Too long to quote or excerpt anything.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=aa0cd21b-0ff2-4329-88a1-69c6c268b304
This is pretty damn harsh.
Stuff like this keeps up, internal Democratic divisions could cause serious issues in the general election.
I dunno, I have faith that the Dems will circle the wagons come general time out of a desire to not commit political suicide.
I’m struck by how the tone of the article is to defend or dismiss the negative stuff about Clinton and focus only on an anti-Obama thesis. Regardless of the validity about what it says about Obama, Hillary supporters can’t have it both ways. They can’t promote Hillary as a “return to the wonderful 90’s” and at the same time say that Hillary doesn’t really like NAFTA. They can’t dismiss their New Hampshire co-chair’s comments as being from someone with a “ceremonial” position.
Glancing at the comments, it appears the author is a long time friend of the Clintons.
Wilentz endorsed Clinton back in November and is reported to be a family friend. He had Bill come to Princeton back in 2000 and publicly defended Bill during the Lewinsky scandal. This appears to be more of a Wilentz thing than a TNR thing; I wouldn’t be surprised if he was rhetorically positioning himself for a full time role in a prospective Hillary Clinton White House.
The reason he can speak so knowledgeably about the history of family is more a matter of being ideologically joined at the hip than a matter of journalistic rigor. And I suspect that the heat of his argument is coming more from frustrated ambitions than reasonable indignation.
It’s difficult to believe someone could be so biased and not realise it. The nail in the coffin, after paragraphs of wide-eyed disbelief that Clinton could do anything remotely bad, was to pretend that distributing a picture of Obama in a turban was a “non-story” because, well, Hillary has done the same many times. Yeah, and if Obama had been smeared by a infidelity claim, and then a picture of him with his arms around a beautiful fashion model happened to get circulated, that would be a non-story too, because Hillary has been seen with her arm around many a woman.
Ignoring the context to push an unbelieveable line.
I should say that I’m not contending that the Obama campaign has been angelic. And I’m not contending that the media has been fair to Clinton. I just think that Wilentz is not being candid about his bias, and he’s exaggerating Obama’s strategies and negatives. He is, in fact, emblematic of the Clinton campaign’s defensive myopia.
I don’t know if “defensive” is the right word; one day, Clinton is a victim of media bias, the next day she’s a wounded champion of universal health care, and on another day she’s getting choked up about a single mother getting kicked out of her home because of an imploded mortgage. Obama may be the better candidate strictly on the basis of consistent, positive, and unifying messages.
Misleading propaganda is hardly new in American politics --although the adoption of techniques reminiscent of past Republican and special-interest hit jobs, right down to a retread of the fictional couple, seems strangely at odds with a campaign that proclaims it will redeem the country from precisely these sorts of divisive and manipulative tactics. As insidious as these tactics are, though, the Obama campaign’s most effective gambits have been far more egregious and dangerous than the hypocritical deployment of deceptive and disingenuous attack ads. To a large degree, the campaign’s strategists turned the primary and caucus race to their advantage when they deliberately, falsely, and successfully portrayed Clinton and her campaign as unscrupulous race-baiters–a campaign-within-the-campaign in which the worked-up flap over the Somali costume photograph is but the latest episode. While promoting Obama as a “post-racial” figure, his campaign has purposefully polluted the contest with a new strain of what historically has been the most toxic poison in American politics.
Holy shit this is as good as something from The Onion in its heyday
The problem is not that Obama is dirty, or the media is too nice to him and too mean to her. Its that he is a better candidate has run a better campaign. Had some of that criticism been turned inward after Iowa, they might have done better.
She has now failed in the two largest initiatives she has ever run - Healthcare and her own presidential campaign. The philosphy of “Being Ready on Day 1” doesn’t allow one to learn from her own mistakes appearently.
“Overtly biased member of the press complains about hidden press bias.”
Well, I’m glad we got that article out of the way. Now, who else has something to say about Obama? Come on, we’ll hear you out.
The comments at the bottom of the article are amazing.
wilentz, i had to down a shooter to keep from breaking my laptop over this g-ddamn tripe you just wretched up.
TNR?
AHAHAHAHAHA
Are you intimating that TNR somehow represents the Dems?
Lieberman got kicked out of the party…
Eh, all it’s saying is that his campaign portrayed Clinton as being more racially insensitive than she is. If that’s his worst quality, I’ll be shocked.
I love how everything that a Clinton supporter did was an independent action taken by someone completely honest, every action of an Obama support was something his campaign did, and every bad story was the result of pressure from Obama to spin things for him.
TNR editor (and owner) Marty Peretz continues to show the world how much of a sick racist asshole he is:
But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.
Uh…isn’t the whole point of the First Amendment (and the following nine) that it’s recognizing a human right, not granting a privilege? Do these guys even re-read what they write?
Marty is the Fish-Bowl Turd at TNR. And everybody knows it.
As the blogger Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, Peretz’s blog is “basically a museum for every anti-Arab/Muslim stereotype and caricature that exists.” Nevertheless, as the Prospect’s Ezra Klein blogged, “Peretz is rarely held to account, largely because there’s an odd, tacit understanding that he’s a cartoonish character and everyone knows it.”