Pimping this campaign

David Shuster pissed off the former First Lady, Sen. Hillary Clinton, with his silly use of the term "pimping" in regard to Chelsea Clinton. The dumbest part was that Shuster thinks that campaigning for your mother is somehow unseemly. The Clinton campaign needs her on the trail instead of in Manhattan. It would look bad if Chelsea was on her job at the hedge fund practicing ruthless capitalism, while her mother tries to trick the working class into thinking that she stands with them. The usage of "pimping" is a little offensive, but MSNBC has let Keith Olbermann use it without punishment, so it isn't banned from MSNBC's airwaves.

Shuster is a young dude, so he has probably read quite a few political blogs, more than likely has listened to talk radio, and the language used on those media are far different than what David Brinkley and Edward R. Murrow would have used.

Yet, with many things involving the Clintons, they really pushed their outrage too far. They have threatened to boycott MSNBC's debates because of this and these threats have even offended liberal talk show host Ed Schultz. On Feb. 12th, shortly after 1:00, he compared Hillary's actions to those of Sen. McCarthy.

So today we have Ed Schultz comparing Hillary to McCarthy, and yesterday, Paul Krugman said Obama people were Nixonian. More proof that policitians use the same tactics, deceit, and lies no matter what the party.

Who cares about democracy now?

While the recounts and court cases were going on in 2000, Democrats played it as if they were trying to save democracy and only cared about getting the vote correct. Which at the time was false, since one of the Democratic motions was to just recount certain counties in Florida, but the situation was pretty much just rooting for the home team.

Liberal website "Open Left" admits that a large number of Democrats have little concern for democracy, the Clinton and Obama partisans just care about their own home teams. Chris Bowers writes about team Clinton and team Obama:

What I am not convinced of is the campaigns themselves, by extension many
of the activist supporters whom those campaigns lead, are respecting democracy.
Specifically, it is remarkable how quickly a statement of
principles--partisanship only derives from intra-party democracy--turns into an
argument over Clinton and Obama.

He also adds

Still, among many of those who dominate our public discourse in the party,
I'm starting to see that there is no actual democracy in the Democratic Party,
only Clinton and Obama. The arguments we are witnessing have nothing to do with
democracy, or party bylaws, or super delegates, or the will of voters, or the
rights of Michigan and Florida Democrats, or any of that.

And more

It is in this sense that we have already reached a crisis of legitimacy in
the Democratic Party nominee. Campaigns and supporters alike cherry pick
democratic principles as they see fit in order to better make the case for their
candidate.

Most of what Bowers said could have been applicable to Gore and Bush in 2000. Outrage is very selective on any side, be it Obama vs. Clinton, Republican vs. Democrat, or Duke vs. North Carolina. Rivalries often make people demonize the opponent while the self declared "good side" is nearly above reproach. It can be seen in the left with the ignorant "Bush=Hitler" signs, and on the right with conservatives who think homosexuals are monsters and liberals hate America.

Hostile Media Effect

A theory exists which attempts to explain how two people can view the same story and get a very different view out of it. The hostile media effect has shown that people often think the media is biased against their point of view, no matter what that view is.

In the aftermath of super Tuesday, this effect is in full force on the liberal web site Democratic Underground. Clinton and Obama supporters are whining and fighting each other over who is getting the short end of the stick on MSNBC.

MSNBC = Obama CNN = Clinton

Left wing hacks like Media Matters for America have tried to push this false story on the public that the mainstream media is dominated by conservative interests. The thinking goes, for example, that MSNBC is owned by General Electric, so they wouldn't allow any voices on the air that go against their interests. If this is to be believed, then Keith Olbermann should be called a GE spokesman instead of the reincarnation of Edward R. Murrow.

Yet there are voices who have declared that MSNBC is in the tank for Sen. Obama. Clinton supporter Lanny Davis complained to conservative Tucker Carlson that Carlson's show was the only fair one on the network

LANNY DAVIS: I certainly read the polls that she's ahead in many states,
tied in many states, and the national gap is tightening. But these are two great
candidates and I'm not surprised. But I did want to start the show by thanking
you, Tucker. You're about the only show on MSNBC that consistently allows a
Clinton perspective to be expressed.

Liberal talk show host Ed Schultz blasted CNN for its Clinton bootlickery on his Feb. 5, 2007 show. Schultz complained that a Clinton supporter sent a question to CNN that was used for an interview with Obama. Schultz dismissed CNN as the "Clinton News Network" in the noon hour of his show.

In other media news that might make the heads of those at Media Matters explode, a non-partisan media research group recently declared Fox News to be the most substantive

The Fox Factor
Perhaps surprisingly, coverage of the candidates
on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report with Brit Hume” was very similar to that
of the broadcast networks. FOX’s coverage of Hillary Clinton was evenly balanced
– 50% positive and 50% negative comments, compared to 51% positive and 49%
negative on the “big three” networks. The tone of FOX’s coverage of Romney and
Obama was also within one percentage point of the broadcast
networks.
Instead, FOX stands out for having the heaviest and most
issue-oriented election coverage. The first half-hour of “Special Report”
has devoted 7 hours 52 minutes to election news since mid-December, an average
of over 11 minutes per night, nearly half the newscast after commercial breaks.
By contrast, the broadcast networks have averaged 5 hrs 8 min, or seven minutes
a night.
FOX was also twice as substantive as the broadcast networks. Almost
one-third of all stories on FOX (30%) dealt with policy issues, nearly double
the proportion (16%) on the networks. FOX also carried less coverage of the
horse race and candidate tactics than any of broadcast networks.

Biased Media during the Primaries

Last week saw the exit of John Edwards from the Presidential race. Some of his strong supporters blamed the media and their lack of attention towards Edwards's run for his poor showing. Their arguement claimed that the corporate media froze out their man because Edwards was running a populist and anti-big business campaign. A report by a group affiliated with the Pew Research Center showed shows Edwards got significantly less coverage than his opponents.

Sen. Obama got the most coverage according to the survey, followed by Sen. Clinton. Former President Bill Clinton came in third, so even he beat out Edwards. But one problem with this line of thinking by Edwards supporters is that the top three in terms of coverage were all democrats, while republicans were in the back of the pack with Edwards. If coverage equates with bias, then the media really hates evangelicals, because Huckabee finished in last place in coverage. Conservatives don't fair much better with the media because Romney is basically tied with Edwards. Which is even more damning of the media because Romney is one of the two frontrunners on the Republican side and he got similar treatment than a third string democratic candidate.