Senator Barack Obama got mired in the controversy over his former pastor. Senator Hillary Clinton got bogged down on her comments about dodging dangerous fire in Bosnia. And both of them took political hits that lasted a while and did some damage.
Now, Clinton is clearly — and truly — bogged down in her comments about white voters liking her more than Obama, even though her aides now insist that she regrets the comments.
The damage to Clinton’s image seems profound. And what better evidence of THAT then the once-unimaginable development that one of her most ardent African-American supporters Rep. Charles Rangle would bluntly denounce her remark?
One of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most important supporters, Charles Rangel, repudiated her claims she has broader support among “white Americans,” calling the comments “the dumbest thing she could ever have said.”
The Harlem congressman’s criticism of Clinton came as rival Barack Obama Saturday took the lead among superdelegates, the group that will decide the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
Speaking to reporters before introducing Clinton at a Manhattan fundraiser Saturday, Rangel chastised the remarks as “very poorly worded.”
But the barrage doesn’t end just there. On newspaper op-ed pages from the U.S. to Great Britain Clinton is being denounced, usually on several key points: (a) her comments make her a more polarizing figure than ever, (b) her comments are unlikely to help her achieve her goals of winning the nomination and unifying the party and (c) her comments damage the Clinton’s legacy of good ties with black voters — a legacy already greatly strained by some of Bill Clinton’s race-raising comments.
A look at some of articles and recent columns indicates that if getting “good ink” and “good air time” is a goal, the Clinton campaign has been derailed even more than the 2000 original version of Republican Senator John McCain’s Straight Talk Express. Here’s a sampling: Read the rest of this entry »
First, if you’re wondering what I as a Hillary supporter think about Hillary’s decision to continue running after yesterday, the answer is I don’t know what I think of it as a strategy. Naturally I would like to believe that she could still somehow prevail. I am not sanguine. People are speculating that she is now running for the VP slot. We’ll see.
But — and this matters more to me — I most definitely admire her for her unswerving commitment to see the process through. Despite the pissing and moaning in the media, and whatever the outcome, I predict that the day will certainly arrive when people will look back with awe and amazement at Hillary’s insistence in going the distance against all odds and wish that they had chosen her. She is indomitable. I like that in a Democrat and so should other Democrats. Alas, many of them are so beguiled by the media myths about Hillary that they just can’t see what a force of nature she really is.
Obama could learn a lot from her and he’d be a better (future) president for it. Instead, I imagine we’ll be stuck with him in his current incarnation — all rhetoric, all the time.
Respondents to my “Macrame Journalism” post make some engaging points, while other points need clarification.
The post was not a defense of journalism (I’ll get into that another time), but a definition of it. Readers are correct to say that journalism today suffers from self-inflicted damage. But what divides journalists from macramé journalists is education and training. The traditional journalism industry, both on and offline, would not hire applicants who could not show a baccalaureate level of journalism education. A macramé journalist, meanwhile, can join the field with an ISP connection and a blog account. Much of their work is very good, but at its best, it is commentary, not journalism. At its worst, it is the same as an avalanche of unsigned letters to the editor. Assigning such blather the stature of “citizen journalism” is inappropriate and dangerous.
he word “abridge” in the First Amendment makes clear that the authors understood that the power of the press predated the Constitution. The origins of such a press were with the Zenger decision in 1734 that established truth as justification to publish. The weight was on “truth.” It was not enough for Peter Zenger and his attorney, Andrew Hamilton, simply to say his newspaper, The New York Weekly Journal, had printed the truth about government officials. Truth required documentation and verification. For almost 300 years, that documentation and verification has been the cornerstone of America’s press. Investigative reporters won’t publish information without triple verification, and then only after a phone call offering the opportunity to verify or deny to the story’s subject.
Enforcing the First Amendment has required the enforcing of such standards, both in freedom of the press and in freedom of speech. The press was granted such power that in the courts a body of law was created and started to grow, protecting citizens from press abuses of its power. The standard of truth is the first burden placed on the press by that law. Free speech is held to a similar standard, which has also shown up in courts since 1789. Classic example: Is an individual who yells “Fire!” in a crowded theater, when there is no fire, protected from prosecution by the First Amendment? Not many Americans have turned their backs on the standards of free press and speech. When they do, thank God, it makes news.
