WASHINGTON — I believe I made a mistake when I decided not to
attend the Democratic National Convention. The consequence of that
decision has been that I have had to watch its highlights on
national television. There the media gaggle, with few exceptions,
has plangently repeated — tediously and cheerlessly — many things
that I know to be untrue. The preeminent untruth resounding across
the airways is that the Clintons are political geniuses. They are
to electioneering what Ludwig van Beethoven was to the piccolo, or
Slobodan Milosevic was to ethnic cleansing, to wit, consummate
artists. Since the early 1990s I have sedulously researched the
Clintons’ life and work. My finding is that they are mediocrities
in all things political, save one: huckstering. Moreover, they are
accomplished hucksters solely because the media are composed of
credulous ignoramuses. Do you think I am being ungentlemanly? I am
not alone.
This week, after but two days of watching the media’s coverage
of the looming Democratic Convention, columnist Tony Blankley, a
gentleman to the utmost, coined the term “the mainstream moron
media.” My guess is that Blankley was perfectly serene when he
typed out that line. Most probably he was wearing an immaculately
starched English shirt. Possibly he was wearing a tie and almost
certainly he had his pants on. But really, after two days
of the media’s homogenized mush, enough is enough. “When I turned
the TV on,” Blankley writes at the outset of the convention
coverage, “the political cable news shows were filled with liberal
pundits, liberal anchors, liberal guest historians, liberal weather
gals and guys, liberal news you can use chicks, liberal political
‘strategists’ (i.e. out of work Democratic National Committee
gofers).” Practically everything they droned on about was
stupid.
Blankley was particularly critical of the blah, blah, blah that
followed the Prophet Obama’s choice of Senator Joe Biden as his
running mate in their Campaign for Change. Joe is a minor
Washington monument, completely with stone head. He has been a
senator for 36 years. He may have been a congressional page during
the administration of Grover Cleveland. Yet, the mainstream moron
media were in the raptures over the Prophet’s bold choice.
Of course, I share Blankley’s derision for the Biden edition of
the Media Follies, but it is their ongoing enthusiasm for the
Clintons that strikes me as most derisible. Hillary just lost a
presidential bid considered for months to have been “inevitable”
(though I always had my doubts as you will recall), and she lost to
a political neophyte, a neighborhood organizer from Chicago. By the
end of the first month of the primaries, she had blown through $100
million. She was doomed by February 5. During her extended soap
opera she was personally indecisive (as was predictable), presided
over a chaotic and embittered staff (again, predictable), and had
no control of her reckless husband (stupendously predictable), who,
contrary to the mainstream moron media, has almost never been an
asset for any candidate he supported. In 2004 he campaigned for 14
candidates, twelve of whom lost — but I repeat myself.
Senator Clinton never really had much of a chance, though you
will never hear this from the mainstream moron media. Her negatives
were always above 40%. They were at 48% when I last reported on
them. No candidate has ever won the nomination with such high
negatives. Nor has a candidate won the nomination with such a
string of scandals appearing on the public record. Think of her
missing Whitewater billing records, her cattle futures
skullduggery, Filegate, Travelgate, claims by the last Independent
Counsel that she was “less than truthful” under oath, the trashing
of the White House as she left in January 2001, the missing White
House property she had to return or make restitution on, the
last-minute presidential pardons and her brothers’ role in
them.
For that matter, think of the early stages of her campaign this
year: repeated dirty tricks against Obama, dubious campaign
contributions from shadowy Chinese sources, her husband
ham-fistedly raising questions of race. Now there is all this
residual animosity against the nominee who won fairly, Senator
Barack Obama. Huckster that she is, Hillary played to her
supporters’ basest instincts, the women of the fevered brow
(feminists), the men of the slightly rubicund neck (hicks). My
Democratic friends, you will all be better off when these shameless
opportunists are in retirement.
