BTW, love the Hutchinson article. Just one quibble: Obama’s drug use isn’t alleged. He admitted it in his book and in front of a class of high school kids.

Last night, I turned off the TV and shut down my computer. I thought I’d do without all the name-calling and biased news on TV, the blogs and the newspaper sites; and do some reading. I started re-reading Al Franken’s “Why not me?” where he (the fictional presidential candidate Al Franken) slogs through an icy primary season (totally fiction). It is too funny. So, if you want to relieve some stress, but you don’t want to totally disengage from the primary season, go check out that book. You will laugh your head off and relieve some stress. Promise.

Go Hillary!!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/hillary-loathe-fest-drive_b_77271.html

Hillary Loathe Fest Drives Obama Surge
by Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Posted December 18, 2007 | 09:53 AM (EST)

If Hillary Clinton said that pedophiles should be barred from hanging out in front of elementary schools you can bet that some in the bash Hillary crowd would scream at her for violating the civil rights of molesters. This is not crass hyperbole. The pound Clinton obsession has gotten that silly. Any, and I mean any and every little nasty snippet of gossip, innuendo and rumor about Clinton is instant fodder for the legion of talking head commentators, analysts, pundits, professional Clinton loathers, and many progressives. They take rapturous delight in dredging up, mangling, twisting, and distorting every past and present statement, speech, and item in Clinton’s voting record to tar her as a walking political disaster.

Here are her alleged sins. Like hubby Bill, she is a business friendly politician that has taken some dubious, even contradictory positions on everything from the Iraq war to health care reform, wheels and deals with fat cat lobbyists and union top cats, and is a mainline charter member of the centrist Democratic leadership. On a personal note the knock is she is stiff, programmed, standoffish, and didn’t dump philandering Bill.

But her two greatest sins are that she’s a woman playing the White House game which traditionally has been a game for the big boys, and she plays the game better than most men. The other one is that she can win. Both explain the visceral hatred for her from right to left on the political scale.
It also explains why Barack Obama has surged. No one has benefited more from the anybody-but-Clinton loathe fest than Obama. If she wasn’t in the race and his opponents for the Democratic presidential nomination were three staid, centrist white male Democrats, Obama’s color and background would make him a curiosity item, but in the end he’d be the just another name in the pack.

But the Bash Hillary mania is so deep and pernicious that it has done the unthinkable for Obama.
It has given him a momentary free pass from the media and much of the public from any of the standard negative racial stereotypes of young and not-so-young African-American males. It has shielded him from the knee jerk double standard nit pick, dirt dig, and doubting whispers about the competence and intelligence of prominent blacks. The Fox Network which has never been accused of biting its collective lip on any politician with the M (moderate) , or L (liberal) words in front of their Democrat tag to progressive publications which routinely slay politicians for their corporate pandering and shilling have applied the hands-off, kid glove treatment to Obama’s record and policy faux paus’s.

Obama quickly sniffed the stiff loathe Hillary political breeze and has picked at and niggled over every Clinton word and alleged political misdeed in the Democratic debates and on the campaign trail. He shrewdly turned the chase for the Democratic presidential nomination and the White House from a referendum on Bush’s gross failures to a referendum on Clinton. When Clinton tried to hit back she was accused of being divisive, polarizing and duplicitous. When a campaign aide rashly and wrongly played dirty political pool and dragged out Obama’s alleged use of drugs as a kid, Clinton was forced to do a mea culpa for his bumble and seek absolution from Obama. It meant nothing. She was pilloried in the press anyway. This over the top dose of media cheerleading and gloating wrapped Obama even tighter in the cloak of nobility, a man above the fray.

When Bill dared say that she is a change maker too that was sneered at as a cheap effort to snatch at Obama’s self-designated label as the authentic agent of change. Even the most cursory glance at his voting record as an Illinois state legislator and his wafer thin voting record in the Senate shows the exact same penchant for corporate and lobbyist deal making, and reliance on big donor campaign handouts that Clinton is pounded for.

There’s a method to the Hillary loathe fest. The tip off came when former Bush political massager Karl Rove dawned his best wolf in sheep’s clothing garb and pretended to give sage advice to Obama on how to beat Clinton. He did it for a reason. The GOP strategists see Obama as the softest of soft targets for whoever emerges from the GOP presidential pack. They think that in a head to head contest, Obama will bomb badly in the South and the Red State belt from Texas to Montana. That’s a potential loss of nearly 200 electoral votes for the Democrats before the first vote is even cast. And with a beaten, battered and spent Clinton out of the picture, the GOP’s big mud slinging mean machine will quickly chisel away Obama’s Teflon coat and the subtle race-tinged Obama beat down would kick in with a vengeance.

But first there’s Hillary. She has to go and Obama is the chosen one to see that she does.

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Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Latino Challenge to Black America: Towards a Conversation between African-Americans and Hispanics (Middle Passage Press)
hutchinsonreport@aol.com

nhinsider.com/press-releases/2007/12/18/nh-pro- [space] choice-leaders-praise-sen-clintons-commitment-to-wome.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN1UgA36YZE

Can we cross our fingers and say the tide is turning on the media coverage? I would say it is, if except for Matthews and Tucker, the rest of the folks on MSNBC give her a decent coverage. We may be there but we just have to wait for a few days to confirm.

Can we cross our fingers and say the tide is turning on the media coverage? I would say it is if except for Matthews and

Our Hubris ‘N’ Handbags Tour returns home today, following a brisk week in corn country. We need a vacation from politics, punditry and all that roiling brew. We might as well get a divining rod or consult the stars, given the prognosticating we’ve heard. Everyone has a theory — conspiracy or otherwise. Ask a bartender, a taxi driver, a valet, a maid from some no-name post-Soviet colony, about politics and you’ll get an ear load. But in a nice way. These Iowans, they have opinions but they are not haters like the ones inside the Beltway and such. They say what they think but it’s tempered in nicety. It really is. They are not mean spirited and it’s refreshing.

We would like to also take this time to say one thing: Mrs. Clinton looks really good. We heard her speak today and while a nasty pic was posted all over the Internet making her look terrible, in person this morning we can attest that she had fab hair — a perfect cut for her, truly she’s found the right hairdo — a nice suit, flattering makeup and even a fresh manicure. Given the nature of her schedule these days, she didn’t look THAT exhausted. We’d be wilted if we had to travel and speak and be upbeat that much. This campaign stuff is nonstop madness. Ya gotta be kooky even to run.

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I added a comment and I’d recommend that you all do, too. Not often we get a totally positive response from rightie media on Hillary.

video1.washingtontimes.com/billups/2007/12/ [space] saw_hillary_in_person_today_sh.html