Tina Fey, guest-hosting Saturday Night Live last weekend, endorsed Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama during the show's faux news segment with the clever line, "Bitch is the new Black."
Fey's routine, as well as the opening debate skit, played on the fact that the mainstream media has treated Clinton with the disdain that comes with familiarity, while falling all over themselves to lick the boots of the new kid on the block who has only been in Washington -- let's face it -- since January 2005, three short years.
In truth, the performance of the mainstream media in this campaign (mainly TV) actually has a recent antecedent. It is quite reminiscent of their coverage during the race in 2000 between Al Gore and George W. Bush.
In that election, Gore was the well known, eight year vice president, up against a relatively fresh and nationally unknown politician from Texas.
Gore couldn't catch a break from the press to save his soul. Everything was overly and harshly scrutinized, from the way he *sighed* during the debates to his supposed wardrobe malfunctions orchestrated by his "guru" Naomi Wolf. He was "a know-it-all" who had answers and plans for everything. It didn't matter that he'd never claimed to be the inventor of the internet, Chris Matthews and company devoted countless hours to dissecting each insignificant and meaningless detail at the expense of substance.
Bush, on the other hand, was characterized as a laconic, likable fella who you'd want to have a beer with at a backyard cook-out. Or so we were told ad nauseam, even though Gore went on to win the popular vote nationwide while losing the electoral vote, the first time that had happened since 1888.
It didn't matter that Bush frequently and regularly came up short on the kind of stuff that should matter to an informed electorate and Fourth Estate. The big names in the Washington press corps, who make annual salaries in the millions and enjoy their permanent station in life and their access within the corridors of power, had made a decision, set the agenda, and the two candidates were along for the ride.
One manipulated the press much better than the other. Then again, one had Karl Rove and one didn't.
On Tuesday in Cleveland, Tim Russert decided that he was going to come out swinging at both of them. Result? He asked Obama about the nutty anti-Semitic minister Louis Farrakhan. What? Journalism students watching that debate must have asked themselves, "Is this why I want to be in this business? I should just shuffle off to Buffalo."
No, Tim Russert should shuffle off back to Buffalo.
When Hillary mentioned during the debate that she more often than not gets the first question, she clearly meant "on each topic," not "the first question of the night." Yet the post-debate analysis by most of cable TV's talking heads was about who got the first question in each debate. They'd totally misunderstood her point, but they ran with their misunderstanding. It's what they get paid to do.
In truth, as lawyer Dan Abrams pointed out on his MSNBC program the night after the debate, she's gotten the first question to start most of the debates as well as the first question on each topic during the debates. Dan noted, rightly, that it is always preferable to go second, not first, because going second allows you to listen to your opponent's answer and marshal the best possible comeback.
Is it churlish to "blame the media" for a losing campaign? You bet. Is the media the reason she's losing? Of course not. Anyway, you can't win by blaming the media, but it's wise to remember that a well-groomed burro with money on its back is still a burro.
There are reasons to oppose Clinton and support Obama, and vice versa. Yet there is an observable distinction by fair-minded people between the two candidates' media treatment over the course of the campaign.
In the words of the late Warren Zevon, "it ain't that pretty at all."
UPDATE: According to the Saturday, March 1 New York Times, "a New York Times/CBS News telephone poll conducted Feb. 20-24 and released this past Tuesday {reveals that} nearly half of those respondents who described themselves as voters in Democratic primaries or caucuses said the news media had been 'harder' on Mrs. Clinton than other candidates. Only about 1 in 10 suggested the news media had been harder on Mr. Obama."
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Hillary will never be the new Gore. She can't hold a candle to the man.
In 1888, Grover Cleveland got more popular votes than Benjamin Harrison, but Harrison won the electoral college. The Democratic party was bitching about it as late as the 1920s.
Thanks! I've corrected. When I wrote 1876 I must have had had Rutherford Hayes on the brain; he also won the White House through the electoral college while losing the popular vote, and it had to do with Florida, too! George W. Bush is the first president since Harrison - 1888 - to come into office under such ignominious conditions. And yes, you get what you pay for!
i am really getting tired of Hillarys army of castratos.
the media is unfair............. cry me a river will you.
she lost 11 contest back-to-back and is still treated like a contender, she is 8-10% behind in national poll (Gallup) and 80% of dem-voters believe that that Barack Obama is going to win the nomination.
I believe that the press is tiptoeing around her because she is the cry- candidate, they dont want to be victimized like Matthews and Shuster.
the reason why Men Vote against her, is because the idea of a women running on her husbands merit is more offensive to them then the idea of a black man running to become the president of USA, white southern males and northern white males voted 2-1 for Obama.
