THE.personal.IS.political

Waaaahh The Meeedia!! (Playing For Excuses, Playing The Victim)

You could tell it wasn’t going to go well for her when she started off the first question by complaining about “always” getting asked the first question, and actually brought up a SNL skit as some kind of evidence of nefariousness by the media (yes, this was a stretch, but she also bought into Bush’s “intelligence” in the run up to the Iraq war, so it isn’t that surprising she’d cite a comedy skit as an authoritative source). I can’t do this one justice in print though; you’ll have to watch it yourself here.

It should also be noted she has been running around touting this SNL skit as proof that the media is out to get her ever since, well, Saturday night. In fact yesterday morning at a press briefing Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer made an issue of it after being questioned about a picture of Obama wearing African dress that, according to The Drudge Report, had been circulated by the Clinton campaign:

“I find it interesting that in a room of such esteemed journalists that Mr. Drudge has become your respected assignment editor,” he lectured. “I find it to be a reflection of one of the problems that’s gone on with the overall coverage of this campaign.” He went on to chide the journalists for their “woefully inadequate” coverage of Obama, “a point that has been certainly backed up by the ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit that opened the show this past Saturday evening, which I would refer you all to.”

The brief moment explained everything about the bitter relations between Clinton’s campaign and the media: Singer taunting the likes of Broder, who began covering presidential politics two decades before Singer was born, with a comedy sketch that showed debate moderators fawning over Obama.

“That’s your assignment editor?” responded Post columnist Ruth Marcus.

“That’s my assignment editor,” Singer affirmed.

So what is this “new” tactic the Clinton campaign is pushing hard now all about? (And I say “new” here because the media always seems to be the Clintons’ scapegoat when the pressure is on) I see two goals of blaming the media for everything, 1) to find an excuse for losing, as a way to externalize the blame, and 2) to try to play the victim to gain sympathy points, specifically from women, just as was done in New Hampshire.

First though, we have to look at the basis for the accusation that the media is unfairly harsh toward Hillary, and unfairly nice to Obama. If you actually look at the facts, there is absolutely no basis for this claim. This is a classic case of Hillary borrowing a page from Bush’s playbook by trying to make something true on the basis of pure repetition. In fact, she has never pointed to a single example, save for “why am I getting asked the first question?”, of how the media has supposedly treated her so bad, or been overly nice to Obama.

She often claims that the press hasn’t “vetted” Obama, they haven’t investigated him enough, they haven’t dug up enough dirt. This is her only basis for claiming overly favorable coverage of Obama, because they supposedly haven’t dug through his record enough. There are many things wrong with this line of attack. First, she provides zero evidence that the media hasn’t dug through Obama’s record, except for the fact that there is no dirt. So where there is no smoke, there must be fire I guess. In this situation there is apparently no way Obama can be clean, because in Hillaryland he is either dirty, or the media is at fault for not finding that he is dirty. It reminds me of the logic of drowning women back in Salem to find out whether or not they are witches. If they float, they are a witch, so you burn them, and if the drown, well, then they weren’t a witch.

It is also quite ironic that they would attack the media for not being able to do something the Clintons haven’t been able to do themselves either. It is no secret that the Clinton campaign has been trying anything to win. They have no doubt dug through his history from the time he was conceived to the coffee he had for breakfast this morning in order to find something, anything on him, and they have come up with nothing. They searched so hard they managed to track down his kindergarten teacher in Indonesia that attested to the fact that little Barack once wrote that he wanted to be president. Yet they have been unable to come up with any real dirt. And so instead of being happy that the Democratic nominee doesn’t share the Clintons’ penchant for accumulating skeletons in the closet, they try to sow doubt about Obama’s character, while attacking the media for not producing dirt out of thin air. So despite intense scrutiny from the Clintons, the media, and the GOP, Hillary keeps trying to make voters worry that their candidate “hasn’t been vetted” just because their candidate isn’t as dirty as the Clintons.