Any out-of-work reporter (plenty of those around) could operate independently online, not writing commentaries like this one, but doing real journalism. As I pointed out in the last post, such work would be instantly recognizable as journalism, just as macramé journalism is instantly recognizable.
I won’t tell my 100 college journalism students what one respondent said about “kids these days and their blogs and rock ‘n roll music and long hair.” They will be the online reporters and editors of tomorrow. Traditional journalism, in converged (print and broadcast) form is moving steadily toward the Internet, where doing business is infinitely cheaper than the traditional broadcast model that has been in place for the last 500 years. I call the new model “incast.” No longer will news organizations (and other media) spend millions sending information out to the audience at large. Online, all that content is just files in a computer, accessible at any time to consumers coming in, a ridiculously cheap and efficient (one-to-one marketing!) model.
What are the news organizations going to do with all that money they save? They won’t have to repeat cycles anymore like CNN, as one respondent pointed out. And they will have millions to hire journalists to fill a practically infinite news hole. That’s where my little longhairs come in.
And now it moves to media center stage: the trend of Republicans crossing over to vote in Democratic primaries. But the New York Times reports that many GOPers aren’t doing this because they’re “dittoheads” obeying the wishes of mega-partisan talk show host Rush Limbaugh, but disgruntled Republicans who feel their party has left — or is leaving — them:
INDIANAPOLIS - Until now, Shirley Morgan had always been the kind of voter the Republican Party thought it could count on. She comes from a family of staunch Republicans, has a son in the military and has supported Republican presidential candidates ever since she cast her first ballot, for Richard M. Nixon in 1972.
But this year Mrs. Morgan exemplifies a different breed: the Republican crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary. Not only will she mark her ballot for Senator Barack Obama in the May 6 primary here, but she has also been canvassing for him in the heavily Republican suburbs of Hamilton County, just north of Indianapolis — the first time she has ever actively campaigned for a candidate.
“I used to like John McCain, but he’s aligning himself too closely with what Bush did, and that’s just not what I want for this country,” Mrs. Morgan, who is 56, said when asked to explain her rejection of the presumptive Republican nominee.
This should be a warning flag to John McCain. As I’ve predicted many times on this site, there is a large segment of voters that aren’t going to look at political party at all this year — but want to take a big broom and sweep away the people who are in charge who have brought the United States a war seemingly without end (even if X voter originally supported the war), a decimated economy, a sagging dollar, an epidemic of home foreclosures and plummeting local property values, and an economy peppered by massive corporate cutbacks or failures and employment ills.
Seen from this perspective, the decisions of Democratic rivals Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to ignore Democratic progressives’ demand to boycott Fox News, makes political sense: Republican voters are in play in these primaries and they all can’t be dismissed as participating in Limbaugh’s call to basically sabotage the Democratic primaries.
This suggests that indicates that the potency of the Democratic party’s most progressive wing, is now being offset in some primaries by more conservative and centrist voters who are cross-over Republicans who feel their party has failed them. And they’re shopping around.
The Times confirms this:
Since the start of the primary and caucus season in January, Republican voters have been crossing over in increasing numbers to vote in Democratic contests — supplying up to 10 percent of the vote in states that allow such crossover voting — and they are expected to play a pivotal role in the fiercely contested primary here. What is less clear, however, is the motivation for their behavior: are they genuinely attracted by the two Democratic candidates? Or are they mischief-making spoilers, looking to prolong a divisive Democratic fight or support a candidate Mr. McCain can beat in November?
Local Republican Party leaders in Indiana concede the attraction of the Democratic candidates to some of their party members. And interviews with roughly a dozen Republican voters in central Indiana suggest that they are driven mainly by concerns about the economy, with discontent over Bush administration policies driving their involvement in the Democratic race.
What’s now happening between Obama and Clinton is competition for some of these Republicans — Republicans probably dismissed as “well-they-must-be-Rinos” by lockstep Republican partisans who will adjust their positions or jettison previous principles according to the latest pronouncements from the White House or EIB Radio Network. The Times again: Read the rest of this entry »
I was born in 1943, just in time to enjoy town squares, in the small rural towns. By the 1950s, and the arrival of better highways and more comfortable cars, residents of those towns had started to drive to larger regional cities to shop, eat, and see a movie. Around the town square, businesses closed, leaving darkened brick shells through which dry goods, sundries, hardware, groceries, movie stars and fountain Cokes had flowed.
