After their media coverage helped create this shit. The fucking arrogant exceptionalism and hypocrisy these editorial boards exude is gagging!
"A debate, not a prize fight" Boston Globe editorial November 3, 2007
WITH ROUGHLY two months to go before the first votes are cast in the presidential primaries, the candidate debates have taken on a new urgency and substance. But voters would never know it from the pregame hype and postgame analysis of the most recent Democratic debate Tuesday night. Forget Social Security, Iran, immigration, oil prices, Internet decency, nuclear weapons, global warming, government transparency, the nursing shortage, and drug sentencing - all of which were covered in the two-hour debate. Let's just assume the only thing voters want to know is whether Barack Obama landed any punches on Hillary Clinton.
The pugilistic metaphors started before the debate began, with analysts on MSNBC speculating on how aggressive Obama would be in his attacks on Clinton. Obama had telegraphed a new willingness to compete more forcefully with Clinton in a New York Times interview earlier in the week, and the TV personalities were fairly salivating at the prospect that Obama might draw blood.
Even the usually substantive National Public Radio began the next morning's political chatter with a discussion of whether the candidates "landed a glove" on Clinton. "They took their swings but no one connected," said NPR's David Greene. The analysts seemed disappointed that Obama wasn't harsher. "Did he keep his word?" asked Renée Montagne. "Did he throw some punches?" On WBUR's "On Point," Houston Chronicle reporter Julie Mason lamented, "He promised to come out swinging but he couldn't pull it off."
It's a hardy perennial for voters to complain that issues don't get enough attention from the media when the focus is on the "horse race" - polls, fund-raising, endorsements, and so on. Part of the problem is that the reporters sharing beers in the Wayfarer Hotel in Manchester, N.H., have been force-fed the candidates' talking points for so long that they can recite them from memory. Meanwhile, voters who are just starting to tune in to the race have to work harder to find serious issue analysis.
Of course, Clinton is an adult and a prohibitive favorite, and should be subject to intense scrutiny. But it is the substance of the candidate exchanges, not the form, that should matter."
Two words, MSM: Ron Paul
