1. Why were you angered at her RFK comment? Do you have something against the month of June?

2. If you are concerned that "her comment, whether intentional or not, seemed to me to paint a bull's-eye on Obama's back" perhaps you should direct your outrage at the media and the Obama operatives who made a massive national news story about a completely innocent* comment uttered in an obscure Midwestern newsroom. No one would have heard this oh-so-dangerous quote if it weren't for the gigantic fauxtrage.

Once again an important matter -- the safety of the first viable black presidential candidate -- gets trivialized by bogus news/campaign manipulations.

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* Completely innocent per: the journalists it was said to, the Politico guys who were "deflated" when they realized their big story was a tempest in a teapot, and RFK's own son. So, you don't have to take the word of racist assassin Hillary Clinton on it.

Sorry, you were played by the news media and the Obama camp, just like you may have been about "as far as I now," "fairy tale" = racism, praising LBJ=dissing MLK, sleeping kids = "Birth of a Nation," and the Drudge Muslim-garb photo.

The liberal echelons of the media (such as they are) and the liberal blogs didn't give a shit about separating fact from fiction, because the false narratives favored their preferred candidate. And thus, the media critique was abandoned.

Media critique and issue/campaign concerns about my party's presumptive nominee are "sour grapes"!? The left has become just as truthy and bullying as the right, and that just kills me. Lefties are now chanting "get over it" to fellow Democrats just like so many little Scalias.

And you're going to cite DailyKos, whose official policy was that it didn't have to be "fair" to Hillary Clinton, as an example of balance?

I love Digby, but she's been standing on her head to find a way to feel good about Obama, including one column that amounted to "at least he's black," and another where she said "At this point I don't care if Obama flips on every single issue, I will do everything I can to see this jackass (McCain) defeated."

Which, by the way, should tell you that Dailykos doesn't speak with one voice, meaning that they didn't have an "official policy" about bashing or praising Hilary Clinton.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/17/12417/1285

Kos himself: "As such, as far as I'm concerned, she doesn't deserve 'fairness' on this site. All sexist attacks will be dealt with -- those will never be acceptable. But otherwise, Clinton has set an inevitably divisive course and must be dealt with appropriately."

Other than not stopping the sexist attacks, he was true to his word.

Oh, but please tell me how that's not technically site policy, and whatever other blah, blah, blah you can come up with to cover up for the crappy turn the leftysphere and the (tiny) lefty media took this year.

The Correntebot misses you.

Real life calls, but I'll post an answer to your question at my group-blog home (http://www.correntewire.com) first chance I get, which should be late tonight or sometime tomorrow, if at all possible.

For super-extra-bonus blogwhoring points, I'll note that at 8:00PM EDT tonight, we'll be having another in our series of discussions about a theoretical "Progressive Blogosphere 2.0," which we'd like to see rise from the ashes of a leftysphere that got caught up in echo-chamber truthiness, surreal hero worship (Obama's "magic water," anyone? [See HuffPo for that one]), bullying, misogyny, and other not-so-healthy things.

Tonight's host is FrenchDoc of the Global Sociology Blog.

Sure, why not disregard...

...the actual words Hillary used (sorry, "invoked," I believe is the phrase that pays) re: RFK

...the word of the people who conducted the interview (and then subsequently endorsed her -- but hey, should you really trust people who endorse a racist murderess?)

... the news organization that propagated the story, then admitted the facts made it a dud

... journalists like Michael Kinsley, who admitted her comment "was willfully misinterpreted to suggest that she was wishing that fate on her opponent," but weren't too broke up about it because "it served her right."

...RFK's son, who was aware she'd made such comparisons before and thought nothing of it (who knows, maybe he was in league with Sirhan-Sirhan and Vince Foster's killer!)

Please rest easy tonight, secure in the knowledge that you're smarter and more intellectually honest than the people who believed and propagated the media-fueled lies of the Bush adminstration. 'Cause you're one of the good guys!

I was going to devote an hour or two to giving it a detailed response.

Before the pigsh*t hit the fan (i.e., the backlash), Democratic Underground users celebrated the implication that Palin was being likened to a sow, in a highly rated thread:

http://www.correntewire.com/your_fellow_democrats

So, I find it not such a stretch that Obama's live audience may have gleaned the same enjoyment out of the conflation of Palin and pig, whether it was intended or not.

From a campaign whose surrogates thought "fairy tale," praise for LBJ, and images of sleeping white children were racist (and that a reference to RFK was an assassination wish or even threat), this shows a remarkably tin ear or worse.

Was Obama unaware that the lipstick/pig metaphor might inflame concerns about sexism and misogyny, especially after Sarah Palin's widely publicized lipstick/pitbull joke?

If he really is that ill-informed and/or insensitive, can someone get him an internet connection and show him Shakesville's Palin Sexism Watch?

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/09/sarah-palin-sexism-watch-12.html

In this context, wouldn't you think twice about invoking that particular imagery? Of course you would, because you're not stupid and not a misogynist. You also might not scratch your face with your middle finger in the same speech where you did a pantomime that likened your female, intraparty rival to dandruff. But, then again, you're not the leader of a new-politics progressive movement.