so long as they're only being applied to clinton. the obama campaign has gleefully availed itself of the fruits of "hillary rules" this entire campaign while simultaneous claiming to be above small politics.

now that they've been lightly applied to him, he demands that the campaign be about substance.

had this campaign been about nothing but substance from the beginning, obama wouldn 't have had any clear road to the nomination, given that most pundits agree that hillary's policies (and grasp of policy) are more fully formed than obama's.

so his campaign, with the help of a press largely operating by "clinton rules", has instead focused on portraying clinton as an amoral, grasping political beast whose only motivation is cold ambition. she and her husband are probably racists, too. it's incredible what terrible people they really are! there's plainly nothing they won't stoop to. right out of the republican playbook of the 90's.

al gore went through the same thing in the 2000 race. remember what a liar he was, what a serial exaggerator? of course, now he's the goreacle.

had either al gore or hillary clinton made the claims that obama made during the last debate ("that's not my handwriting" on the gun memo/ "i never said i wouldn't wear a flag pin" -- both flatly false statements) it would have been taken as damning proof of their moral bankruptcy. the fact that obama was able to make those statements without being flayed makes it clear that "clinton rules" are still not being applied to him in full force.

the obama campaign has largely been politics as usual hiding being a mask of sanctimonious piety. yuck.

Sometimes I wonder if people are quite as outraged as they claim to be about this issue. It seems as though people out there are mad at the media because people out there are mad about the media. I believe that people out there kinda like the Reality TV that is the political coverage that our media provides.

As Mr. Conason said, this has been going on for several election cycles now, and you can bet that every election cycle, journalists have been writing about it. There has to be a reason why this hasn't changed. And the reason is that people love drama. Policy Shmolicy. People want conflict. They want shady dealings. They want lies and scandal, and our society doesn't even WANT to keep our fiction and nonfiction separate anymore.

That said, Clinton managed to beat Bush in 1992 amidst a hostile media. I believe that the excitement that still pours from the left despite this draining primary season is evidence enough that there are sufficient numbers of people focused on the important issues to set this country back on the right track.

The funny thing about John McCain is that he does not need any mollycoddling from the press. On a given average day, McCain will make enough mistakes and gaffes equal to two weeks of Obama and Clinton gaffes. What I am saying is that even with all the help from the mainstream media, John will self-destruct. That is how bad a candidate he is.

Don't believe any of the polls that say it is close between him and Obama and him and Clinton. Once the Democratic nominee is picked, the polls will show something closer to the real situation: McCain is unelectable.

Joe, you and your cohort Joan Walsh just won't give up worshipping Hillary Clinton, and if you have to constantly knock Obama, who will the the nominee, so what? Under the guise of toughening him up to face the Republicans the Hillaryites have not let up. And so what if he loses in November? She'll be back to challenge McCain in 2012.

The rules are different for Democrats. No disputing that. But to suggest that things ought to be more "fair" is also to suggest that higher forces than viewership and revenue generation are guiding the media. To borrow the author's own word, there is a "matrix" of reasons why Dems are subject to higher scrutiny than Republicans, but one of the main ones is their self-inflicted mantle as reformers. Eliot Spitzer was an extreme example of this phenomenon. LIke it or not, no one would much care is state senator Joseph Bruno was caught in a brothel shouting Nazi slogans-partly because people ASSUME he's going to lie. (you can throw 1001 counterexamples at me, but just remember it gets reported if it makes good copy)

And the spirit of this article was good-the rules are different, so GET OVER IT.

Obama was indeed subjected to a fierce right-wing-framed line of questioning on Wednesday, but it was ironically his hedging on the issues he's been so dying to talk about that did him in. As I've said in other posts I didn't support him for president but Dennis Kucinich could have answered those right-wing screeds with more credibility than did Obama.

We know the Clinton rules too. Where Clinton got in the most trouble was not by getting blown my Monica. It was when he denied it. By the same token Obama scored the most "points" with the voters when he courageously addressed the Rev. Wright scandal head on. No one cared that David Patterson had an affair, because he got it out of the way and set about proving himself as a governor. We don't expect Obama to be perfect, but we do expect him to stand up for what's right.

as the wednesday debate proved, one cannot question barack obama except to ask softball questions. the press treats him like a cross between jesus and michael jordan. obama finally got pressured wednesday night, and he didn't look good.

in fact, he looked like he might just slug the "typical white people" asking the questions. hillary clinton has put up with this for over a year, enduring the "let's attack hillary" show - HARDBALL - and msnbc, nbc, tim russert (politics is a man's game) and everyone else. obama gets just a taste and the media freaks out, obama freaks out, and george and charlie will probably have to resign a la imus.

chuck davis

cwd2017@yahoo.com