The reporters went to great lengths to show they were reporting on what the Obama camp was doing, not orchestrating the shift themselves. Still, the piece subtly vented the establishment media's own frustration with Obama, the growing mainstream consensus, voiced at countless dinner parties in Washington and New York over the last few months, that he can't play with the big boys -- or the big girl. Full Story »
Posted by Kaizar Campwala
I just can't agree with the high assessment of this article by the originial reviewer. The News Journal's media critic has come up with a clever title, with its allusion to "huevos," but this piece, for me, comes under the "horseracing the horserace" category--how does writing a trivial article about a trivial article makes for better journalism? I find the writer disingenuous in that he pretends to be taking on the NYT, when at the same time he is , in an underhanded way, attacking this particular candidate. Ironically it impugns the Times for the egg whites = Volvo/Chardonnay labeling, when that type of labeling has been embraced by those more aligned with the editorial policy of the National Review or farther right, as was famously outlined in Thomas Frank's 2004 book, What's the Mattter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. This ganging up on a candidate is troublesome, in light of the October 16 Fact Check article on how misconceptions stick. (see http://www.factcheck.org/specialreports/cognitive_science_and_factcheckorg_or_why_we.html) I'm not sure the "media is abandoning Obama" is even accurate. Vanity Fair has a piece this month. What I find so curious about the Clinton surge in the media is the unquestioning acceptance of her claim to "experience" See James Taub's "Obama's guide to leading a "post-post 9/11 America." If experience were the criteria, Bill Richardson or even Joe Biden, Chris Todd or Dennis Kucinich would have the superior claim to Clinton, as well as Obama. While what I have written so far, was my initial gut reaction, I just checked Google and the article has been embraced and reprinted in full by Free Republic, whose readers made comments such as "Looks like the MSM/Democrat Elite have had enough of Hussain. Time for him to put down the pail and shovel and get out of Hillary's sand box" and posted a Photoshopped Time Magazine cover with Mr. Obama's picture in front of the capitol captioned "Half honkey/half donkey I'm only half racist. The Democrat's great (secretly white) black hope." 'Nuff said.
