"White women are a problem, that's -- you know, we all live with that"
~~ William Kristol of the New York Times and Fox News to laughter during a political discussion on Fox TV.
“She's talking like she's Annie Oakley!”
~~ Barak Obama, falsely implying that Sen. Clinton lied about ever using a gun.
“When I ran for the Congress, when I ran for president, I met more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are men.”
~~ Shirley Chisholm, U.S. Senator and first major party, African American Presidential candidate in 1972.
If you’d told me at the beginning of this year’s seemingly endless Democratic Presidential nomination process that sexism is far worse in American than racism, I’d have scoffed.
But the contrast between the incredibly abusive, biased treatment main-stream media gave Senator Hillary Clinton and the adulatory coverage of Senator Barak Obama made it obvious that sexism is far worse than racism.
Sen. Clinton has been described on television and in MSM print as: a whore, a witch, a bitch, Hitlery (in the New York Times ), Hildebeast, she-devil (MSNNBC), shrill, castrating, merciless, heartless, a vampire, compared to a psychopathic killer, likened to North Korean dictator Kim Il Jung, (LA. Times) being as “mean as Leona Helmsley (for simply not quitting the campaign according to Business Week)”, “like "a scolding mother, talking down to a child" (on CNN), and derided for her laugh, her cleavage (in the Washington Post), her thick ankles (Carl Bernstein on ABC), her clothing, her "Wal-Mart shopper’s bad hair and big bum" (New York magazine), and for “pimping her daughter Chelsea” (MSNBC).
Virtually no attention was paid to this bias by the media until Senator Clinton’s campaign was over. Even now this constant and astonishing level of vitriol is denied by some in the media. Fewer want to acknowledge the active role of Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod (his Karl Role, or Lee Atwater) in stoking the fires of both sexism and racism to attack Clinton.
Even now this constant and astonishing level of vitriol is denied by some in the media. But even those tepid attempts at navel gazing barely touch on the level of discrimination.
There are three levels of discrimination in the media treatment of Sen. Clinton’s historic campaign. First, there are the blatant misogynist insults. Then there is the coverage of Sen. Clinton’s poor treatment itself. Finally, there is the pervasive bending of the news through subtle digs, bias in questions, and attitude.
The latter is subtler but probably more damaging to Sen. Clinton’s presidential campaign in total. We’ll examine that later. First, consider these examples: Early in the campaign, Sen. Clinton was harassed by men carrying signs proclaiming, “Iron my shirt”. Then when a questioner asked Senator McCain “How can we stop this bitch,” McCain laughed.
Later Sen. Obama, sensing an opportunity, piled on with a string of sexist put-downs including: “She has her claws out now … (imitating a cat scratching), “She’s like Annie Oakley …”, and “She’s down from time to time and needs to (strike out) …” .
Finally, there are the political “souvenirs”, such as the Hillary nut-cracker, the T-shirt that proclaims “Better a Bro than a Ho”. Then there is the toilet brush for “The First Cleaning Lady.” The media barely reported these incidents.
Imagine if their racist equivalents had been directed at Sen. Obama. If Sen. McCain had laughed at “How do we stop that N …”, that would have been the end of McCain campaign. Period. {As Marie Cocco of Washington Post wrote. } If picketers harassed Obama with signs, “Shine my shoes,” or “Pick my cotton”, they’d have been ejected and vilified prominently on the news.
If airport vendors, instead of offering the anti-Clinton products offered anti-Obama nooses, they’d be shut down. I can’t even describe the racist equivalent of the Hillary nutcracker.
That the sexist equivalents were barely covered, on occasion promoted, is a direct statement that the media finds them tolerable, if not enjoys them. Consider also, the way the media has abetted Sen. Obama’s campaign in smearing both Clintons with racist accusations.