Another major fault in this line of attack is that Hillary isn’t attacking the media for investigating her too thoroughly, even though that is exactly what she is accusing them of not doing to Obama. In fact, the media hasn’t come out with any startling revelations about the Clintons during this campaign, aside from some of Bill’s shady business dealings, but even those got amazingly little press, even after they pumped $5 million of their personal cash into their faltering campaign. There is definitely no cause to say the media has went out of its way to dig up dirt on the Clintons, and if anything they haven’t been diligent enough in pressing the issue of Bill’s business associates, contributions to the Clinton Library, and refusal to release her tax records until after she is nominated (which is a very suspicious refusal that continues to get barely any notice from the media). So if the media hasn’t spent much energy investigating you, why cite their lack of dirt on your opponent as some kind of evidence of special treatment? The logic again doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

So we’ve established that although she claims it is all about vetting, it actually isn’t—But does the media talk more negatively about Hillary than Obama? No matter which side you are on, you can find examples of pundits or journalists who seem to take one side or another. For every Chris Matthews (not that I’d say he is in love with Obama), you have a Tucker Carlson, or a Joe Scarborough. For every Frank Rich, you have a Paul Krugman and a Taylor Marsh. Pointing out a personality here or an anecdote (or comedy skit) there is not a very convincing way to prove media bias. However, there could be a very good reason for more negative coverage of the Clintons (if there is any) than the Obama campaign, all you need to ask is which campaign has given the media more bad things to talk about? I’ve written at length about all of the dirty tricks, lies and hypocrisy that has come out of the Clinton campaign, between Hillary and Bill and their surrogates there seems to be a constant stream of attacks and doublespeak. I couldn’t say the same for the Obama campaign, which has been incredibly positive on average, and has shown exceptional control over its surrogates. So yes, the Clinton campaign got bad press over comments by a couple of their surrogates, and Mark Penn himself, referencing Obama’s admitted adolescent drug use. Did Obama or his surrogates mention Bill’s past drug use? No, so no story there. The Clintons got some bad press for Bill’s angry unpresidential tirades against Obama. Did Michelle Obama, a former US president herself, go on a over-the-top attack against Hillary’s record (while purposely misrepresenting the facts)? No, so no story there for the Obama campaign. When all of the other instances of race-baiting from the Clinton campaign came out, culminating with Bill Clinton flat-out dismissing Obama as a black candidate just like Jesse Jackson, they got some bad press (but not nearly enough). Did Obama try to exploit racism in this country to marginalize Hillary? No, so no bad press there. Hillary got some bad press after her surrogates filed a lawsuit trying to close caucusing sites in Las Vegas just days after the union prominent in that area endorsed Obama instead of Hillary, and the Clintons backed this. Did Obama transparently try to disenfranchise voters in order to gain an edge? No, so no negative story. Did Obama angrily yell “Shame on you Hillary Clinton” at a campaign rally and hypocritically accuse her of things that only his campaign has been guilt of? No, that was Hillary, and so no negative coverage on Obama. Did Obama the very next day come out and childishly mock Hillary while demeaning her message of change as well as all of her voters? Nope, so no negative coverage there. I believe the logic of this is easy to follow by this point. Obama has gotten negative press coverage from time to time, generally for completely ridiculous reasons (and largely motivated by disingenuous Clinton attacks), but he has ran a very clean campaign, and as a result he has given the media less material to attack him with. The Clintons on the other hand have repeatedly shown that they will say and do anything to win, and many of these low tactics have understandably produced backlash.

Although Hillary can’t point to anything specifically lacking in the media coverage of Obama, I think in all fairness I should point out a few things that have been lacking in media coverage of her, to debunk the “fairness” argument once and for all. There are many issues, some of which I have already mentioned, that have either been completely ignored by the media, or have been underreported by the media, both to Hillary’s advantage. There are two in particular though that I want to highlight, because they show both how little the media is doing to “vet” Hillary, and how easily they could effectively end Hillary’s campaign, and be completely fair in doing so.

