Our Media At Work
May 1st, 2008 at 11:32 am by Susie
Melissa goes to a Clinton event, and compares what she saw with what was written:
So, yesterday, I wrote a post about attending a Hillary Clinton event, in which I passingly mentioned that the guy who introduced her referred to her testicular fortitude.
This morning, Shaker Reb emailed me a link to MSNBC’s coverage, in which that’s the lead. In fact, you have to read seven paragraphs before you get to anything of substance at all about the event, which gets two paragraphs, before three more about her “referring in passing” to her interview with Bill O’Reilly.
Now, Clinton spent over an hour talking about and answering questions about policy in amazing detail—and, throughout, she spoke the language of the labor movement specifically and progressives generally; there was no rightwing framing, no triangulation. She was impressively blunt about the Republicans playing class warfare and about her determination to raise taxes on corporations and the rich, and she was much more explicitly anti-corporate in some of her statements than I expected. At one point, I leaned over to KenBlogz to whisper, “This woman is a communist!” All of which is arguably actual news, given her reputation. (Although I suppose it isn’t news to the media which has been dutifully not reporting it.)
Yet MSNBC reports on “testicular fortitude” (sorry—who’s playing the gender card?!) and her interview with Bill O’Reilly (you don’t think that has anything to do with ginning up some of that outrage on display when she met with Scaife, do you?).
Ridiculous.
Is anyone surprised to hear I’m 99% certain the dude who filed this report was the one I mentioned reading The Drudge Report during her speech?
hillary + “balls”= OKAY
hillary + “Rocky is a Pansy”= OKAY
“periodically”+ hillary = NOT OKAY
Melissa has spoken out on all three, steveeboy.
Susie, the funny part is you are liberal and most of the working MSM are liberals too. So if you feel they are slanting things re Obama vs Clinton, just think how conservatives feel every day of every year.
wendy whinner - yeah, you’re right. There is a secret cabal of media people who regularly meet and decide how to hurt conservatives and help liberals.
It’s all obvious if you have the right kind of vision.
Btw – I don’t presume to speak for Susie, but the post was about how a long appearance filled with red meat political substance on the part of the candidate was reduced to trivialities. That’s not a left-right problem. The major players in our media spend far too much time with trivial framing issues – who can bowl, who wind sails, etc. It’s about trivia over substance. I would hope even a conservative could agree that’s a problem.
Actually Bob, Susie’s post was a complaint about how the media generally decides to report an event. You can call it framing - you libs love to complain that you lose elections because you fail to frame things properly. It is never the fault of your position on the issues of course (per the advice of the high-priced San Francisco linguist) and dweeb George something or other (am I correct?).
As to trivia vs. substance or wind sailing vs. bowling, Americans tend to consider all of a candidate’s traits when they vote. Unfortunately for you, candidates like the wind-surfing Patrician wannabe Kerry just don’t cut it wit the majority of American voters. But don’t despair, there is an election every four years in case you hadn’t heard.
You know I just realized something.
This Obama - Clinton firestorm has wreaked havoc on Susie’s blogging voice. She is shaken to the core as many of her former allies, kindred spirits and fellow bloggers have turned against Susie’s choice. This has made Susie take a step back to consider what her progressive / liberal philosophy is about.
I suspect this is why Susie has been so quiet lately. That is my 2 cents - maybe Hillary’s campaign could use it.
wendy - my apologies. You are correct; the American people can sniff out a phoney from a thousand miles away. That’s why they voted for that famous brush-clearing son of the working class George W. Bush.