The media s**t-show is back: Why coverage of Hillary Clinton has been an embarrassment

[DonViejo]

Hillary Clinton has a reputation for hating the media. The past week shows why that's so easy to understand

ELIAS ISQUITH

A bit less than a year ago, Politico Magazine released an in-depth piece by Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s long and incredibly fraught relationship with the national, mainstream media. At the time the piece was written, the question of whether Clinton would run for president in 2016 was much less settled than it is today, and according to the piece’s authors (who said they conducted dozens of interviews with former or current Clinton insiders) if the onetime secretary of state decided not to run, it would be for one simple reason: her fear and loathing of the political press. “Look, she hates you,” one anonymous source said to the two reporters. “Period. That’s never going to change.”

I’m too young to have truly experienced the Clinton years. During the late ’90s, when the country obsessed over Monica Lewinsky and millions of Americans pretended they’d never even heard of this thing called “oral sex,” I was more concerned with Pokemon cards and Sarlacci. But after reading through Politico’s potted history of the media’s treatment of Clinton — and especially after witnessing the absurd press conference she held on Tuesday at the U.N. about what has been called, with a fitting laziness, “emailgate” — I must admit something. Despite finding her views on economic and foreign policy to be lacking, when it comes to her antipathy for the media, I can’t blame Clinton. Not one tiny bit.

Now, at the risk of proving Nietzsche’s maxim about the abyss true, I want to make something clear upfront: My feelings in this regard are inspired more by the behavior of the media than that of Hillary Clinton. I agree with those who say there’s something problematic — at least — about her choice to use a personal email account during her tenure at the State Department. I agree with those who consider it a sign that Clinton is no ally in the effort to increase government transparency. I think her explanation that she used her own address as well as her own server because she thought it’d be more “convenient” is risible. And I find her claim that the 30,000 emails she deleted were about personal things, like yoga and family vacations, improbable at best.

But if I were to put these qualms on a scale, and measure them against the contempt I’ve felt while watching the media cover this “scandal,” I doubt they’d carry even half as much weight. Because while I’m certainly used to seeing my colleagues in the political press devote their time and energy to cynical, superficial stories that few people outside the politico-media elite will bother to read, I’ve never seen them do it with such unabashed gusto. I’ve never seen them be quite so shameless about placing themselves, and their relationship with a politician, at the front-and-center of the national stage. I’ve never seen them be so gleeful and self-conscious about creating a circus, either. It is, quite simply, embarrassing.

more
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/12/the_media_st_show_is_back_why_coverage_of_hillary_clinton_has_been_an_embarrassment/

[oldandhappy]

1. Very grateful for my 'mute' button!

[pansypoo53219]

2. behold the 'vast route wing conspiracy'.