In Lieu of Super Tuesday, A Few Words on Media Darlinghood

Since both of these Media Darlinghood stories have been brought to Harrogate's attention through the efforts of the same blogger, a word of credit is in order. More and more Harrogate finds himself enjoying Big Tent Democrat's Posts over at TalkLeft. Certainly, BTD hasn't been nearly the Hillary Clinton partisan that Jeralyn has been, but unlike many others sympathetic to Obama's campaign, he has at least maintained a degree of objectivity.

That being said,Darlinghood Story #1: Ezra Klein is responding to this simple observation by Paul Krugman:

By my count, 3 of my last 10 columns have criticized Barack Obama.
7 of Frank Rich’s 10 last columns, and 6 of Maureen Dowd’s last 10 columns, have criticized Hillary Clinton. But, of course, that’s different: Hillary is eeevil, and deserves it.

Ezra Writes

I think Paul Krugman's got a point when he says that he gets a lot more flack for repeatedly criticizing Barack Obama than his colleagues do for continually lashing Hillary Clinton. Rich and Dowd go after Hillary largely on personality grounds -- she's cold, and calculating, and entitled, and overreaching. Krugman, by contrast, keeps slamming Obama on health care. The sense I get from some of those critiquing him is that they're tired of hearing about this disagreement and think Paul should get over it already. And that's a fair point. But while there are a lot of folks who accurately diagnose the illegitimacy of Dowd and Rich's critiques of Clinton, very few seem to notice or care that these attacks on her personal comportment are repetitive. Continual Hillary-bashing is somehow far less jarring than continual Obama-bashing. Maybe that's a strength of his.

This is such a rich piece of literature. First of all, it's hard to tell the difference between Maureen Dowd and Robert Novack in terms of subject matter: both are political gossips first and foremost. Second, the undeniable fact is that Hillary Clinton has been hammered by the Punditocracy from the beginning, and what's worse, the substance of the critique always revolves around broad, unsustainable claims about her personality. And then, Paul Krugman is one of the only high profile people to have been consistently critical of Media Darling Obama, and people are acting like he's being irrational? Krugman's complaint about Obama is substantive, but he's supposed to get over it? Yes, substantive criticism of what Obama actually stands for might deflect time away from talking about how "grasping" and "conniving" Hillary Clinton is.

And finally, the line, "Maybe that's a strength of his." Wow what a way to close out, Ezra. The point is not that people are behaving badly, it is that this bad behavior works to Obama's advantage.

Darlinghood Story #2. Look at Michelle Obama saying this:



BTD wisely noted in response to Michelle Obama's Bill Belichick-like behavior

This is what we do NOT need. Imagine if Bill Clinton had said that? Michelle Obama needs to straighten this out immediately. Really bad stuff from the Obama campaign.

This thread attracted an amazing 300 comments before Jeralyn finally closed the thread.