In these empty storefront windows in the 1970s started to appear signs of business activity unrelated to the prosperity of the town. The most telling of these signs was this one: “Macrame.” It proclaimed, loudest of all, that the square, once the center of commercial and civic activity for a proud people, was dead, and the old, sad, deserted buildings were now hosting splinter arts and crafts groups learning to knot yarn in a certain way.
Journalism is on that same path today. Since the Zenger decision in 1734 established its purpose and power in America, journalism has served a proud people continuously for almost 300 years. Now it is being gutted, its professionals bought out or laid off, its buildings closing, its customers and its business fleeing on a new superspeed highway to a new region that no one yet understands.
Where journalism was, in the pre-Internet world, Americans now find macramé journalism, a hobby practiced by a huge number of Americans on the Internet and in the blogosphere. This new, fun way of knotting information has done what the founding Americans hoped could never be done. Macrame journalism has a loop around the feet of the First Amendment, which is struggling, as calves do against the ropes, but will soon go over on its side.
Journalism is not Cowboys and Indians in the back yard. The term “citizen journalist” is an oxymoron. Many citizens now publishing on the Internet write very well, and argue convincingly, but without working knowledge of journalism definitions, values, and principles, and commitment to those principles, they are not journalists. Do you realize that the rate of media illiteracy in America is 90 percent? Not their fault; all media, including journalism, is based on a set of definitions and values that are not taught to American schoolchildren. They should be, just like algebra, but they are not.
The First Amendment, as it applies to journalism: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.” Do you realize what an amazing statement that is? It tells us that the framers of the Constitution in 1787 knew that freedom of the press already existed, like one of the self-evident truths, or an unalienable right. That kind of power, practically absolute, created by the recognition of truth as a right to publish, deserved great respect in its handling. It is scary now, witnessing hordes of amateurs calling themselves citizen journalists, and taking their work seriously, and even scarier that traditional publishers go along with it. Scary not because of an abuse of press power, that the First Amendment has managed to protect for more than 200 years, but of a draining of it. Without that power, democracy starts to die, too.
This is not a defense of journalism; it is a definition of it. Journalism still exists, on and offline, and it is as instantly recognizable as macrame journalism. You macramé journalists, go ahead and keep writing. It is your First Amendment guarantee of free speech, and some of the commentary is very good. But to a journalist today, cruising the town square of journalism, it looks dead, and feels sad. It feels like the First Amendment is being looted.
Among many great political resources from the left, right and center, one always high quality read is The American Thinker. Ever a source of insightful, varied commentary and analysis, the Thinker combines the talents of many writers, including the always provocative Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse. Now The American Thinker is working on expansions to the services they provide and are asking for the help of readers to do so.
American Thinker today launches its first-ever appeal to readers for financial support. We want to explain to readers why we are doing this at this particular moment.
AT began almost four and a half years ago with the mission of providing a platform for smart and knowledgeable thinkers to reach an audience of people concerned with the future of America and of American concepts of liberty and constitutional representative democracy. We knew from our life experience that the most brilliant minds and deepest expertise were often found outside the ranks of established journalists, professors, and other public figures who already enjoyed access to prominent publications.
Please consider stopping by at the link above if you would like to help keep this type of independent thinking nipping at the heels of gatekeepers in the commercial media.
When I came into the newspaper business in 1967 at the tender age of 20, most reporters and editors drank like fish and smoked like chimneys (on the job), lived and died for the news scoop, type was set on massive linotype machines using molten lead, and when the presses of morning and evening newspapers rolled it was like printing money.
Today newsrooms are like vegetarian cafeterias, the scoop is most often the purview of cable news channels, or Internet sites, the entire typesetting and printing process is electronic, and when the presses roll for the remaining morning papers (there are no evening papers as such anymore), one can only wonder how many years it will be before they are silenced.
The reasons for the long downward spiral of the industry are complex and multi-layered, but basically boil down to something that I was saying well before I wrote my last story and quit a few weeks before the 9/11 attacks:
Newspapers will not survive if they don’t change and change damned quickly by embracing the Internet and hugging it to their collective bosom.