Obama is too classy to say what men all over the USA say when they hear the line "35 years"
Imagine if your wife used your merit to go ahead of another person. she is running for reelection when no one elected her for that office. That is what is Unfair that No one have asked her why she is using her husbands merit, is this ok for every women everywhere.
akhinaten,
In a previous pro-Hillary piece by Jane Hamsher from December 5, you submitted a comment in which you said the following (typos intact):
"i support you for not voting with your Vagina....Vote-with-your-Vagina is a buss stops from Vote Hillary because she is Bill"s old onenigth Madras."
You also questioned Clinton's political credentials in the Hamsher piece. It's as if you were unaware of the history. You write:
"Why does she not run as a republican...... because according to the polls they would not vote for a woman?"
I am not on record for either of them, and my blog entry was focused strictly on the media attention issue, but you are seemingly angry toward her because she's a female.
Blah, blah, blah the media hates Hillary. Blah, blah, blah, it's every person in the world's fault but Hillary's.
Nice Republican trick bag you got there, if you don't like the way the media reports just claim it is biased against you. If the guy who you have to run against has more personality than you call his followers cultist and so on and so forth.
I have some news for you Hillary supporters : if Hillary wins the nomination your going to regret all of your Barack bashing when your trying to convince them to come out and support your candidate in the general. Most of those new voters will be gone and there is a possibility that Hillary will lose miserably to John McCain, especially if she is going to try to run on experience against him.
Furthermore, we all know the bulk of Clinton supporters are rank and file Democrats who will vote for whoever is the Democratic candidate. So keep up your BS, it'll do you a lot of good in the end.
Actually, I see the similaries between Hilary and Bush:
1) Both surround themselves with insular, incompetent staff (can you say Mark Penn) based on loyalty rather than knowledge, ability or talent.
2)Both live in a bubble, and they refuse the stick their head out of their shell long enough to really know what's going on.
3) Although Hilary has a very strong command on the English language, and we all know that Bush does not -- both say really dumb things on a fairly regular basis. Case in point-- Bush "Gas will be $4 a gallon, I didn't know that". Hillary-- "bring your vacuums and brooms because women are good at cleaning". As a woman, I STILL can't believe that she said that. I know at least 20+ women who have switched to Obama after that comment. Everyone is talking about how she set the clock back for women by decades. OUCH!
4)Both are extremely polarizing
5)Both refuse to take responsibilities for their own mistakes, and instead blame others, no matter how ridiculous it sounds.
6)Both have difficulty maintaining a cool, calm demeanor, and have anger problems. Both get upset, and emotionally unstable/unpredictable in front of national television, completely inappropriate for a president.
7) Both rose to political fame riding on the coat-tails of someone else -- Bush on his father, Hillary on her husband.
8)Both voted to authorize the Iraq War
9)both have made a lot of promises that they have not kept. Bush's unmet promises goes without saying. One of Hilary's is her promise to bring 200,000 jobs to New York. Instead, the state of NY has LOST a net of 30,000 jobs under her term. She blames this an assumption of having a Democratic president (see #5)
10) Family dynasties. Bill Clinton has already served 8 years. If HIlary gets elected, that will make over 20 years of Bush/Clinton.
These are just off the top of my head. Actually the more I think about, the more I'm scaring myself. So, if you are content with where this country is, and where it's going -- Hillary is probably your gal. Me for one, I think this country needs real change, so I voted for Obama.
Your arguments are all incredibly simplistic and childish (and for the most part, inaccurate), and your conclusion that we "need real change," apparently just for change's sake, is scary. Besides, if we want REAL change, we shouldn't vote for Obama. His politics, as is becoming increasingly apparent, are no different or better, and in many aspects are worse, than anyone who has run in modern history. The only demonstrable difference is the shade of his skin, and if that is what you define as change, you have a lot to learn. Even Condoleeza Rice would meet that criterion. You want REAL change? Then you missed the boat when Kucinich dropped out and you had might as well support Nader. That train ain't leaving the station though, either. I may grudgingly support Obama, or at least vote for him, if he wins the nomination. I haven't decided for sure yet, because I don't like the way he is winning (i.e., his strategy of demonizing his Democratic opponent), and I especially don't like the way he totally looks the other way and completely fails to do anything to reign in his overzealous surrogates and supporters who have adopted an attack mode from very early on.
Very well said. Thanks for putting this together.
