While it seems inevitable that the inevitability of Hillary Clinton's winning the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination is no longer operative, as I write this there remains a slight possibility that she'll stage a comeback and yet emerge as the winner, but as one who has lost her main bastion of support: the media.
To put it bluntly, like rats deserting a sinking ship, her formerly worshipful media acolytes have gone scurrying down the rat lines in a frantic race to embrace their newfound messiah, Barack Obama.
Many former worshippers at the altar of the once sainted Hillary have turned on her like snarling pit bulls. A prime example is Bloomberg's Margaret Carlson formerly of Time magazine where she served as chief hagiographer for the cause of St. Hillary.
While at Time the Carlson woman gushed that Hillary’s friends described her as an “amalgam of Betty Crocker, Mother Teresa, and Oliver Wendell Holmes."
In a Time magazine cover story, Margaret Carlson pulled out all the stops composing a hymn to the sainted wife of President Clinton, and producing a classic journalistic emetic.
"As the icon of American womanhood she is a medium through which the remaining anxieties over feminism are being played out,” Carlson rhapsodized. “She is on a cultural seesaw held to a schizophrenic standard: everything she does that is soft is a calculated cover-up of the careerist inside; everything that isn't a putdown of women who stay home and bake cookies . . . Perhaps in addition to the other items on her agenda Hillary Rodham Clinton will define for women that magical spot where the important work of the world and love and children and an inner life all come together. Like Ginger Rogers, she will do everything her partner does, only backwards and in high heels and with what was missing in [former Bush campaign manager Lee] Atwater — a lot of heart.”
That was Carlson then. Here's Carlson now. In an e-mail she wrote, " I often say rash things that on reflection I wish I hadn't said. On Clinton, I covered the White House for 8 years and I don't think it would be good for the country to go back there . . ."
That's not all. Writing in the Huffington Post, Taylor Marsh noted Carlson's "poison pen Bloomberg columns targeting the Clintons."
Clinton adorer, Chris Matthews went all aswoon over his new American idol, Mr. Barack Obama. Sayeth Matthews "The feeling most people get when they hear a Barack Obama speech, I mean, I get, I felt this thrill go up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often."
Perhaps the worst characterization of St. Hillary came from Newsweek’s Evan Thomas, grandson of the late Socialist presidential candidate Norman Thomas. He described Hillary as “a Joan of Arc figure, persecuted for her righteous crusade.”
Listen to him now: "Once scorned or reviled former presidents have a way of becoming elder statesmen. Clinton, out of office, morphed into a globe-trotting do-gooder, expansive and relaxed, even with reporters," he wrote in Newsweek.
"Hillary Clinton came into her own as a U.S. Senator, not as charismatic as her husband, but still solid and respected, even by reporters. But as a presidential candidate, Hillary was back to the old psychodrama, running as a once and future queen in a Restoration drama. Her basic pitch — ready on day one — is the same one used by George H.W. Bush when he ran for president in 1988.
"Hillary has been unlucky to have a rock star as an opponent, the kind of dazzling orator who is bound to make her seem plodding by comparison. Obama appeals to the young millennial-generation reporters who fill the seats on press planes, just as Bill Clinton struck a chord with baby boomers 16 years ago. Her campaign has arguably alienated reporters by stonewalling them at times, but the relationship between the press and the Clintons is complicated — more in the nature of a bad marriage than a cold war."
Media Research Center's Brent Bozell, author of "Whitewash: What the Media won't tell you about Hillary Clinton," predicted the lady's declining popularity in an interview.
I asked Brent if she was beginning to lose popularity.
“Yes she is," he told me. "She is always going to be the 50-50 candidate where half the country loves her and half the country hates her. In recent days she’s given those who don't like her reasons to remember why it is they don't like her. Talk radio particularly, and the Internet, have come alive with those stories.
“So that 50 percent is rising up again, and as that 50 percent rises, then people who might otherwise be inclined in her favor begin to wonder ‘can she win this thing?’ Among Democrats that is the single biggest question Democrats have — can she win in a general campaign given her overwhelming negatives?
“The dislike runs very, very deep because there are conservatives who believe she is vicious in her personality, and I think there are some liberals who believe that as well. Like him or loathe him, you get the feeling that you could enjoy having a beer with Bill Clinton, you don't get that feeling that you could enjoy anything with Hillary Clinton — except maybe anesthesia.”
All of which goes a long way toward explaining why the overwhelmingly left-wing Democrat media is jumping ship — they not only fear she'll lose in November if she's their candidate, and they have fallen under the hypnotic spell of Barack Obama.
Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist and World War II Marine who writes for Newsmax.com. He is editor and publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s.
He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska.
He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association For Intelligence Officers.
He can be reached at pvb@pvbr.com.
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