I take no satisfaction in being right. (And yes, it was weird to feel like a fireman without a ladder when the first aircraft slammed into the World Trade Center on that beautiful September morning.)
Wolcott’s got a When Democrats go Post-al look at the lefty blogosphere up at Vanity Fair that’s getting lots of attention and is generally none-too-flattering.
April 29th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Past political campaigns have had their share of people associated with candidates who are placed on the defensive — but seldom has one in any year had one as proactively insistent on keeping himself alive and injected into an excruciatingly close race as the political albatross now dangling around Democratic Senator Barack Obama named Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Aside from the eager nodding of heads and the unspoken “Keep it up!” you can almost feel coming from the campaign of rival Democratic Presidential wannabe Senator Hillary Clinton, conservative Republicans are ecstatic. Jonah Goldberg, writing in The Los Angeles Times:
God bless the Rev. Jeremiah Wright!
After Barack Obama gave his big race speech in mid-March, many critics noted that the Illinois senator had thrown his own grandmother under the bus to defend his controversial pastor. Well, Wright proved over the last few days that he would not be outdone. He not only threw Obama under the bus, he chucked much of the liberal and mainstream media under there with him. If this keeps up, to paraphrase Roy Scheider in “Jaws,” he’s gonna need a bigger bus.
For six weeks, Obama’s biggest supporters have diligently argued that to so much as mention Wright is in effect racist. When Hillary Rodham Clinton said that Wright wouldn’t have been her pastor, Andrew Sullivan gasped on his Atlantic blog that this was “a new low” in the election. When Lanny J. Davis, Clinton’s consummate spinner, defended her on CNN by describing what Wright actually said, CNN’s Anderson Cooper lambasted Davis for daring to even repeat Wright’s comments. Newsweek’s Joe Klein chimed in, “You’re spreading the poison right now.”
What Wright has done the past few days by (over)exposure is to leave himself in the eyes of many indefensible in terms of the center — and converted himself into an unrelenting albatross also chained to a 1,000 lb. anchor dangling around Obama’s neck:
Obama and his defenders have repeatedly insisted that the bits from Wright’s sermons that got wide circulation last month had been taken “out of context.” His infamous sound bites were grounded in concrete theological or factual foundations, they claim. He was quoting other people. He’s done good things. Nothing to see here, folks.
And so God bless Wright because he’s left all of these folks holding a giant, steaming bag of … well, let’s just call it a bag of “context.”
His positions and the context of his remarks, some could argue, are still explainable, but the problem is that those making that argument right now veer into a nuanced area of nuance — the kind of argument that usually does not work in elections where candidates oversimplify, generalize and try to link up their opponents with broad-brush imagery of stances, events or individuals that will be seen unfavorably by key chunks of an attention-span-challenged electorate.
All this comes at a time when Obama’s campaign is reportedly battening down the hatches for what is expected to be a brutal campaign lasting well into the summer, the New York Times reports:
Mr. Obama’s aides said that they remained confident he would win the nomination. “We feel very good about the position that we are in,” said David Axelrod, his chief strategist. “But we have gotten to the position we are in by taking every week and every contest seriously.”
Still, they said they were no longer as hopeful as they once were that the contest could be resolved before June 3, the day of the last primaries. As a result, they were girding for six weeks of attacks by Mrs. Clinton and potential election defeats that could raise further questions among superdelegates — the elected Democrats and party leaders who will ultimately determine the nominee — about Mr. Obama’s strength as a general election candidate.
And Wright’s double-whammy of appearances came at a time of introspection and private disappointment:
In discussions with donors and supporters last week, Mr. Obama’s advisers played down the loss in Pennsylvania, noting that both sides had expected Mrs. Clinton to win there.
Still, the message belied private frustration and disappointment that Mr. Obama shared with a few associates and advisers, particularly over the hardening narrative that he could not appeal to working-class voters, and a personal frustration for comments he made about some small-town voters being “bitter” at their economic conditions. (Mrs. Clinton seized on those remarks, which have shadowed his campaign.)
“Everyone’s got a real calmness about where we are,” said David Plouffe, who is Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, “but a real sense of urgency that we have eight contests coming up in pretty rapid succession.”
But now it’s clear from the amount of space Wright has gotten on blogs, on serious cable talk shows, on screaming head cable and radio talk shows and in the opinion columns:
Wright is proactively making it tough for Obama to right his campaign.