You got that one right. REH
I WAS living outside the country at the time. Luxembourg to be exact. And it was easy to see that Gore was "the guy who said he invented the internet.. Ha ha ha, what a wooden dolt" and Bush was the "guy you'd like to have a beer with". Well, the MSM got what it wanted... a ruined country with lots of dead Americans.
Obamaddicts for change... change again, vote Nader in. A true progressive.
"Obamaddicts for change... change again, vote Nader in. A true progressive."
I guess the appropriate comeback is:
NaderNerds for Futility....lose again, vote Nader, An unelectable progressive. ???
You insult our intelligence even mentioning Gore's name in all this.
The fact that we're talking Bush with Karl Rove and the manipulated media throws out all comparisons.
So your point is amateurish at best and really a whirlwind of conversation that achieves very little.
The comparisons are slight. Granted, Gore has now found his progressive foundation that would have served him well in 2000, but it was an ongoing learning process that he had to share with the world, and solidified it in an incredible degree, and was awesome to behold. Still he was robbed as we all were. Clinton should have learned from this and had she been doing a bottom-up campaign instead of the smarty pants top-down, she would have sown it up by now.
Don't agree in the least, castlerider. Is it "amateurish" to suggest Gore got shabby treatment compared to Bush in 2000? No. Maybe you were living outside the country at that time.
As for whether it's amateurish to bring up Hillary's treatment by the media in this campaign, I'll defer to the NY Times poll of Democrats that shows half of them think she's been treated harsher and only 1 in 10 think Obama has.
Are all these Democrats who have voted (for or against her) just plain wrong, while you're the only one who is right? Not likely.
No, I was here, allright. I remember how the media insulted our intelligence, campaigned and made not just Gore look like an idiot, but anyone who supported him look like one..
I guess I am still unnereved about what Rove did, which I find to be just as criminal as what he did as Bush's little instigator in the White House, running Alberto Gonzales around like a Howdy Doody dummy, along with everyone else from this administration who lied before Congress and the world.
Compared to that, yeah, calling Hillary's treatment as outright biased is damn sure amateurish.
She mostly has her own self to blame, along with her handlers who have insisted on running a top-down campaign, when she should have run it bottom-up, and been the true progressive populist all along. This is the "change" people want and have wanted from her, and are ready to offer her support for. She tried to play along and make nice for the big corporate boys, and the general public saw right through this and have rejected her for it. I think it's sad, because I rooted for her from the beginning and am pissed that she's let it slip through her fingers.
So those who voted against her maybe were or weren't wrong, but it may stand to show that she sure as hell was, obviously.
So yeah, don't bother insulting my intelligence when all you want to do is blame someone else for her failures.
You fell for the Clinton okey doak. all of the campaigns have the debate committees and in advance of the debates they negotiate everything form the order that the canidates will come out onto the stage, the seating arrangements or if they are going to be standing and the order that they will be standing. They also negotiate who will get the first round of questions and who will make the closing statement.
In earlier debates with multiple candidates, there couldn't be a coin toss over who went first. That only happens when there are only two candidates, I suspect. And anyway, a coin toss over who goes first or last has nothing to do with who is asked the first question on a given topic during the debates. I agree with Mr. Williams: it's churlish to blame the media and the media isn't why she's losing, but it's also clear the media has hammered her harder. That poll of Democrats in today's NY Times says 50% of them feel that way in their gut and only 1 in 10 feel Obama has been hammered harder. Are all those Democrats in the poll just wrong? Doubt it.
would you feel that way if you knew the truth about obama?
but you haven't heard the truth about him because the media doesn't want you to know it.
To the extent this analysis holds water, it is a leaky sieve. Hillary's problem is not that she is the new Gore, but that she is the same old Hillary. She has not moved with the times, and she is still back in 1993 when she was working on her abortive health care plan as if it were a private project, even shutting out the Congress, the very people she needed to pass her plan.
Her being stuck in the past is evidenced by the fact that she needed Bill to try to save her campaign, and when that failed, she had to hurry him off the stage. Now that she has to do it alone, she seems helpless and has found the press to be a ready and willing scapegoat. When she was the "inevitable" candidate, the talk of the press corps was that she and her team were too aloof to bother with the press, and now that she is in trouble, she is complaining that they are biased.
Hillary's chances of becoming president hinge on her demonstrating that she has control over her own destiny and does not need to be propped up by either her husband or the press. But it may be too late for that to sink in.
Are you saying you actually consider Tina Fey's routine on SNL a serious "endorsement"!?!
I think it has been elsewhere reported that SNL impresario Lorne Michaels has formally endorsed Obama and that Tina wanted to do a shout out to Hillary on the show, so I suspect it probably was basically sincere on her part. Sure seemed to be, and funny, too!
