The Evil Petting Zoo

As you've now doubt heard by now, Hillary managed to win the New Hampshire primary yesterday. What this means for the overall path towards the Democratic candidacy will have to wait until we've gone through a few more primaries. Until then, though, I'd like to talk about what this means for the media.

That's right. The media. After Hillary's victory, Talking Points Memo proposed that Hillary's victory was based not just on her merits, but also on the driving media obsession on her. Not just on her -- on making her look bad. On following her crying jag like she's Michael Dukakis and just did a striptease on top of an M1 Abrams. On pointing out how "emotional" she is, while failing to mention the fact that she stood up resolutely to an anti-feminist protester. On calling her a "Vaginal-American". On painting her as a "she-devil" and Photoshopping horns onto her visage.

Is it a bit of an unfounded theory? Maybe. But so far, this has been a bit of a "backlash" election. The youth of America, who've been told that they don't do enough, finally got out and voted for Obama. The evangelicals, who are apparently tired of being dicked around by the neocons, are voting for Huckabee. Is it that much of a stretch to imagine that the public, absolutely sick of the media antipathy towards Hillary, decide to deliver an electoral pimp-slap to Chris Matthews and his ilk?

Obviously, it hasn't taken full effect yet. Even after being told by Rachel Maddow about the TPM theory, even after being told by Tom Fucking Brokaw that the media has some explaining to do, what does Chris Matthews say? That the only reason Hillary got elected as a senator was out of sympathy for having a horndog husband.

I'm not a big Hillary fan. I think she's a bit too rooted in the establishment, and I would prefer Obama as a frontrunner. But if she's what it takes to point out that there's something very wrong with the way the media plays politics, then so be it.