Legal Commentary

Will Obama Get the Clinton/Gore Treatment?

By Big Tent Democrat

Jamison Foser writes:

To anyone who lived through the media feeding frenzy of the 1990s, during which the nation's leading news organizations spent the better part of a decade destroying their own credibility by relentlessly hyping a series of non-scandals, the past few days, in which the media have tried to shoehorn Barack Obama into the Rod Blagojevich scandal, have been sickeningly familiar.

I lived through the feeding frenzy against Hillary Clinton in the Dem primary (that one was cheered in certain Left circles), the frenzy against Al Gore in the 2000 election, through the Media feeding frenzies of the Iraq Debacle, and the various and sundry other Media feeding frenzies of the last 8 years. In my view, Obama has gotten nothing compared to that over Blagojevich. Indeed, the attempts to start the frenzy have been nonstarters for the most part.

Don't get me wrong - I admire the vigilance of Foser, Media Matters and others on the Left against the Media. We must always stand vigilant. But that vigilance was sorely lacking in the last year when the subject of the attacks was Hillary Clinton. The good news is that, by and large, President-Elect Obama remains a Media Darling and will be difficult to touch in the next year. More worrisome to me frankly is the likelihood that legitimate progressive criticism of Obama will be shouted down. We must be vigilant against that as well.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on December 13, 2008 (boomark / email).