Bob Somerby:

FENN: [Obama] is very likeable. He has a great smile. He has a great way about him. I tell you, I like Barack Obama. Everybody is liking him. But the problem is you haven’t—you haven’t been—he hasn’t been bashed for fifteen years by the Republicans and Fox News.

Obama has an advantage, Fenn said. Unlike Clinton, he hasn’t been bashed for the past fifteen years by Republicans—and by Fox News.

Let’s understand the basic shape of Fenn’s remarkable comment.

As he spoke, Fenn was appearing on MSNBC, a cable channel on which Clinton has been mercilessly bashed for the past many years. Chris Matthews, the network’s top political figure, has displayed a loathing for Hillary Clinton (and for Bill Clinton and Al Gore before her) that surpasses the boundaries of comprehension; Matthews and his NBC buddies are major opinion leaders of the mainstream, insider press corps. Meanwhile, Carlson himself has often spoken about Clinton’s castrating ways. (And about what a fake, phony asshole Gore is.) In this conduct, MSNBC has reflected the Clinton-Gore hatred that has driven so much of the mainstream press elite over the past sixteen years.

But so what? Fenn, explaining why Clinton isn’t liked, says she’s been beat up by Fox!

And there you see, in all its glory, a central deception of the past sixteen years—a lie that has been handed to voters by a long string of liberals and Dems. To this day, major Dems and major career liberals pretend that it was the “right-wing machine” which led the attacks on the Clintons and Gore. In last night’s comment, Fenn refuses to tell the truth about the main source of the Clinton/Gore-trashing. But many, many others like him have told this bogus tale through the years. To this day, they still haven’t told you the truth about the trashing of Gore. And in the course of the past few months, they’ve walked away from the truth about Clinton.

If the mainstream press corps turns on the next Dem nominee, will voters understand what they’re seeing? Or will they assume that, since it’s not Fox, the trashing must be well-founded?

The dead of Iraq are in the ground because of the story we liberals wouldn’t tell. Peter Fenn seems like a nice guy. Last night, within the context of insider Washington, he did keep himself highly likeable.

There is that other problem, however. Tell the truth about the corporate media, and the media coverage dries up. Just ask John Edwards.