Hillary Clinton Speaks at Convention, the Press Concocts a Story

The press has portrayed Clinton's planned convention address, as well as the fact that her name is being placed into nomination, as an unprecedented, heavy-handed power grab.

It's not.

In years past, Democratic candidates who won lots of primaries and accumulated hundreds of delegates (Jesse Jackson, Gary Hart, Jerry Brown) have always been allowed to address the convention and very often place their name into nomination. It's the norm. It's expected. It's a formality.

But, boy, in 2008, an awful lot of media outlets have played dumb. When covering the August 14 announcement about Clinton's role in Denver, they miraculously forgot to make any historical reference to similar names-placed-in-nomination at previous conventions.

Read the entire Media Matters column here.

Comments

[johnie2xs]

HMMMMMmm!!!!!!!!!! History! What a concept. When we have people in this country who think that "the transition from propeller driven to jet driven aircraft occurred during the Revolutionary War", the quaint idea of understanding, let alone, quoting history, is just......­.........w­ell,......­.....uh,..­........QU­AINT!!!!!!­!!!

[AggravationKills]

This may be the smartest piece I've read all election. MM does good work. Kudos.

[OtayPanky]

BubbaCo is playing good cop/bad cop.

Why else would Bubba himself, as well as Terry McAuliffe and other surrogates, not want to be there on Friday when Barack accepts the nomination?

Smarten up.

[aubrey8]

Nice article but most of us knew that months ago.

[lennix]

the msm is the ones thats dangerous and we need to put them in check they seem like something hollywood made up to brain wash people and control people who have hate and think that the only ones who are right for america is old white men with money not women white or black no man of colour unless they are the puppets on the strings they use when ever the what this is way we went to iraq becuase these nut on cable and msm put the lies out there

[lwaxanatroi]

This is another of the GOP's patented catch-22 scenarios. Hillary speaks, and she's an egotistical megalomaniac. She doesn't speak, and she's sulking in her tent ready to bring down Obama. I'm glad HRC chose the bolder option; it's the only way to go in catch-22 land. Do it knowing you'll be castigated by the other side, but do it knowing in your bones that you'd have been castigated for making the opposite choice. For far too long have we tried to play that catch-22 game by not getting castigated. Face it, they live to castigate and all you can do is plot your own course in spite of it. Great speech, Hill, although I'm still waiting for some red meat. Guess I have to start watching the convention at 2 in the afternoon to get any here in California., It feels so empty when it's over at 8:30. I remember the old days, when you could stay up till 3 am and go tobed still biting your fingernails, wondering how the latest floor fight was going to play out,

[StevieRae]

Thanks for the work MM does. I'm not prone to believe in conspiracies but I'm beginning to see some definite connecting dots in the conservative media. One merely needs to see the thread on sites like Real Politics.

It seems that not unlike Walmart's efforts to influence it workers to vote against Obama, conservative interests entrenched in perpetuating business interests; those many who are direct and indirect benefactors of the military industrial complex have begun to adopt a Walmart-type strategy to undermine Obama by creating doubt and scaring Americans.

The reality is they see the very possibility of McCain being beaten by Obama and there's too much to lose. We are about to see more evidence of the ugly under-belly of capitalism as some of its power centers do everything to hold on to their influence on every aspect of Americans' life by electing McCain and defeating Obama.

[XME]

She is the first women EVER to win more than one primary, and she won 23 of them...time to give the woman a little credit whether you like her or not (and I don't much care for her!)

[RevBuck]

Great column. It is so obvious the msm has worked hard to fabricate a story out of this. As soon as CNN and the others got their equipment set up in Denver they started obsessing about the Clintons and trying to build up the drama. I'm with some others who have started tuning in to C-span to avoid all the hype. I will be glad when Thursday gets here.

[RadhaColalurver]

Thank you fore being one of the few people who bring this up. The Media Matters column was fantastic, and everyone should read it. So many people are fooled by the MSM which has a sick control over our lives and thoughts.