morning. Most of what I see is for pure political and media junkies like me, and I could easily spend hours poring over it. But I can't. Who can? We've all got to get back to work.

So much output, so little input. There's a price to be paid for all this, and that is that there's less time to think, less time to read, less time to talk with smart people without try to wheedle a quote out of them that you can use within the next hour. There is no news taking place in Boston. It ought to be a chance to listen and learn, and to get ready for the campaign ahead.

But that's not the way it works anymore. Instead, we've got thousands of journalists producing non-news from a convention whose work, such as it is, was preordained on Super Tuesday, way back last March.

RIVERS WHACKS JACKSON (AGAIN). The Boston Herald today blows out the front on the Reverend Jesse Jackson's criticism of Boston. Reporter Maggie Mulvihill quotes the Reverend Eugene Rivers as saying of Jackson, "Jesse's talking trash and blowing smoke. This is Jesse's showboat."

As Mulvihill notes, Rivers is "one of the city's most respected leaders on racial issues." However, he is also a long-standing Jackson critic. In fact, three and a half years ago, there were even rumors that Rivers had something to do with exposing an extramarital affair Jackson had had - rumors that Rivers denied.

Here is what I wrote about Rivers (and Jackson) in February 2001.

DEPT. OF SELF-PROMOTION. PR Week interviews me about Media Log in its July 26 edition. Also, Timothy Noah of Slate took odds on how long Bill Clinton would speak on Monday night. As you'll see, I was too pessimistic, but what the hell - there was no prize.

DEPT. OF NON-SELF-PROMOTION. Speaking of everybody's writing, if you visit Media Log directly without going to BostonPhoenix.com first, well, take a look. Phoenix staffers have been posting like crazed weasels since Monday.

FUN - AND MEDIA-BASHING - WITH HOWARD AND MICHAEL. The line snaked from the front of the Royal Sonesta Hotel, on Land Boulevard in Cambridge, around the corner, and way, way back down Cambridge Parkway. I had no way of measuring it, but it might have stretched half a mile.

These were the Deaniacs, mostly young, waiting to see Howard Dean, the man they had tried to get elected president, and filmmaker Michael Moore. You could even hear celebrity Dean supporter Joan Jett singing "I Love Rock & Roll" from somewhere amid the boats floating on the Charles. Was it her, or was it a boombox?

The afternoon event, sponsored by the progressive Campaign for America's Future, was not a masterpiece of planning. It was hardly surprising that many hundreds of people would turn out to see perhaps the two biggest celebrities on the American left. As it was, only a fraction of those hoping to get inside were allowed to squeeze into the second-floor meeting room where the event was held.

Those of us in the media, not surprisingly, were well treated, given good seats with a decent view. We soon learned why: we were the main course.

Dean, the former Vermont governor, went first. These days he's running something called Democracy for America, an outgrowth of his campaign organization, Dean for America, that is working to elect local progressive candidates across the country - even a candidate for library trustee. "I like to think library trustee is a pretty important position in an administration where they like book-burning better than reading books," Dean said. (Media Log guarantee: all quotes are 95 percent accurate. Both Dean and Moore talked so fast, and the cheering was so loud, that I may be taking slight liberties.)

After a bit, Dean turned his attention to Teresa Heinz Kerry's telling a reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review to "shove it," and asked, "How many of you would like to tell reporters to shove it?" Whoops and hollers all around. Dean then told the crowd that the Tribune Review is owned by right-wing financier Richard Mellon Scaife. "That," Dean said, "even tops the Boston Herald," which he compared to "the National Enquirer."

Not that the Herald doesn't often deserve it, although the New York Post would be a more accurate, and somewhat kinder, comparison. Later, though, another speaker later noted that a Republican official had recently denounced Michael Moore as being part of the "hate and vitriol from this John Kerry celebrity set." The source: a July 22 story in the Herald by Dave Wedge. Only no credit was given.

Moore was running a good hour late, and other speakers, including former secretary of labor Robert Reich, filled the time. Finally, following an awkward pause created by what was apparently a pit stop to the men's room, Moore bounded on stage, blasting the media for failing to report on weak evidence underlying the Bush administration's case for the war in Iraq.

Conceding that George W. Bush is the villain of his film Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore continued that "there is an unstated villain in the film, and that's the national media.... The film outs them. It outs them as shills for the Bush administration. It outs them as cheerleaders for this war." And this admonition: "You can ask any question you want and not be arrested. So what has prevented you from asking the questions? You haven't just been embedded. You've been in bed with the wrong people."

