Hillary Clinton has more and more in common with Richard Nixon and Jimmah Carter everyday. She is really paranoid about a lot of things, and her campaign and her don't let any minutia go by without a stern rebuke. Check out this from the New Republic:On June 1, The New York Times published a front-page article titled, ONE PLACE WHERE OBAMA GOES ELBOW TO ELBOW. The feature detailed Barack Obama's love for pickup basketball, his jersey-tugging style, even the time he hit a long game-winning shot after getting fouled.
The Obama camp clearly welcomed the humanizing glimpse at Obama's life; his rivals, probably not so much. In an ordinary campaign, that might have been it. But this is no ordinary campaign--not when Hillary Clinton is a candidate. And so, the Clinton team let Times reporter Patrick Healy, who covers the Hillary beat, know about their "annoyance" with the story, as Healy later put it.
If grumbling about a basketball story seems excessive, it's also typical of the Clinton media machine. Reporters who have covered the hyper-vigilant campaign say that no detail or editorial spin is too minor to draw a rebuke. Even seasoned political journalists describe reporting on Hillary as a torturous experience. Though few dare offer specifics for the record--"They're too smart," one furtively confides. "They'll figure out who I am"--privately, they recount excruciating battles to secure basic facts. Innocent queries are met with deep suspicion. Only surgically precise questioning yields relevant answers. Hillary's aides don't hesitate to use access as a blunt instrument, as when they killed off a negative GQ story on the campaign by threatening to stop cooperating with a separate Bill Clinton story the magazine had in the works.
My goodness, killing stories, cutting access, sounds like something the Dems accuse Karl Rove of doing. Gee, could that be even more liberal projection? I think so. But wait, here is some more that should make reporters wince:
Reporters' jabs and errors are long remembered, and no hour is too odd for an angry phone call. Clinton aides are especially swift to bypass reporters and complain to top editors. "They're frightening!" says one reporter who has covered Clinton. "They don't see [reporting] as a healthy part of the process. They view this as a ruthless kill-or-be-killed game."
So do these reporters bristle against this as they do with some small things like Rove did? No, here is what they do:
Despite all the grumbling, however, the press has showered Hillary with strikingly positive coverage. "It's one of the few times I've seen journalists respect someone for beating the hell out of them," says a veteran Democratic media operative. The media has paved a smooth road for signature campaign moments like Hillary's campaign launch and her health care plan rollout and has dutifully advanced campaign-promoted themes like Hillary's "experience" and expertise in military affairs. This is all the more striking in light of the press's past treatment of Clinton--particularly during her husband's White House years--including endless stories about her personal ethics, frostiness, and alleged Lady Macbeth persona.
It's enough to make you suspect that breeding fear and paranoia within the press corps is itself part of the Clinton campaign's strategy.
Well, duh....intimidation has always been Bill and Hill's m.o. Ask the Arkansas troopers, ask the White House Travel Staff, ask Bill's mistresses....
The Bush administration changed the rules," as one scribe puts it--and the Clintonites like the way they look. (To be sure, no one accuses the Clinton team of outright lying to the press, as the Bushies have done, or of crossing other ethical lines.
Um, what about "I did not sleep with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky?" What about all those denials about hiring P.I.s to follow Bill's mistresses? Hmmm?
The media is so suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome they blame him for how Clinton treats them...geez.
Look, Hillary is goin to try to remain sheltered. I look for her to try a FEMA style fake news conference at any moment. I hope bloggers are around, because the MSM will try to bury it, because they fear her. I mean, after all, she has the testicle lockbox.