Will he have to make a statement to distance himself even more from him? And what if Wright’s love affair with national media coverage continues? In essence, Wright himself has been putting the muscle, meat and flesh on the skeletal stereotypical imagery critics have tried to sculpt about Obama. And he won’t stay out of the spotlight to let the issue defuse itself.
Candidates’ associates have seldom totally sank a national political campaign.
But perhaps we are about to see an example of what happens when an association does.
April 22nd, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Senator Hillary Clinton got the Pennsylvania Democratic primary victory she needed so she could press the case that she should continue in the race because rival candidate Senator Barack Obama could not close the deal after vastly outspending her.
But her victory margin (a 10 percent margin, at this writing) most certainly means that the increasingly ugly battle for the Democratic party nomination will go well into June…and perhaps all the way to the convention.
Clinton ran a campaign of negativity unprecedented for a modern political primary. And the increasingly raw fissures in the Democratic party show no sign of receding: if anything, her victory means they will likely accentuate. Meanwhile, it is a fact: Obama has not been able to win over voting blocs that seemingly remain his stumbling blocks.
And what next? Obama is favored to win North Carolina. If so, will the Clinton camp argue that a win there doesn’t matter? And what about Indiana? It’s likely to become a prime battleground — perhaps one of the most important primaries of this looooooooong primary season. How did the Pennsylvania voting shape up? CBS News:
The Pennsylvania Democratic primary shared many of the same vote characteristics of other primary states this season - with Clinton winning her core base of union members, less educated and lower income voters and rural voters, and Obama winning voters with more education and income, and black voters.
What made Pennsylvania different, however, is the consistency of these traditional gaps as well as the appearance of some new divides. With intense media coverage of Obama’s recent statements regarding small town voters, and a consistent characterization of him as an elitist both by the media and by the campaigns of Clinton and John McCain, these pre-existing social divides grew larger in this first contest since the story broke.
In the primary Clinton received 71 percent of the vote from white members of labor union households, leading Obama by a striking 43 points. In contrast, Clinton won a smaller proportion of the white non-union vote, still besting Obama by 57 percent to 43 percent. This union vote is in stark contrast to the union vote in Ohio, one of the most recent and similar contests. In Ohio Clinton received 67 percent of the white union vote, and 62 percent of white non-union vote. This demonstrates a more polarized electorate by union status in Pennsylvania than Ohio.
This pattern of division repeats itself among other groups that have been important in past contests. White Democratic voters making less than $50,000 a year supported Clinton with 66 percent, compared to 58 percent support from those making over $50,000 a year. Obama received 24 percent and 42 percent respectively.
There was a 19 point preference gap between the less educated and the more educated in Pennsylvania primary voting. Clinton won 75 percent of the vote from white Democrats with a high school diploma or less - three times Obama’s vote among these voters - compared to 56 percent of those with more education.
Meanwhile, each candidate gave their own (predictable) spin on the election results. Clinton said the tide was turning and America deserved a President who wasn’t a quitter (TRANSLATION: She ain’t getting out until she runs out of money or feels it’s fruitless to stay in.) Obama noted that his campaign started way behind (TRANSLATION: He didn’t do as badly as it seemed he would do but it was not a good night for him). But the voting results really mean this:
“Hillary Clinton appears to have done what she needed to do in order to keep her campaign going on into Indiana and North Carolina and possibly well beyond that,” said CBSNews.com senior political editor Vaughn Ververs. “For Obama, this loss stems some of the sense of inevitability of his campaign and increases the pressure on him to regain the momentum.”
April 22nd, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Prophets of (Hillary Clinton’s) doom have again been proven wrong. The prophets’ strident claim that this Pa. primary elections would sound the death knell of Clinton’s ambition to get the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, has yet again fallen flat on its face.
To those living abroad, the American media/blogs might have contributed in a substantial manner in accentuating a virtual “civil war” within the Democratic Party. There is a visible air of “aggression” within and outside the US. Whether it is the US administration’s foreign policies, or the attitude of the supporters of Democratic presidential candidates, or the media/blogs, few seem to take recourse to a meaningful debate and discussion.