The media all but ignored assessing these relentless, personal attacks, until Sen. Clinton’s campaign was over, then did a cursory job yet regurgitates every accusation David Axlerod et al send to their Blackberries, no matter how baseless. That the coverage of Clinton’s 
campaign was biased in undeniable (although a few in the media, most notably CNN's various "experts" and MSNBC’s Keith Olberman do manage to deny the obvious), the cause of the bias is.
There are three theories:
1. We Journalists Just Like Obama Better. This theory, best expressed by Kurt Andersen of New York Magazine, is that Obama’s core constituency is yuppies; the press are yuppies, and Obama’s a yuppie, so they liked him better. This is basically a mea culpa that the press has done a horrible, biased job, but it’s not so bad because we like him.
2. Clinton Is Obnoxious. This excuse is widely found online. Stanley Fish, a professor and blogger for the NY Times’ Web site examined how much of the 
hatred toward Clinton is personal v.s. sexist in
"All You Need is Hate.". Posters respond to accusations that their comments were sexist by making vulgar, sexist insults and saying, in essence, it’s justified sexism because we don’t like her. That gave Fish grist for a second column exposing their hypocrisy.
3. We Always Hang the Leader. Gloria Borger, part of the self-proclaimed ‘best political team on earth” at CNN made the case that Clinton was the leader and “We in the media always go after the leader,” and now that Obama is the leader we’ll turn on him. In essence, she admitted that they personally at CNN and most of the media did a terrible, biased job of covering the campaign but that was all right because that’s how the game works.
This was repeated when Candy Crowley, covering the campaign for CNN, said in the New York Times that for the most part, she did not see a drumbeat of sexism in the daily reporting, “but I certainly did see it in the commentary.” Still, Ms. Crowley said, “it was hard to know if these attacks were being made because she was a woman or because she was this woman or because, for a long time, she was the front-runner.”
4. Yes But It Didn’t Matter. In this version, the press says, “Yes, some (other people but not me personally) were sexist in their coverage, but it didn’t matter because Sen. Clinton was incompetent and would have lost anyway.
An amusing aspect of this excuse is that it implies the media is impotent: If 17 months comprising a daily deluge of negativity and falsehoods by the media had no impact then the media is useless and irrelevant.
Caption: Click to enlarge this image. Per Dr. Lichter of George Mason, coverage of Obama was an overwhelmingly 90 percent positive until the Pastor Wright video's surfaced. This image from the New York Times article by Kit Seelye.
That there are occasional media pieces discussing the sexism in the campaign merely covers up how pervasive that sexism truly is.
The more overt examples on cable news are just the tip of the iceberg – the great mass of media sexism lies in the subtle distortion of the news, how questions are subtlety turned and phrases tweaked to constantly put Clinton down while advancing Obama.
In the presidential debates, the men who hold office are constantly referred to by their titles – Senator Obama, Senator McCain, Senator Byden – while Hillary Clinton is often Mrs. Clinton. Then consider the way questions are shaped. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer couched a question about Senator Clinton’s experience as, “ You don’t have much more experience in the Senate than Senator Obama,” despite that fact that she had then been there eight years v.s. Obama’s two, had participated in over ten times as many Senate sessions, given Obama’s abysmal attendance record, and had been re-elected while Obama had barely begun his first term.
Saturday Night Live's skit on the Democratic Presidential debates struck a nerve because people immediately recognized the truth behind the humor. SNL mocked Tim Russert's silly civics gotcha questions, obviously intended to trip up Sen. Clinton, and similar pandering by NBC's Brian Williams. An article on Salon.com discusses how bad the debates were. {Click to play video.}
How Press Regurgitate Obama’s Attacks.
The examples of how coverage was skewed against Clinton and in favor of Obama are innumerable. But let's examine just a few.
The New York Times did a good front page expose' (after the story was circulated online) on how Obama made false statements claiming to have passed regulations requiring nuclear waste dumpers to report their pollution. Not only was the regulation never passed, but Obama watered it down to the point that it was worthless.
