Maybe it was that Bill's alcoholic abusive stepfather bothered them despite Bill overcoming his rough beginning.  I still remember reading/hearing/seeing the Broder types looking their noses down at Bill.  He didn't belong there.

Hillary was never going to be a media darling.  She is a woman my age who "should act a certain way"...i.e. showing deference to men and their decision making and their intelligence.  The fact that Hillary is a serious, intelligent peer of many of those media types (Broder, Matthews, Russert) hurt her.  And younger men seem to not get Hillary at all.  I don't know why.  Heck I don't know why when it happens to me.  You feel it, you knows it's there, and yet you don't know why. There's a resentment.  Many women feel it or have felt it.  Many of us simply don't know how to deal with it, because it is usually denied.....and put on us as being, too sensitive, too this, too that.

Obama has issued a series of carefully worded denials that convey absolutely nothing (and people complained about parsing Bill Clinton's words?) leading up to some predictable mumbling about how they were going to have some sort of internal investigation to find out who knew what.  This is patent nonsense.

Chicago Tribune has a well detailed story about Rahm Emanuel's contacts with Blago on the subject of the Senate seat, starting even before the election.  Does anybody imagine Obama needs to have an internal investigation to find out Rahm was talking to Blago? Ridiculous.

Yes, it's certainly pretty much beyond question that the Obama camp was not even considering any "pay to play" crap with Blago, but how the contacts with Blago were handled, and specifically whether the Obama camp knew Fitz was investigating it before it became public, and if not, whether they tipped off Fitz when they understood what Blago was doing would tell us some reasonably important things about the Obama way of operating.  I'd really like to know that.

I cannot, nor should anybody, forget that according to Obama, Rezko was "some guy I did 15 minutes of legal work for," Wright was "just the pastor of the church I attended," Ayers was "just some guy in the neighborhood."  His very bad, IMHO, instinct is to deny and minimize to the point of outright deception his associations with unsavory characters and hope the story goes away or moves on without him.

In other words, however noble his intentions, he has a lousy record on coming clean on this kind of thing, so there's very good reason not to accept his minimizing of this one.

Blago's shenanigans aren't the most important thing in the world to non-Illinoisians, but how the Obama camp dealt with them IS important in getting a handle on his operating style.

Agree on the other side of the coin, too: Abject worship is not an option.

Yeah, the really rightie nutcases will howl, but I think the others will only give it a drive-by.

I guess we'll see. But my impression is that if it were Bubba or Hillary, no matter how untainted, we'd never hear the end of it. Never. And yes, some people will always mention it about Obama, but--fewer and nuttier people.

I'm a NYC dem. I voted for her proudly both times, and in the primary. I think she rocks. But, it was a primary, one which she and her team ran very poorly, and yes some things were too much, but it's over.

The press tends to fawn. They want access. They are thinking of their careers. If they play ball they can make lots of money. They could even wind up like David Gregory with a show of their own.

I understand and share your outrage at the media treatment of Hillary Clinton during the campaign.

But I do not agree that she was treated worse than Obama.

Both Hillary and Obama suffered fawning reports and disturbing stories, at the hands of many in the media and in the blogsphere. This site, for one, was no fan of Obama.

Please don't buy the current MSM meme suggesting that Obama was treated better than McCain and Hillary. For the most part, McCain was treated as a paragon of virtue, until he selected Sarah Palin and became quite unhinged in the comportment of his campaign; they could not fail to notice.

His frame is what the press did (and is beginning to do) to Democratic presidents and his examples are stunning, including the current ones.

Will Obama Get the Clinton/Gore Treatment?

witness many a maureen dowd (the doyenne of the (supposedly liberal) nyt's op/ed pages) column during said primaries: obambi, barry, etc.

granted, ms. dowd is a special case, being clearly, certifiably insane (she hears "voices"), but she's still employed by the nyt's, the country's ostensible "paper of record".

bear in mind, the primary source of the attacks against the clintons/gore/kerry were not the "conservative" publications/columnists, but the purportedly liberal/progressive ones. the republicans and such as the wsj merely picked them up and ran with them.

heck, they've been doing it with the blogo situation: in spite of fitz's pointed statements to the effect that obama has nothing, zero, nada, zilch to do with the actions gov. b stands accused of, supposedly "liberal" columnists like eugene robinson insist that obama "explain" himself.

fitz's pointed statements to the effect that obama has nothing, zero, nada, zilch to do with the actions gov. b stands accused of,