April 22nd, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
We earlier ran THIS POST that has an audio clip of a radio show in which former President Bill Clinton again thrust himself into the news — this time by charging that Senator Barack Obama’s campaign played the race card against him and that memos prove it.
Bill Clinton denied Tuesday he had accused the Obama campaign of ‘playing the race card’ during a Monday interview. A recording of the former president making the comment during that interview has been circulating online.
Go the link in the first paragraph here and re-listen to what he said on the radio.
Outside a Pittsburgh campaign event, a reporter asked Clinton what he had meant “when you said the Obama campaign was playing the race card on you?”
Clinton responded: “When did I say that and to whom did I say that?”
The reporter replied that the former president had made the remarks during his interview with WHYY Monday night.
“No, no, no, that’s not what I said,” said Clinton. “You always follow me around and play these little games. And I am not going to play your games today. This is a day about Election Day, go back and see what the question was and what my answer was.
“You have mischaracterized it to get another cheap story to divert the American people from the real urgent issues before us, and I choose not to play your games today. …
“I said what I said you can go back and look at the interview, and if you will be real honest you will also report what the question was and what the answer was. But I’m not helping you,” said Clinton.
April 22nd, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
It is said that American youth voters would play a crucial role in this US presidential election. But have we ever wondered that most of the wisdom pouring out in the media/blogs on Iraq and Afghanistan “wars”, and other issues, is the monopoly of people who have possibly left their youth far behind? And these “wise” people may have basically lost what is called a zest for life.
I remember in the 1960s when I was in school how emotional/angry we felt at issues/events/developments taking place in different parts of the world at what we perceived as “unjust” and “unfair”. American youth then was at the forefront of youth protest. Or was our generation just silly/sentimental?
Today, I was pleasently surprised to read an 18-year-old junior’s views who studies at St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, Del.
Excerpts:
“I have begun to understand that we deal with this war in abstractions. We see Iraq as a distant problem, and it’s difficult to summon outrage because we have not been asked to sacrifice anything. Is it possible to summon deep-rooted anger for a war for which we were never asked to sacrifice anything? I continue to hope that it is.
“It occurred to me last month, on my 18th birthday, that the soldiers dying in Iraq are my age. They are college-aged, anxiety-filled kids. Kids — members of my generation — are dying in Iraq…. I finally realize. War is a children’s crusade.”
As you consider the output of the coverage you watch over the next few days related to the remaining primaries and their results in the Democratic presidential nominee race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, keep in mind this lengthy list of data and statistics that show how poorly the news media reflects the female population - especially among the gatekeepers.
Three of my favorites:
In newspapers, 38 percent of journalists working in daily newspapers are women; 65 percent of all supervisors are men.
American Society of Newspaper Editors, 2006 census http://www.asne.org/index.cfm?id=6506
Women who enter newsrooms are leaving prematurely. In 1992, nearly 42 percent of journalists with five to nine years of experience were female. Ten years later, that group was only 26 percent female. As of 2002, more than half (54 percent) of women in newsrooms have fewer than five years experience. The American Journalist in the 21st Century.
Critics in the media — quite a few of whom unabashedly favor Obama — have been out in force this week, pointing fingers and getting red-faced over ABC’s treatment of their favorite in the most debate. Yes, that shoe always pinches when it’s on the other foot, I’ve noticed.
At The Politico, John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei wrote:
The shower of indignation on Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos over the last few days is the clearest evidence yet that the Clintonites are fundamentally correct in their complaint that she has been flying throughout this campaign into a headwind of media favoritism for Obama….. (The Politico)
The article further acknowledges, “Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon.” (The Politico) [Egalia: “Politico says Obama has a secret weapon….the media. Duh. Duh. Duh. That’s a secret if you’re deaf, dumb, and blind.”] But it’s not exactly a new trend; the media also — according to me — did its little part, all to get George W. Bush elected.
