Rant of the Week

Perception

"The Media" is an amorphous term that seems to mean, as Alice says, whatever you want it to mean. "The Media", according to Hillary Clinton, has been soft on Obama. It wasn't "soft" on her when it nearly led the coronation back in September-- that was simple inevitability. Hillary was enchanted. How rude of "The Media" to betray her trust. And she has always put her confidence in strangers.

Gloria Steinem, in an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, opines that it would be somehow unjust if a woman were not the nominee this year because, after all a woman, has never been the nominee before, and this is the best chance ever of that happening. So, so unjust. Why, I never! Who is this... this interloper!

Clinton has been steadily feeding the perception that Obama is a charismatic pretty boy without substance. That's kind of odd-- I first became aware of Obama when some journalists began writing about his new, broad-minded, non-partisan approach to politics-- a rather daring approach given the eight years of Bush's intensive partisan and vindictive approach to policy. What is more substantive? To challenge political orthodoxy like Obama, or to immerse yourself completely in the "the game" like the Clintons?

I'm liking Hillary Clinton less and less as the campaign wears on. Her attacks on Obama seem petty and mean-spirited. Her determined insistence that she has "experience" is ridiculous and tiresome-- it is based on poll results, not on any kind of reality.