mediacrit.com

I’m sure by now nearly the entire world has seen (or heard) at least part of the now infamous video clip of Gov. Howard Dean on the night of the Iowa caucuses. Long the leader of the polls in Iowa, Dean slipped in the final weeks as Senators John Kerry and John Edwards surged. Dean finished a distant third.

But, it is likely you didn’t get more context about what the national news media are now calling Dean’s “I Have a Scream” speech (a pun on the fact that the caucuses also fell on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day).

Here’s what did happen: In his attempts to lift the spirits of the approximately 3,500 supporters in Des Moines who expected to be celebrating a victory, Dean ripped off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and took the microphone from Sen. Tom Harkin, who had just introduced him.

Dean’s supporters were already cheering, so a raspy-voiced Dean, vigorously pumping his arms and raising his voice to cut through the cheers, continued to rally the troops after their tough loss.

“You know something?” Dean began. “Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we’re going to South Carolina, and Oklahoma, and Arizona, and North Dakota, and New Mexico. We’re going to California and Texas and New York. And we’re going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan, and then we’re going to Washington, D.C. to take back the White House. Yeaahhhh!” Then (red-faced and a bit out of breath), he laughed, turned back to Harkin, and smiled as the room continued its cheers.

I saw clips of the speech on television. Once the national political pundits got a hold of it, they described Dean’s speech as “angry,” a “tirade,” a “shriek,” a “howl” and an “emotional meltdown.” And when I first saw the soundbite of Dean charging through his list of the states on the campaign, I thought he looked a bit nutty, too. But was this accurate?

I talked to a veteran Des Moines-based reporter who was there to cover the Dean post-caucus rally, and he said that Dean’s speech didn’t seem highly unusual, given the context of the event. It only seemed strange, he said, when he got back to the office and excerpted that specific piece of audio. I gave Dean’s speech a second look by viewing a longer piece of video that included some of the context. (Judge for yourself: CBSNews.com and other Web sites have the video). He may have gotten red in the face, but it wasn’t angry, an emotional meltdown, or any other of the above descriptors.

If you understand the speech in the context of the rally, and that it was well within the spirit of the occasion, then it’s not a big deal. But, if you look at just the soundbite, stripped of all context, it does look and sound crazy. It sounds even crazier in one of the many hip-hop remixes that are floating around on radio and the Web.

This is a case where the news media clearly had it in for Dean. Many in the national news media have been dying to tell the story of Dean’s political obituary because they don’t like the idea of an “insurgent”leading the party. Dean has been unfairly pegged as an “angry” man for rolling up his sleeves and giving rousing speeches. (Just four years ago, the same media pundits lambasted Al Gore for being too buttoned down and giving dull, over-rehearsed speeches. What, exactly, do they want, I wonder?) So, the “angry tirade” became the news media’s easy symbol for why Dean lost, even though it came after the caucuses met.

Dean may or may not be the best candidate for the Democrats. But, the rest of the nation’s primary voters should have a chance to judge that for themselves, based on fair information about the candidates. As for me? I’m switching to C-Span so I can watch the candidates uncut.