It only describes part of the media beast. The smallest, least significant part, the insecure reporter-who-doesn't-know-nothin' but doesn't want to be left out of the pack part. That's nothing, that's existed forever. What we certainly have that Rosen doesn't mention is a number of players at the top of the political journalism pyramid who are just bad actors, who act in bad faith repeatedly. You could take Dean Broder, almost all of the columnists for the Washington Post, Richard Cohen, and on and on.

The most prominent examples these days are Russert and Matthews. Ironically, they make only one point about elections: that voters are thirsting for "authenticity." Lest you think that these people are modern day followers of Albert Camus, Russert is a media blowhard whose biography of his FATHER was ghost-written -- what kind of judge of "authenticity" is he? And why does his "authenticity" tilt so heavily to the right? And is getting his crack staff to make up a charge of inauthenticity by doing a mash-up of excerpted quotes over a decade or more that lead to the inevitable question about when, exactly, did the candidate stop beating his spouse an authentic question? Probably not. But Russert, and all of his bad actor friends, is enormously successful in lending a tone to the mindless media. They don't know squat, but they did see Meet the Press. Tell me that six months of unceasing sexist artillery barrages from the Matthews show wasn't determinative in starting the "panicky loser" stories out of pre-New Hampshire.

Insiders in the MSNBC hierarchy tell me that...

I'll shock you guys. It was Obama who went negative, with the approval and encouragement, and script-providing, of the MSNBC crowd, at the October 30 debate. And his supporters here and at the Huffington Post went negative a long time before that. What's been their narrative? Has it been to uplift people with this policy or that? No. Down in the blogs and the letter sections, you could hardly tell the Obama supporters from the Limbaugh dittoheads, circa 1996. Their guy? Always fresh as a daisy. The message of his supporters? Not about policy, always about Wal-Mart, Clinton=Bush, "I'll never vote for Hillary," and all the rest. Obama always talked about hope and change. Gee, I'll have me some of that. But the knife-fighting was always going on.

And they've done a variant of the Clinton Rapid Response of '92: the Proprioceptive Response Team. Make a comment about LBJ, who got the Civil Rights Bill through, and JFK, who didn't, and it's, "You're disrespecting Martin Luther King." The Obama campaign has kept Hillary bottled up between themselves (always high-minded) and the trashing by Matthews and Russert.

It's a shame this has become a grudge match, but I don't see how, facing these Chicago street tactics, anything else was possible. Oh, yeah, giving up was possible.

So I guess we can write off any hope of a Clinton-Obama ticket, huh?

Obama's camp mercilessly distorted Hillary's comments about LBJ versus JFK into a slam of Martin Luther King -- in a quest for victory in South Carolina.

I think fundamentally, I am worried about how far Obama will go in embracing "bipartisanship." The remarks have been seized on and distorted, but Obama did run a radio ad in rural parts of Nevada urging Republicans to caucus for the Democrats so they could vote for him. And I got a similar mailing from the Obama camp telling me how to do the same in California.

Is that a bipartisan reaching out (good), or pandering? You make the call.

Doesn't anybody read policy papers anymore? On almost every front, Obama's bipartisan front takes him further to the right that I want to go.

"Needless to say, it was Clinton's short fuse that dominated the overnight stories, not the substance of his remarks in Charleston."

Did he do that? Was it "natural" that he got that reaction? Paul Tsongas was a nice old man who, by the way, was lying about his cancer, and his campaign was one the press was in love with: cut all the entitlements. Like Bradley, who was destroyed in a one-on-one debate by Gore, Tsongas was loved by elements of the press, but not by the voters. Was it ungentlemanly to point out that Paul Tsongas would cut your Social Security?

Meanwhile, Bill was the first, and to my mind the only president who never got a "honeymoon." (Note: Bush got one, extended by three years by his manly reaction to 9/11.) The New York Times fell all over itself trying to make a story about of the insane Whitewater non-scandal. Sort of a prelude to the Judy Miller scandal.

It's not "all about Clinton." It is, however, true that any progressive, from Gore to Hillary (yes) to Edwards to Kucinich, is going to have to swim against a hostile and corporate press and its lazy habits.

Did an honest, progressive, wonderful and kind Obama supporter just tell Mr. Brown to STFU? Good guys don't do that, do they? And of course, since he's supporting Obama, he must be saying this at the instigation of the Secret Mr. and Mrs. Obama cartel that controls everything. Hey, does that mean that Obama = Bush?

No. I think it's time we ask for a better press corps. This morning's interview with Hillary was shameful. They focused, as is their wont, only on Hillary's rejoinder, not the initial remark. (See, it's only the Clintons who have gone negative, see?)

And this week, Obama has discovered the answer to Bill on the campaign trail: Michele Obama does a very good job of representing her husband. Will the press keep a keen eye out for the slightest negative remark that she makes about the Clintons and scream "reverse racism"? I don't think so.

By the way, I don't think the press is so much pro-Obama than anti-Clinton.