Exeleon was the leading contributor to Obama's campaign at the time. That's a startling story that directly undermines multiple legs of Obama's claims to be morally superior to and different than classical politicians:
Obama killed legislation to the advantage of his leading campaign donor, perhaps the worst nuclear waste dumper in the country, and then lied about it.
But try to find major, national media that picked that up. There was coverage, but little. CNN normally parrots every political story that appears in the New York Times or on the Drudge web site verbatim with little added effort. Yet, I didn't see CNN do any coverage of the Exelon story and when I searched CNN's Web site, both with its local search and using Google, the only stories I could find on Exelon were years old and extraneous.
By contrast, I stopped counting at 26 the number of times CNN called Clinton a "liar" or some variation for her false statements about being under sniper fire when she landed in Bosnia. Now, you could argue Clinton deserves the criticism over Bosnia. But is it balanced to almost totally ignore the remarkable facts about Obama's lies over nuclear-waste dumper Exelon, while reiterating Clinton's statements on Bosnia every day for weeks?
Similarly, when Clinton consultant Mark Penn was shown to have worked for the Columbian government, this was repeated constantly in the media as an example of hypocrisy, and of her campaign's questionable ties. Fair enough. Yet, Obama's top strategist, his Karl Rove, David Axelrod, is or was a consultant to nuclear-waste dumper Exelon. Try to find stories that cover that. Innumerable articles report, and editorials praise Obama's exaggerated claims to not take money from lobbyists and not be influenced by big money. Try to find one of those articles that parses what the difference is between Axelrod being a "consultant" to the nuclear waste dumper, rather than a "registered lobbyist", a distinction I think only lawyers like Obama would appreciate.
How many articles state that 44 of Exelon's executives donated roughly a quarter-of-a-million to Obama, while he was watering down and killing the nuclear waste bill? Two of the most egregious examples of biased, truly bad journalism were a front page feature in the San Francisco Chronicle again recycling every racist accusation by Team Obama, and a huge feature in the New York Times Magazine proclaiming that people who voted against Obama were racist.
The Chronicle article "Seismic shift .." on Feburary 17, was highly opinionated, yet ran not as an editorial, but as a feature news story. Most of the Axelrod/Obama accusations were repeated, yet no attempt was made to present opposing viewpoints by anyone, or to give the Clinton campaign a chance to answer the attacks.
In an email exchange with the author, I offered contrary points for every Obama accusation and asked why she didn't at least present those views. She Responded that, "You make many excellent points. I would take exception with the ... timeline," claiming that comments by Obama supporter Sen. Clyburn's showed that, basically, the Clinton's started it. That's demonstrably false. Even if Clyburn was correct, why didn't the Chronicle even attempt to present Clinton's perspective?
Yet, when the same author wrote a piece on whether the Clinton campaign faced sexism in the media, her approach was quite different. She retreated to he-said-she-said journalism where every claim of sexism against Clinton was countered by quoting someone that scoffed at this, usually by making a personal attack on Clinton's competence or qualifications.
As for the New York Times' piece "What's the Real Racial Divide?", this was a triumph of circular logic -- literally. According to Matt Bai, since Obama is "transcendent" and has run a "stellar" campaign, the only reason anyone would vote against him is that they are racist. He "proves" this by graphing concentric circles of where people voted against Obama, stating that since whites in racially-mixed areas voted against Obama those people must be racist, therefore if you live in these areas and vote against him you are racist.
To quote: "while white Democrats in rural states are apparently willing to accept the notion of a racially transcendent candidate, those living in the shadow of postindustrial atrophy seem to have a harder time detaching from the enduring stereotype." The proof? They voted against Obama! Flawless!
Finally, there is the widely trumpeted accusation that Clinton ran a negative campaign after falling behind. Editorials criticized Clinton for "turning negative", worried about whether Obama would be forced to come off his perch and respond in kind.
