Our Corporate Media Tips Its Hand

From the AP’s Nedra Pickler (here)…

NEW HAMPTON, Iowa - Hillary Rodham Clinton has taken the lead among Democratic presidential candidates in an Iowa poll, an encouraging sign of progress toward overcoming a big hurdle in the race.

(Oh, and by the way, here is Pickler in action taking a partisan shot at Barack Obama, and here is Pickler allowing Bill Donahue a soapbox from which he can slime Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen to the point where they decided to leave the John Edwards campaign, though Pickler didn’t bother to look into some of Donahue’s infamous remarks.)

“An encouraging sign of progress,” huh? Well, at least Pickler didn’t write about Clinton’s “laugh,” which many other corporate media stooges are doing (I’m not going to say more about it; it truly isn’t worth it).

Gee, I don’t know who edits copy over at the AP, but I can tell you that some of my journalism profs would have “ripped me a new one” if I’d handed in stuff like this, to say nothing of former employers.

I don’t think it’s any big revelation to say that Hillary Clinton is the candidate of the status quo. And that is why our dear corporate media cousins love her so.

I respect her intellect and her tenacity, and she’s better than over half of the men taking up space in the Capitol building, but if she ends up getting the big chair (and I’ll support her if she gets the nomination, but we’re nowhere near that point yet, despite what Pickler and her ilk say), it will be progress for sure, but for the “Liebercrats” more than anyone else.

And I thought this exchange noted by kos earlier spoke volumes…

At a campaign stop (in New Hampshire), Hillary Clinton sparred verbally for several minutes with a man who pressed her on her recent vote to call Iran's army a terrorist organization.

Randall Rolph, from nearby Nashua, asked why he should support Clinton's candidacy when she did not appear to have learned any lessons from having voted to authorize force in Iraq.

Clinton thanked him for the question and explained her Iran vote would lay the groundwork for using diplomacy and sanctions to pressure that government.
Clinton accused the man of being a plant who had been sent to ask the question, to which he took exception, saying the question was a result of his own research.

"I apologize," Clinton said, explaining that she had been asked the very same question in three other places.

As kos noted, Hillary is being asked that question because her vote on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment was so unconscionable (and the person who should get the Dem nomination noted that here). And she’s going to get asked about that a lot more from here on in (and I realize that Lt. Gen. Kennedy could have been a Repug "plant," by the way).

And speaking of Dems dead wrong on Iraq, that brings us to none other than Sideshow Bob Casey, who offered this typical pabulum concerning Iran (here)…

"We've got to get Iran right—for the country's sake and our own," says Democratic Sen. Robert Casey Jr., a moderate from Pennsylvania.

Bob Casey, Master Of The Obvious™…

Well Bob, the first thing you could have done to “get it right” is avoid falling into the same trap Senator Clinton fell into, but of course you ended up voting for Lieberman-Kyl also, just as you voted for the FISA scam before your summer recess and voted against the Feingold amendment to cut off funding for the war by next March (and oh yes, there was that untidy little business about a certain New York Times full page ad, as I recall here - you actually did vote the right way on the Webb Amendment, though, miraculously enough).

Basically, Bob, as far as I’m concerned with your track record, if you “get Iran right,” it will be a fracking miracle.