• “35 Years of Experience” – Her entire campaign from the beginning (well, that is at least since she realized she actually had to work for her nomination) has been predicated on the assumption that she was vastly more qualified than Obama. She has repeated the slogan countless times, “35 years of experience”, ad nauseam. She has repeated attacked Obama’s supposed lack of experience, and has stated that he isn’t fit to be commander in chief. So given that her whole campaign rests on this superior experience, and that without it there would be nothing left for it to stand on, the media would at least make sure it wasn’t all hype. But they haven’t. The media has given Hillary Clinton a free pass in claiming superior experience over Obama, even though when you look at the facts, it is nothing but fluff. Included in her 35 years (which encompass everything she has done since the final months of law school) are 15 years working at a large corporate law firm (conveniently never mentioned by her campaign) and serving on corporate boards at Wal-Mart (6 years), TCBY (7 years), and LaFarge (2 years), followed by 8 years of First Lady under her husband’s administration, where she was given control of a few projects, most notably health care reform which she ran into the dirt with her poor management. To her credit, she did some non-profit and public service work sporadically throughout her 35 years, however these are the exceptions rather than the rule (contrary to what her “experience” rhetoric would indicate). One of her favorite past activities to highlight is that she worked for the Children’s Defense Fund, “helping children” as she likes to say, which is admirable, but she never mentions that she worked there for less than a year, and that it was the only full-time job in the non-profit sector she ever held. She did sit on the boards of a handful of public interest organizations, which she never fails to add to her experience. It typical fashion she manages to take credit for all the good deeds of the public service organizations whose boards she sat on, while claiming no responsibility whatsoever for the actions of the corporations whose boards she sat on, more notably Wal-Mart, with its unmatched track record for union busting, small-business devastating, third world labor exploitation and environmental degradation. Just as with her time as First Lady, she conveniently claims responsibility for every success, while disavowing any responsibility for all failures, even if she was on record as supporting them in the past, as with NAFTA. She also points to work she has done while in the Senate, some of which has been admirable, but much of which has been fluff. She did develop a great knack for introducing bills on issues like helping children or protecting the environment, just to let them rot in the hopper. Instead of working to find cosponsorship for these bills so she could get them passed, she just dropped them in the slot so she could get credit for introducing legislation on important issues, and turned her back. At the same time as she has greatly exaggerated her record, she has had the audacity to claim that Obama has a pitiful record, despite the fact that he has a longer career as an elected official than she does, and despite the fact that his pre-legislative career was at least as impressive as Hillary’s, and many (including myself) would argue much more impressive. Regardless, somehow she believes her experience somehow equates to superior and unique qualifications to be president of the United States, and that has become the foundation of her entire campaign.

  The media has given her a complete pass on this, never showing voters what her “35 years” really included, how she distorted her public service beyond recognition, while covering up her 15 years in a corporate law firm and all of her years on corporate boards. The media has never asked her to explain, after making clear the facts, what exactly makes her so much better qualified to be president than Senator Obama. The media’s free pass on this has been the gift of life for her campaign. Just image what would have happened to her campaign if the experience argument had been slipped out from underneath it. It would have crumbled in an instant. How’s that for a big bad evil media?

• 11 losses in a row – As New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd pointed out today in response to Hillary’s attack the media strategy, “Beating on the press is the lamest thing you can do. It is only because of the utter open-mindedness of the press that Hillary can lose 11 contests in a row and still be treated as a contender.” She hits this nail on the head. Imagine, if Barack Obama had lost 11 states in a row after losing by three on Super Tuesday, and if almost all of these losses were 20, 30, 40 point landslides, and if he was consistently losing almost all demographics in each race, and if all of the polls for the remaining states showed him having nowhere near enough support to ever make a comeback. Can you imagine him still being in this race? Can you imagine the media treating him as any more credible of a candidate than Mike Huckabee? Hell no! Yet Hillary, despite running in just such a scenario, is treated as a near frontrunner by the media, she is treated as though she could somehow turn this around even with a loss in Texas and maybe a tie in Ohio if she is lucky. In fact there is no way in hell she can win this thing, yet the media is keeping her campaign floating in fairytale land by not pointing out the obvious, that it is over, and that she needs to stop being a sore loser and pack it up before she does any more damage to the Democratic Party.

So there we have it, this media, the media that is supposedly so rabidly anti-Hillary and so eager to watch her fail, is not only being evenhanded, it is actually the only thing preserving her campaign by holding back the floodgates of reality. At any time the media could have pulled the plug on her campaign, especially after her last 11 defeats, and been completely fair in doing so, but they haven’t. Now this isn’t because they love Hillary, it is because the race is a huge money maker for them, so they have a vested interest in keeping the Hillary campaign afloat, especially with her increasingly erratic behavior.

In reality, Hillary should count her blessings, and thank the media for helping her keep up this charade as long as it has. Her attacks on the media are not based in reality; rather, they are based in a desperate duo’s last attempt to find someone else to blame for their failure, because god forbid they admit they aren’t perfect, god forbid they made [plenty of] mistakes, god forbid there is a candidate better than both of them.

Update (3/4): If the media did indeed hate Hillary, this could be part of the reason.