The problem with this is that Obama was negative from day one, coming out in the first debate with accusations that both Sen. Edwards and Clinton were basically dishonest and corrupt, then in the ABC-sponsored debate, verbally attacking Clinton for being on Wal-Mart's board.
Does no one in the media remember Clinton saying afterwards, "He came looking for a fight and we gave him one."?
Admittedly, bias or sexism is subjective. But there is one, rare example where we can actually calculate the level of bias! (Stick with me here.)
After the results of the so-called Super Tuesday primary votes were in Clinton was ahead in every single measure: She had roughly 140 more delegates, had received more popular votes, and had won every large state's contest.
So, the 
media loudly proclaimed the results were "a virtual tie," or "a wash."
Then, when the media estimates of delegates showed Obama possibly leading by only 25 delegates, which was less than their estimated margin of error, headlines trumped "Obama in the lead."
From CNN, to the New York Times, to the SF Chronicle the media all-too-happily declared Obama had taken the lead, and all their coverage revolved around Obama's success, Obama's momentum, Obama's marvelous campaign.
So, a Clinton lead of 140 delegates was a tie, while a possible Obama edge of only 25 delegates was a lead worthy of celebratory, banner headlines.
How Obama Used Racism
Not only was Obama’s campaign negative right out of the gate, in fact, the Obama campaign made extremely effective use of racial smears against the Clintons as a core part of its media strategy.
They worked: Clinton’s approval rating with African American plummeted from 80% to 7%, and her once 24 point lead over Obama was turned on its head with 90% of black voters picking Obama.
Here is, I am sure, a very incomplete list of the Axlerod team’s stream of racist slurs:
1. Before Iowa, possibly starting as soon as 2007, one of the Obama campaign members responsible for liaising with the African American churches said, “Blacks don’t owe Clinton nothin’. The Clintons did to us blacks what they did to Monica Lewinsky.” You can see that on YouTube. Obama never denounced nor apologized for that vulgar insult.
2. Early in 2008, the Obama campaign team sent out a fake press release describing Sen. Clinton as (D-Punjab), meaning the senator from India. Axelrod was criticizing Clinton for raising money from an Indian steel magnate fleeing prosecution for tax evasion in New York; Obama is now reportedly working with that same fund raiser on a mammoth fund-raising effort.
3. During the New Hampshire campaign, Pres. Clinton called the image of Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war a “fairy tale.” No reporters that witnessed indicated that this referred to either Obama’s ethnicity or even his overall presidential campaign; the comment very clearly focused on whether Obama was consistent in his efforts on Iraq. A New York Times reporter that was there, Kit Seelye wrote later that references to Obama as a black candidate simply didn’t happen.
Yet the Obama campaign went on the attack: African American senators claimed Pres. Clinton slurred all blacks, and the Obama campaign distributed this misinformation in email to the press. Obama’s falsified claims were repeated constantly on television and online as absolute truth. They launched this attack by having DNC member Donna Brazile state on CNN that "It's an insult... as an African-American" and that his tone and words are "very depressing."
4. Following his New Hampshire loss, the national co-chair of Obama campaign Jesse Jackson Jr. appeared on CNN making a number of personally insulting comments about Sen. Clinton including: “Clinton didn’t cry for Katrina,” an obvious statement that Clinton doesn’t care about blacks.
Jackson repeated this on MSNBC: "they have to be looked at very, very carefully in light of Katrina, in light of other things that Mrs. Clinton did not cry for, particularly as we head to South Carolina where 45 percent of African-Americans will participate in the Democratic contest ... we saw tears in response to her appearance, so that her appearance brought her to tears, but not Hurricane Katrina, not other issues."
5. An Obama “spokesperson”, an African American said on CNN, “Clinton said states with black voters don’t count.” Did she really? When? Host Wolf Blitzer let the falsehood go unchallenged.
6. With the tactic of using racist accusations working so well, the Obama team decided to use this to deflect any criticism by the Clinton team even if it wasn’t vaguely related to his ethnicity.
