NH primary recap & the Press

Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com is a voice of sanity in this crazy election - and the year is still young! This post about pundits being wrong and self-analyzing themselves a bit is a very worthwhile read. I have to admit I was very happy, almost ecstatic when Obama won Iowa less than a week ago. Now Hillary has won NH ( by 2% points!). I agree that there should be a much thicker line between Journalist and Pundit.

Are Gloria Borger and Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman and Wolf Blitzer suddenly going to abandon their desire to impose shallow, melodramatic narratives on our elections and spend their time, instead, analyzing the candidates' responses to Charlie Savage's questionnaire on presidential power, or the dominant, corrosive role lobbyists and large corporations play in our political culture, or the widening rich-poor gap, or the strain and stain on our country from our imperial policies? The question is so absurd, so laughable, that to ask it is to answer it. None of them could remotely do that even if they wanted to, even if they were allowed to, and they don't and aren't.

I saw Chris Matthews and Tim Russert on TV briefly last night. My first reaction was just surprise at how animated they were... so surprised and maybe almost pumped up (in a happy way) that they were wrong about underestimating Hillary. In the end perhaps their underestimation is of the voters, and the viewers...?
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and I just updated with this mea culpa post from my favorite blogger... bottom line... women don't want to be taken for granted.... (from one of his readers ...

....But, by Monday night, I was sputtering that "we are not electing Jesus here" and was appalled/furious at the undisguised and creepily malevolent glee that the talking heads (Fox bobbleheads/barbies and Chris Matthews deserve particular mention; and you, sir, do not come out unscathed) were throwing up as "analysis" of the "Hillary meltdown" and of their frankly undisguised loathing of her. I thought it was sexist and so did every woman I know.

You dismissed the Steinem editorial as "old-line lefty". Newsflash: there were twenty copies of that editorial in my in-box before breakfast yesterday morning – all of them from women who are ardent Obama supporters. We remain Obama supporters and will work "until the last dog dies" (thanks, Hillary!) for his nomination. However, we are just about done with a media that cannot report, analyze or provide information on candidates without first filtering it through its self-aggrandizing, inside-the-beltway-fantasy- filter about what would provide a better election narrative. Okay, so much of the media does not like Hillary? Neither do I. They just have to stop with the comments about tears, wrinkles, brittleness, legs and her alleged cackle. I may not want to vote for her—but I have always respected her.