My favorite butcher, baker and candlestick maker have expressed their opinion, so why not my favorite comedy writer, eh?
I've been saying this for months...the media will decide our next president. Voters, you can think that it's your decision, but you would be wrong. I only hope that if and when he does become president, Barack has the smarts to be able to handle the job like he's been telling everyone.
Gee, how much does John Edwards pay for a haircut? Now can you say ANYTHING about ANY of his policy proposals? I didn't think so. THANKS MSM!
John edwards didn't pay $400 for just a hair cut, that was MSM spin on the fact that he also paid for the hairdressers air fare and his time he had to wait for Mr Edwards to give that hair cut as well.
it's all in how they presented it.....and present it still
that is how the media is biased.........do they report anything about any of the candidates policies?
or are they just pitting you against one candidate over another based on "who they want" as president ..........pssssst wake up america
if you truly want to take back our country and want change........then the change needs to begin with you! you need to change the way you look at the msm and what bs they feed you........make an informed decision on who you should vote for.
if you don't change then America will not truly get change.
It's a shame this post didn't reference Sean Wilentz's article this week in the New Republic on how the media has enabled the Obama campaign's under the radar strategy to discredit both Bill and Hllary Clinton - ever since the New Hampshire primary.
And before the Obamaphiles on this message board start screaming the outrageous lie that Wilentz is a friend of the Clintons, here's a fact check: Wilentz is a Princeton historian who once spent five hours interviewing Bill Clinton, and he has never spent more than a few minutes with Hillary Clinton.
In case you're interested in the truth, here's the link to the Wilentz article, which is titled "The Race Man" http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=aa0cd21b-0ff2-4329-88a1-69c6c268b304&k=5083
"Yet there is an observable distinction by fair-minded people between the two candidates' media treatment over the course of the campaign."
That is absolute BS. Al Gore was an effective politician; an elected official. While he and his campaign were mismanaged by the national Democratic Party leadership, he also made several blunders, and indeed lost his own state.
Hillary Clinton is a former first lady of a popular president. Her Senate record is not impressive; she carpetbagged to NY to run for the office and talented Democrats bowed out so she could run. She has used the NY Senate office to springboard her obsessive run for the Democratic nomination.
The first few months of her campaign were all about her inevitability, her sure win. She happened to run in a field of talented people whose skills were equal to hers. She has proven herself to be a peevish, demanding, whining candidate.
The msm gets few points for fairness, but, they have dutifully reported every stumble and every faux pas of Bill and Hillary -- and Obama, and the candidates who dropped out. There's nothing wrong with that kind of reporting, except that it infuriates those who wish to see Hillary crowned. The first several debates were a Hillary-fest of softball questions; now it's a bit harder since there are only two left and she's not quite as believable as initially.
Hillary can't hold a candle to Al Gore in any respect; and the press treatment of Hillary has been comprehensive, to the point where the msm parrots her every complaint. Al Gore was mishandled by the Democratic leadership, much like John Kerry.
Hill has run her own campaign, like her marriage, for better or worse.
Hillary deserves to lose on her own merits, or lack of them. And she is.
slow2, you need to go back and look at the poll of the press people that covered the 2000 election.
A majority of those polled owned up to their bias for Bush at the time. There was an article about the results of the poll that was posted right here on Huffington Post, back in the early spring of 2007, if I remember correctly. So, while Gore may not have had the best advice and strategy his candidacy was most certainly torpedoed by the fawning of the press corps for Shrub.
I'll leave others to comment on the current campaign. But you need to do some reading about the 2000 campaign. Most of Al Gore's "blunders" never happened; they were manufactured by a press so remarkably hostile to him that it boggles the mind. He was labled a serial liar/exaggerator for statements he never made, were 100% true, or were reported as the opposite of what he actually said. Meanwhile, Bush was presented as a likeable lightweight; his speech patterns were made polite fun of, but they ignored his repeated lies-- "the vast majority of my tax cuts go to those who make the least," and "in Texas I brought Democrats and Republicans together to pass a patients' bill of rights" (he vetoed the bipartisan legislation, which was then passed without his signature), to name just two. Gore mismanaged by the party? Perhaps, but even a semblance of balanced press coverage and he'd have won easily.
Please point me to where the media has gone after every stumble and faux pas of Obama. Oh, that's right - he's perfect. He doesn't make mistakes, so there are none to report. Personally, I think Hillary was right on target last week. His worshippers think that he's Jesus' younger brother - even his used Kleenex are holy.
Posted February 28, 2008 | 04:57 PM (EST)