At one point, Moore quipped, "I'm not picking on the press here today. I'm sure they'll kick the piss out of me later." Well, not here. Certainly not when Moore went on to point out that General Electric, which owns NBC, has $600 million worth of contracts in Iraq, making them "war profiteers." (That's harsh, but it's certainly true that NBC News's corporate parent has a direct interest in not crossing the White House on the war. How come Tom Brokaw doesn't tell us that?) Or how about Moore's contention that Disney, which refused to distribute Fahrenheit 9/11, turns out to have accepted a $300 million bailout from a member of the Saudi royal family for EuroDisney ... brokered by the Bush-connected Carlyle Group. A splendid story for Peter Jennings, whose employer, ABC News, is part of the Disney family.

Moore also urged progressives to work for the Kerry-Edwards ticket, saying of the Bushies, "They're not going to go without a fight, and believe me, they are better fighters than we are. They are up at six in the morning trying to decide which minority group to screw today. Our side, we never see six in the morning. Unless we've been up all night."

Dean and Moore were both terrific, full of fire and passion, bringing their supporters to their feet repeatedly. Dean was as unpresidential as ever, which was a reminder of why - once the caucuses and primaries started - almost no one actually voted for him. But he remains the guy who energized the Democratic Party, who dared speak out about the Bush administration's depredations when most Democrats were hiding under their beds, terrified they would be accused of lacking patriotism.

As for Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11 isn't perfect, but it's been unfairly caricatured as nothing but a factually deficient exercise in Bush-bashing. The truth is that it is a deeply moral statement about America in 2004. No wonder the Republicans are so eager to tear it down.

TED K., "PERFECT BASTARD." Now these Teresa Heinz Kerry quotes, reported by David Guarino in today's Boston Herald, are far more entertaining than a mere "shove it." Even if they are 30 years old.

THE KING OF VOX POP. For all of Bill Clinton's prancing and preening last night about his own eight years in the White House, what really made his speech extraordinary were the touches of self-deprecation. Listening to him talk of his new-found wealth, he sounded for all the world like Bruce Springsteen singing about being "a rich man in a poor man's shirt." And he used it to great effect in criticizing the disastrous economic policies of George W. Bush:

For the first time when America was in a war footing in our whole history, they gave two huge tax cuts, nearly half of which went to the top one percent of us.

Now, I'm in that group for the first time in my life.

And you might remember that when I was in office, on occasion, the Republicans were kind of mean to me.

But as soon as I got out and made money, I became part of the most important group in the world to them. It was amazing. I never thought I'd be so well cared for by the president and the Republicans in Congress.

I almost sent them a thank you note for my tax cuts until I realized that the rest of you were paying the bill for it. And then I thought better of it.

But that was just a warm-up for the main event: Clinton's praise of John Kerry's military service, framed in the context of his own - and Bush's and Dick Cheney's - well-known desire not to fight in the Vietnam War:

During the Vietnam War, many young men, including the current president, the vice-president and me, could have gone to Vietnam and didn't. John Kerry came from a privileged background. He could have avoided going too, but instead, he said: Send me.

When they sent those swiftboats up the river in Vietnam and they told them their job was to draw hostile fire, to wave the American flag and bate the enemy to come out and fight, John Kerry said: Send me.

And then, on my watch, when it was time to heal the wounds of war and normalize relations with Vietnam and to demand an accounting of the POWs and MIAs we lost there, John Kerry said: Send me.

Then when we needed someone to push the cause of inner-city children struggling to avoid a life of crime or to bring the benefits of high technology to ordinary Americans or to clean the environment in a way that created new jobs, or to give small businesses a better chance to make it, John Kerry said: Send me.

So tonight, my friends, I ask you to join me for the next 100 days in telling John Kerry's story and promoting his ideas. Let every person in this hall and like-minded people all across our land say to him what he has always said to America: Send me.

The "send me" refrain became kind of a call-and-response exchange with the audience. It was remarkably effective, and the Kerry campaign couldn't have asked for a better introduction to its candidate on network television in prime time. Hillary Clinton's introduction was good, and she is obviously a much less wooden speaker than she was during her 2000 Senate campaign. Al Gore was warm, funny, and human. But Clinton - as he has been in Democratic circles since 1992 - was the undisputed star of the night.

One touch of irony: despite the self-deprecation, despite the strong words of praise for Kerry, Clinton still showed him up by demonstrating that he is the best communicator in politics, and the one towering figure within the Democratic Party. Maybe he can't help it - he's just too good. But Clinton didn't make it any easier for Kerry to get out from under the Clinton shadow.

I sat next to Slate's Will Saletan last night, surrounded by other Slate-sters and New Republic staffers. Anyway, here is Saletan's take on the proceedings.