President Clinton had been rightly criticized for admitting to drug use (Remember, “I didn’t inhale”) and George Bush has for years been under suspicion of supposed cocaine use that has been never substantiated, but was recently resurrected in Scott McClennan’s book {See refs here}.
Ah, but with Obama – you can’t even criticize him for what he admitted doing without being accused of being a racist. When Clinton campaign manager Mark Penn mentioned that Obama’s drug use, which Obama discussed in his autobiography, made him vulnerable to Republican criticism. Obama’s campaign said this was a racial slur, which was promptly mimicked in Bob Herbert’s column in the NYTimes, and on cable news as “an attempt to ghettoize Obama”.
Why is it acceptable in the media to criticize other presidential candidates for using drugs, even when this is unproven, yet intolerably racist to mention Obama's admitted drug use?
7. Radio ads for Obama during the Nevada caucus said, in Spanish, that “Clinton does not respect our people… Hillary Clinton is shameless”
Obama refused to disavow those advertisements. {Obama also was silent about union management’s thugs that physically threatened Hispanic union workers who supported Sen. Clinton.}
8. Then, according to "Hating Hillary", by Andrew Stephen on the New Statesman’s Web site, “One of his (Obama’s) female staff then distributed a confidential memo to carefully selected journalists which alleged that a vaguely clumsy comment Hillary Clinton had made about Martin Luther King ("Dr King's dream began to be realised (sic. British spelling) when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964") and a reference her husband had made in passing to Nelson Mandela ("I've been blessed in my life to know some of the greatest figures of the last hundred years . . . but if I had to pick one person whom I know would never blink, who would never turn back, who would make great decisions . . . I would pick Hillary") were deliberate racial taunts.”
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, among others, later said that Clinton’s comment on MLK "was absolutely right."
No decent, honest person could describe Sen. Clinton’s praise of MLK or Pres. Clinton’s comments on Mandela as “racial taunts”, but the Obama campaign did --repeatedly.
The attack was launched by one of Obama's most prominent backers, the mayor of Atlanta, Shirley Franklin, who stretched Clinton's remarks and implied that he had called Obama's entire candidacy a fairy tale -- and the media echoed those baseless charges constantly.
According to an article Race Man. How Barack Obama played the race card and blamed Hillary Clinton, by Sean Wilentz, in The New Republic: “… the Obama campaign and its supporters chose to pounce on the remark as the latest example of the Clinton campaign's race baiting. Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, a black congressman… felt compelled to repeat the charge that Clinton had disparaged King, and told the New York Times that ‘we have to be very, very careful about how we speak about that era in American politics.’
Several of the Times's op-ed columnists, including Bob Herbert and Maureen Dowd as well as (Frank) Rich, rushed to amplify how Hillary was playing dirty, as did the newspaper's editorial page, which disgracefully twisted her remarks into an implication that ‘a black man needed the help of a white man to effect change.’ "
"The New York Times’ columnists Herbert, Dowd and Rich were particularly eager and consistent in helping Obama smear the Clintons. Virtually every column Dowd wrote for six months attacked the Clintons even when she wrote about another topic. According to The Dowd Report, since January 9, 2008 Dowd published "17 columns, 14 of which were significantly critical and laced with sarcasm about one or the other of Senator Clinton or Bill Clinton," plus two that appeared to be about Mayor Giulani and Governor Splitzer, but "ended up being critical of Hillary." . Rich’s criticisms got so bizarre he even termed her incompetent and unqualified because her campaign ran up a large bill at a Dunkin’ Doughnuts. Again from the New Republic: “
Among those dismayed by Obama's tactics and his supporters' was Bill Moyers. In a special segment on his weekly PBS broadcast in mid-January, Moyers, who as a young man had been an aide to President Johnson, demolished the charge that Clinton had warped history in order to race-bait Obama. "There was nothing in [Clinton's] quote about race," he observed. "It was an historical fact, an affirmation of the obvious."
