Russert chuckled as one of his guests called Hillary "Muskie in a pantsuit." Ha, ha, the party regular undone in New Hampshire, "crying in the snow," etc. This was striking, so remember this. Ed Muskie was a much stronger candidate than McGovern, so Nixon's "ratfuckers" decided to cripple him. They wrote a fake letter to the Manchester Union-Leader accusing Muskie and his wife of being prejudiced against French Canadians. (That reality, the Nixon campaign's dirty tricks, didn't come out until the impeachment began.) So Muskie made an angry speech in front of the paper while the snow was falling. Dishonest journalists said he was crying. Watching the film today looks to me like his face was wet from snow. But as a result of this high-handed treatment, Muskie was out, and Nixon won a huge landslide.

Well, today, Russert and Matthews are the ratfuckers themselves. They didn't report, they put their thumbs on the scales. And the cynical Obama used all the negative stuff about Hillary that was his legacy from the right and from the crazies who destroyed Gore. And this is "inspiring"? Actually, Hillary's counterattack is quite effective, but in this shortened campaign, it's pretty hard to swing momentum around and give people another thought.

He was telling Kerry he won, wasn't he?

It's not that it isn't true, but that it's very slippery to bring up. The Clintons can't bring it up. They'd be derided as "whiners," or "Muskie in a pantsuit," as the chowderhead on Chief Hitman Russert's show said yesterday. For them to refer to unfair treatment would, and does, make them a target of ridicule from their opponents and from the guilty press corps itself. Even an honest broker such as Glenn is accused of being a "Clinton-lover" by supporters of the current front-runner. Let's say that Obama wins the nomination, and then he goes up against the media fave, McCain. Can't anybody see the story lines that will start to emerge in the general election.

It's a bit like the Electoral College. It's only really clearly a nasty relic when the guy who got the most votes loses, as in 2000. But it is never going to be changed by the "winner." And let's just say that Gore wins in 2012 or something. He has the moral authority to ask for the constitutional amendment to abolish the EC, but I can hear the "Loserman" yelling now.

Aside from putting some real urgency into the divestiture of media companies from any other business -- from Defense to amusement parks to whatever it is that Sumner Redstone does. Bring back the Fin/Syn separation. Anything, to make actual journalism return.

That's the issue, and it's much larger than the trashing of Hillary Clinton or whoever's next in the media hotseat. It all seemed to go to hell after Tonya Harding, didn't it?

She cried!

But she's an evil bitch!

She never shows emotion!

Public financing is desperately needed, plus some totally new media mix when it comes to the coverage of elections. Here's one idea: force all organizations that present news and information to the public to divest from control by non-news corporations.

And lastly, a cap on journalist's salaries. Say, the maximum you can pay a news anchor is, say, $200,000. That would get a lot of the idiots out of the way.

Why would anybody take any of the political journalism in the Obama Post seriously? It's all should be declared a campaign donation. And Tom Edsall is always getting these mysterious whisperers in the Clinton campaign who say things like, "We're thinking about smearing Obama as a drug user." And what do you know, the very next day, the Washington Post goes out and asks Shaheen about possible negative attacks on Obama that the Republicans might make, and he says, "Oh, well, he admits in his book that he experimented with drugs. Don't you think the Republicans will use that?" And the instantaneous outrage, which has already been prepared, erupts! How dare these Clinton staffers attack The Lord! Hey, you asked the freakin' question, prompted by the has-been-- er, senior Washington Post reporter now down on his luck, working for Obama.

I knew, during the glorious 2006 season, when the blogs created their own story line and wiped out much of the power of the old media, that there would be a counterattack, and that the regular old corrupt media would be back. Well, gee, howdy!

Must not call her an intellectually bankrupt has-been. Must not call her a hard right nutcase hiding in a female body, making a small fortune disparaging the movement that got America to pay the slightest attention to her. Must not disparage her clientele, who've also got their heads up an anatomically-impossible location.

After all, as the Hillary rebound shows, it might just rally people to her side.