April 19th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
One can understand when a staunch Republican declares that he/she “hates” a presidential candidate from another party. But it stumps me when even the so-called Democrat-supporters are quoted in the media saying they “hate” Hillary Clinton. I can understand Democrats “opposing”, “disagreeing”, “dis-approving”, “disliking”, etc., etc., their own party candidate, but why “hate”…
It has been pointed out that many in the mainstream media and blogs have not been able to conceal their “hatred” towards Hillary Clinton. As I always support the underdogs, I empathize with those unhappy with the present trend and are sulking, after being driven to a corner. (In day-to-day use, “hatred is a violent feeling that impels the subject to wish another person ill and to take pleasure in bad things that happen to that person.”More here…)
The trait that “you can either love a person, or hate a person”…and nothing in-between, is self-destructive. I can understand if a majority of the media and the blogs love/admire Barrack Obama. I do not even question Obama admirers’ complete faith in him and that he has full credentials to be the next leader to occupy the White House.
But the hysteria being built up in the media/blogs trying to virtually push Obama into the Democratic presidential nominee seat has not been taken kindly by many. This has been criticised as it tends to stifle any meaningful debate/discussion on the real/crucial issues that face the US and the world, especially in view of the legacy/burden of the Bush era. (I know some may say that all this was started by the Clinton camp…a classic case of whether the egg came first or the hen!!!)
“Hatred” is a negative emotion. Bush and Co., and possibly many Americans, “hated” the “evil” unknown/invisible hands behind 9/11. Instead of evolving a sensible/effective strategy (through quite deliberations/diplomacy/consensus) to thwart the forces behind terrorism/militancy, a mind-less hysteria was built up. “Rage” (another negative emotion) followed “Hate”. The result: A sledge-hammer approach…virtually bringing down a house trying to kill a rat!!!
And where are we now after all these wasted years? Hysteria is a major impediment to creating informed public opinion. It thrills but kills…And is as dangerous as terrorism itself. Just see…the Media/blogs have now forgotten Osama-bin-Laden/Afghanistan/Saddam Hussein/Iraq. Media can’t do anything about Bush (because he can still retaliate or trash them further.) Some have begun to ask: Has Hillary Clinton become a soft “hate” target?
April 18th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Iraq. The economy. Terrorism. Foreclosures. Taxes. Education. These among the issues facing the U.S. but a new firestorm has started sweeping the blogosphere via a You Tube embed: Did Democratic Senator Barack Obama give Democratic Presidential nomination rival Hillary Clinton the finger?
Did he try to signal it to the crowd? Wasn’t that a knowing look? And, it stands to follow, since he did this (an assumption some are already making — so each viewer is urged to watch the video) doesn’t it therefore mean he lacks class and should immediately apologize? And — not said yet — shouldn’t this disqualify him from the Presidency if he refuses to admit it? And, if he won’t come clean and admit it, shouldn’t he resign his Senate seat?
See the video below. To my mind, this is totally in the eye of the beholder. Republicans and Democrats who are vehemently anti-Obama are looking for things now to discredit him — just as Obama’s supporters and looking at things to discredit Clinton and McCain supporters are looking for things to discredit Obama and Clinton. Welcome to 21s century seek-and-destroy politics.
Once again, American politics boils down to seemingly discussing anything but actual issues that impact the country and the peoples’ pocketbook. But you judge for YOURSELF:
So American politics has now moved to a stage where LITERALLY every gesture is analyzed and given the worst interpretation on it — as if unconfirmed suspicion equals reality.
April 18th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
The Big Debate is over and as the Pennsylvania primary approaches parts of the blogosphere are denouncing unfair and slanted assertions and questions, negative statements, and a piling on of negativity — and that’s just when they write about ABC’s debate moderators. Polarization in the blogosphere reflects the polity. And here’s our famous linkfest that takes you to blogs of various opinions.
WE THOUGHT WE HAD PROBLEMS IN COMMENTS AT TMV: ABC News debate co-moderator George Stephanopoulos is getting an eye-full of anger in comments on his blog. Read skippy.
THE STEPHANOPOULOS DEBATE OVER THE DEBATE CONTINUES.GS defends himself, saying they were asking tough news questions that needed to be asked. The problem: almost 50 minutes of the first part of the debate was seemingly aimed at Senator Barack Obama — leaving GS and ABC News open to the charge that it was not a balanced debate but lopsidedly slated against Obama.
Ed Kilgore looks at the arguments about talking about electability and writes:
The more you look at it, the “electability” defense for endlessly superficial debates–and media “coverage” of campaigns in general–doesn’t make much sense. If George just came right out and said his network needed “fireworks” to boost ratings, it would sound more plausible.
Among many great political resources from the left, right and center, one always high quality read is 