Moyers rehashed what every reputable historian knows about how King and Johnson effectively divided the labor, between King the agitator and Johnson the president, in order to secure the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Moyers said was happy to see that, by the time he went on the air, the furor appeared to be dying down and that everyone seemed to be returning to their senses and apologizing--"except," he pointedly noted, "the New York Times." But this upbeat part of his assessment proved overly optimistic.”
9. Next, Candice Toller, another Obama campaign manager, claimed that "a cross-section of voters are alarmed at the tenor of some of these statements" and saying: "Folks are beginning to wonder: Is this an isolated situation, or is there something bigger behind all of this?"
10. Later, when Pres. Clinton later compared Obama's victory in South Carolina to those of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988 Obama campaign managers and supporters claimed this was a racist attempt to put down Obama -- even though Jackson himself, declared Clinton's remarks to be entirely inoffensive. Jackson said to Essence magazine that although he endorsed Obama he disapproved of the Obama campaign’s tactics, calling them, "again, I think it's some more gotcha politics." Here’s what President Clinton actually said that Obama claimed was “unfortunate” and his managers said was racist:
Jesse Jackson won in South Carolina twice in '84 and '88 and he ran a good campaign. And Senator Obama's run a good campaign. He's run a good campaign everywhere. He's a good candidate with a good organization.
Remember, in South Carolina each candidate won the majority of voters that looked like them: Sen. Edwards won with white men, Sen. Clinton won with white women, and Sen. Obama won with blacks who comprised a plurality of voters in the Democratic primary there.
11) Then it surfaced that Obama co-chair Jackson was attempting to intimidate black politicians: “Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., had warned one of Clinton's unshakable black supporters, Representative Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, that he'd better line up behind Obama.
Jackson, once again playing the role of the Obama campaign's "race man" enforcer, posed a leading question: "Do you want to go down in history as the one to prevent a black from winning the White House?" Black congressmen were threatened to fall or line or face primary challenges. "So you wake up without the carpet under your feet. You might find some young primary challenger placing you in a difficult position," Jackson said.
Yet for the Obama-inspired press corps, it was the Clintons who were playing the race card. 'The question now is how much more racial friction the Clinton campaign will gin up,' wrote Frank Rich, one of Obama's vehement advocates in the New York Times," according to Wilentz.
12) When Clinton won the Texas primary, Obama's campaign claimed it was because the "3 am phone call ads" were racist, implying that a black man could not handle a crisis. Again, any criticism of Obama's lack of accomplishments or experience was immediately labeled racist.
13) Now the nasty spins into the totally absurd. Remember the brouhaha about a photograph of Obama in Muslim garb? This appeared on the Drudge report and got the negligible media coverage it deserved – until Team Obama sprung into action hyping it to the press. The photo was in an internal email between Clinton campaign staffers, one of whom asked rhetorically how badly the press would treat Clinton if it found a similar picture of her. Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe claimed the Clinton camp deliberately planted the non-story calling that "the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we've seen from either party in this election" and "part of a disturbing pattern." Yes, it was, but part of a pattern woven by Axelrod and Plouffe.
14). Then there is the Geraldine Ferraro imbroglio. No national media paid attention to her original comments, nor picked up a subsequent interview with a small, local newspaper – until the Axlerod team started bombarding the press with emails trying to tie Sen. Clinton to Ferraro’s comments. One of the amusing scenes from the cable news follow up was when an Obama staffer appeared on Fox news with Shepard Smith and said, “We believe the issue is over and accept Clinton’s apology.” To which Smith said (as I recall it), holding his Blackberry up, “Then why is your press staff still emailing me with accusations? I just got one. You know they email me every day.” Although this is off topic, that scene was repeated with George Stephanopoulos on ABC news when Axlerod said approx, “We accept her explanation and believe it is over,” to which Stephanopoulos replied, “I just now received an email from a person in your press relations team with more accusations (on that topic).” I admit to being amusing by seeing Axlerod freeze at being caught in that lie. These smears were largely repeated unquestioningly throughout the media, with little or not attempt to access their veracity.
