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Thank you Joan for this - and for thinking independently and more objectively than many of your media peers. You are a much welcomed breath of sanity and intelligence.
About Hillary: It started towards the end of the primaries, was moved by the concession and DNC speeches, but when Barack really met Hillary and they campaigned and pow-wowed together in Florida - it further improved his growing approval, appreciation, and respect for her. He knows she deserves more respect than they gave her during the primaries. They were harder and more unjust to her than to McCain.
They recycled the worst, most vicious Republican attacks against Hillary. Not Barack directly so much - but the campaign. Oh, yes they did.
Barack knows it.
This is something I sent to some in the media in frustration over the smear treatment the Clintons almost always get:
Soap Opera Blindness
I am so sick of the attitudes of those in the media who insist on entertaining themselves with viewing the Clintons as a soap opera. It's adolescent. Get over it. Bill and Hillary Clinton are both tremendously intelligent and talented. They are much more virtuous though imperfect, human beings, and public servants than most of you give them credit for. The have worked so much harder, and sacrificed so much more, than most of you. All so many of you focus on is shallow, B.S. and gossip, that you insistently try to convince yourselves is justifiable by your own versions of "cleverness," and "superiority." Bah. It's the same crappy characterizations over and over. You don't know them. You don't know what they really think. Their motivations are far more virtuous than you ever give them credit for. You are far from "above" them. You totally have the wrong priorities. You are not being part of the solution, but part of the problem. It's like inflated tabloid journalism. Please write about important issues, and not personal character assaults. So much of the negativity about the Clintons has been the direct result of etched-in Republican and media smears. Please grow up, and move on.
It true, it's not the Clintons who make such a big drama - it's the press. I'm sure the Clintons would rather the press just let them alone to do their work with respect.
Our country can't afford the press continuing to get our priorities so wrong.
