On Hillary Clinton
Courtesy of Melissa McEwan over at Shakesville, we have Eric Boehlert's Media Matters op-ed piece:
Hillary Clinton speaks at convention. The press concocts a story.
Hillary Clinton is going to speak at the convention. There is nothing strange or unusual or out of the ordinary about this. As Boehlert reminds us, "At the Democratic National Convention in 1992, Jerry Brown, who finished a very distant second to the party's nominee, had his name placed into nomination and addressed the assembled convention.... In years past, Democratic candidates who won lots of primaries and accumulated hundreds of delegates (sorry, Howard Dean and Bill Bradley) have always been allowed to address the convention and very often place their name into nomination. It's the norm. It's expected. It's a formality." (Emphasis mine.)
Based on previous conventions, if a candidate had accumulated as many delegates and votes as Clinton did during the primaries and then did not have her name placed into nomination, that would represent a radical departure from the convention norm.
But, boy, in 2008, an awful lot of media outlets have played dumb. When covering the August 14 announcement about Clinton's role in Denver, they miraculously forgot to make any historical reference to similar names-placed-in-nomination at previous conventions.
Instead, readers and viewers were left with the obvious impression that what was scheduled to happen in Denver was remarkable, an anomaly. And I suppose if you look at the events through a soda straw, it does look unusual. But if you include the slightest bit of context, the story changes into something normal and routine.
But that's not the story the press wants to tell ...
Exactly. The story the press wants to tell is that Hillary Clinton is not nice. She's not ladylike. Boehlert includes a link to a New York Post article headlied (oops -- well, never mind, leave it) "HILLARY PUSHES WAY ONTO STAGE".
Okay, I concede that we shouldn't expect better from the New York Post. But I can, and do, expect better from real journalists. And I'm not getting it.
Why does Hillary Clinton frighten these people so?