Caption: In one of the few attempts by network television news to assess sexism in the Democratic political campaign, CBS News anchor Katie Couric interviewed female voters on the extensive sexism they witnessed.
Just Quit, Witch!
Incessant calls by the media for Clinton to quit her campaign also demonstrate the media's bias. Speculation that Clinton would quit started before the Iowa campaign, and reached a crescendo laced with sexist innuendo when the media predicted Clinton would lose New Hampshire. 
As feminist Gloria Steinem noted, in past campaigns when leading candidates slid behind there was no outcry for them to quit.
This was echoed by political commentator Joan Walsh on Salon.com, "The sexist disrespect raced by Clinton, and her female supporters has been deplorable. But maybe worse has been the willful denial by much of the media and many Obama supporters that it even exits, or if it does, that it matters. Check out Bob Somerby's take on the recent "Meet the Press" "debate" about whether sexism hurt Clinton, if you haven't read it. It could turn any feminist into Harriet Christian."
Walsh continues: "The most destructive divisive refrain in the attacks on Clinton has been the demand since February for her to drop out of the race."
Similarly, Steinem noted that Clinton was incessantly criticized for not making a concession speech quickly enough, when she did so within four days compared with a typical four week gap.
Faux Comedy Attacks.
Main Stream Media’s tepid soul-searching also ignores how the non-news coverage was skewed.
Late night talk show hosts literally made thousands of highly personal, derogatory jokes about Sen. Clinton while virtually ignoring Sen. Obama. It was a seemingly nightly occurrence for David Letterman or Jay Leno to make fun of Sen. Clinton’s looks, her clothing, her cleavage, her marriage, or her sex life. That was all fair game.
Conan O’Brien joined the chorus asking her to quit by saying, Clinton “Flew away on her broom.” Oh, we get it: Clinton’s a witch which rhymes with bitch.
Yet Obama hardly gets a mention. Lettermen and Leno referred briefly to Obama’s bad bowling game, but even that was done in the context of “why didn’t someone on this team tell him not to bowl?” Can you think of any other politician this prominent that is so rarely the subject of derisive humor on late-night television?
The media’s compulsion to defend Obama even extends to comedy. When SNL did its skit ridiculing the skewed presidential debates, John Stewart of the faux news program “The Daily Show” on the Comedy Central did a sketch deriding a supposed “attack Hillary” media center. There were no jokes and almost no laughter: Stewart was mounting a political defense of Obama against other comedy, not trying to be funny.
There is certainly plenty that is risible about Obama. The question is whether the late show hosts avoid making jokes at Obama’s expense because they are biased in favor of Obama or frightened to criticism him.
# # #
Was it really sexism per-se, or was it just the (mostly right-wing) political attack machine with the media complicit that has come to be known as status quo in American politics? Hillary was the presumptive nominee at first so she got all the negative attention. Now that Obama is the presumptive nominee he's garnering all the attacks (can you recite the Sean Hannity's "Stop the RADICAL Obama Express?" Hannity knows that truth is not what's important, planting the seed in people's mind is all that is needed to be effective.)
The only difference between racism and sexism is there is currently more political correctness surrounding racism than sexism. But what it all boils down to is attacking either of them in whatever way that might have an affect at the polls.
There is no decorum nor concern for the best-interest of the citizenry in American politics anymore, and I think that is leading us down a road to disaster.
Posted by: Mike Schinkel | July 12, 2008 at 08:53 PM
Good comment, Mike.
Certainly, the talking heads on conservative media were loaded for either Clinton or Obama.
But I still contend most of the sexist bias against Clinton was in the liberal media, and that Axelrod/Obama actively used racism to leverage the liberal media against her campaign.
Posted by: James Fawcette | July 14, 2008 at 03:51 PM