You win, media. I'm voting for Barack Obama.
In fact, if Hillary Clinton gets the nomination, I'm subletting that house in France where Robert Altman was going to live after Gore lost. And while I'm not convinced that Barack Obama will be the best president, I'm positive I can't take four more years of Hillary-bashing.
I'm forty-two. If Senator Clinton is elected president next year, I will potentially be hearing and reading about Monica Lewinsky, Vince Foster, Whitewater and Travelgate until my fifty-first birthday. And it won't be Hillary who's obsessing over her shredded Rose Law firm records and Paula Jones. It will be the media. Just yesterday, Tina Brown announced she's writing a biography of the Clintons, due in 2010.
Sweet Jesus, make it stop.
If she was merely the target of right-wing whackjobs like Ann Coulter or Laura Ingraham, I could remain in country. But she's not. Even FOX-defined left-wing media outlets like The New York Times, Salon and the Huffington Post (sorry, hand that feeds) have recently contributed to the ringing in my ears:
She is a brittle, relentless manipulator with few stable core values who shuffles through useful personalities like a card shark.
Camille Paglia, Salon.com, January 10, 2008
She won her Senate seat after being embarrassed by a man. She pulled out New Hampshire and saved her presidential campaign after being embarrassed by another man.
Maureen Dowd, New York Times, January 9, 2008
The lesson from the coffee shop interlude...ought to be summed up in a new slogan. "It's Not About You, Honey."
Judith Warner, New York Times, January 10, 2008
So the New Hampshire race is now officially too close to call, Hillary's hypocrisy running neck and neck with her cynicism. Be very afraid, indeed.
Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post, January 7, 2008
She is a shameless borrower of other candidates' good stuff. ... it's probably only a matter of time before she announces the sudden discovery of long-lost Kenyan relatives.
Gail Collins, New York Times, January 10, 2008
I don't get it, she seems like a capable enough senator. Maybe I'm dumb, maybe Hillary Clinton is, as Don Imus says, Satan. Yet despite all this hostility, she was the presumed frontrunner for months, and the Comeback Kid on Tuesday night. I don't know how she does it, but I do know that she's doing it without me. Because all they've got on Obama is his middle name.