SCAIFE'S LONG REACH. Here is the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's coverage of Teresa Heinz Kerry's "shove it" blast at the paper's right-wing editorial-page editor, Colin McNickle. McNickle is writing a blog from Boston, but has not yet weighed in on his exchange with Heinz Kerry.

While everyone is a-twitter over Heinz Kerry's outburst, what's almost forgotten is that the Tribune-Review's owner, billionaire right-wing financier Richard Mellon Scaife, once called a female reporter a "fucking communist cunt."

Granted, a would-be first lady needs to watch her language more than Scaife does. (Not that "shove it" qualifies as being much worse than "I'm not going to answer your question.") But Media Log thought you'd like a reminder as to whom she was telling off.

GAY MARRIAGE AND DEMOCRATS. Bennett Lawson is a young gay man from Chicago. An aide to his hometown Democratic congresswoman, Jan Schakowsky, Bennett has come to Boston this week to do volunteer outreach to the gay/ lesbian/ bisexual/ transgender community. At around 1 p.m. today he was standing outside a conference room at the Sheraton, where the GLBT caucus was holding a standing-room-only meeting. His job was to guard what looked like hundreds of bag lunches prepared for those attending the caucus.

I wanted to ask Lawson about a rather unusual phenomenon: the passionate support that gay and lesbian activists have for same-sex marriage, and their seemingly equally passionate support for John Kerry, even though both he and George W. Bush oppose gay marriage.

Of course, I'm being deliberately disingenuous in phrasing it that way. Yes, Kerry opposes gay marriage, but he also recently voted against a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage, an amendment pushed by none other than Bush. Kerry also voted against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, a nasty law that was happily signed by Bill Clinton. Still - aren't folks like Lawson just a wee bit put off by Kerry's lack of support for one of the gay community's principal issues?

"He's running nationwide in a country that is not exactly comfortable with gay marriage," Lawson replied. "His record is very, very strong on gay issues. Every good liberal has to moderate things in order to run nationwide - or, in Illinois, to run statewide - but his record really speaks for itself."

I told Lawson that he sounded like he didn't believe Kerry when he says he genuinely opposes same-sex marriage. "No," he replied, laughing. "You know what? I don't." And since Kerry supports civil unions, with all the rights, benefits, and responsibilities of marriage, that's good enough for Lawson.

Still, Lawson is less than thrilled at the notion that the Democratic Party establishment would prefer that gay and lesbian voters support Kerry without making too much of a fuss. "I would like to hear the word 'gay' a lot more than I'm hearing," he said. "At the same time, I don't know what that gains."

Shortly before I spoke with Lawson, California senator Barbara Boxer addressed the GLBT caucus. "George Bush has decided that, this year, you're the scapegoat, and I'm here to tell you that you're not the scapegoat," she told the crowd. She raised the specter of a re-elected Bush getting the opportunity to name as many as four Supreme Court justices, and observed that Congress rushed to judgment on the anti-gay-marriage amendment even as a number of homeland-security bills sit unacted upon."They knew they didn't have a chance to pass it, and thank you for all the work that you did," Boxer said, but added: "This hurtful campaign isn't going away. They've just begun."

Given the wildly enthusiastic reception accorded Boxer, I was surprised to learn that her stand on same-sex marriage is exactly the same as Kerry's. In a brief interview, conducted on the run as she headed off to another engagement, Boxer told me that she favors domestic partnerships and civil unions with all the rights of marriage, but not marriage itself. When I sought to clarify by asking her whether she specifically opposed gay marriage, she responded that she would rather stress what she's for rather than what she's against.

I also asked her if she was concerned that, despite Kerry's official opposition to gay marriage, the Republicans would seek use the enthusiasm of Kerry's gay, pro-marriage supporters against him. Her response: "If they want to do that, I think they would be making a terrible mistake."

It's pretty obvious that gay and lesbian activists such as Lawson believe Kerry, Boxer, et al. are being deliberately cynical about their true feelings when it comes to same-sex marriage. Ironically, so do Karl Rove and company. Whether Kerry's inner self supports gay marriage or not, he's clearly walking a very narrow path on the hottest of hot-button issues.

Personally, I'd love to see him come out and declare forthrightly that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry. But at the very least, he's decided that that would amount of a political suicide note. And maybe he even thinks it would be wrong.

TRAFFIC TERRORISM WORKS! As Media Log predicted some time ago, Boston and the roads leading into it are virtually empty today. I zoomed in from the Far North in about a half-hour, and had my choice of parking spaces at the Prudential Center, where I'm covering a gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender event at the Sheraton.