No respect

Original Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/06/hillaryclinton.uselections2008/print

By David Greenberg

Hillary Clinton deserved to end her campaign on her own terms, rather than being shoved aside by the media

It's getting hard to tell which of Barack Obama's spaces is more crowded these days: under the bus or in the tank. Even as he jettisons baggage that might harm him in the fall election - foreign policy adviser Robert Malley, a fierce critic of Israel; the Trinity United Church of Christ, where he worshipped for two decades - the Illinois senator basks in increasingly uncritical and oftentimes gushing treatment from the press corps.

The victims of this one-sided media treatment have been Hillary Clinton and her supporters. Complaining about the media, of course, is like complaining about the weather - there's nothing much you can do about it. Moreover, like Al Gore in 2000, Clinton invited some of her negative coverage through her staff's reportedly cool treatment of reporters during the campaign's first year. But given a race that ended in an effective tie, it seems probable that had the media been as rough on Obama as they were on Clinton and as adoring of her as they were of him, a different standard-bearer would now be leading the Democratic party.

Consider a mild example, from the Associated Press, which is supposed to be a neutral, opinion-free source of news. On Tuesday, the day of the last primaries, the AP was so eager to anoint Obama the Democratic nominee that it rushed into print with a false story that Clinton would "concede" that night - a story that the Clinton camp slapped down but only after pundits had been led to expect her to quit immediately.

Furthermore, the AP itself proclaimed Obama the winner based on its reporters' private conversations with previously uncommitted delegates. For five months, the AP had scrupulously tied its delegate count - the "official" count, on which other news organisations relied - to actual committed delegates, not on private, uncorroborated reporting. Apparently, it could not bring itself to adhere to this policy for an additional 24 hours.

Finally, in its story about Obama's victory, the ostensibly bloodless wire service ended on this snarky line: "Clinton struggled with self-inflicted wounds. Most prominently, she claimed to have come under sniper fire as first lady more than a decade earlier while paying a visit to Bosnia. Instead, videotapes showed her receiving a gift of flowers from a young girl who greeted her plane."

Such a description of the Bosnia sniper-fire flap was, though perhaps technically accurate, nonetheless deeply dishonest. It left no clue to the reader that during that visit to Bosnia Clinton's plane had in fact received threats of sniper fire; that Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, had been rushed to the armoured cockpit for landing and outfitted with flak jackets; and that Apache helicopters and military vehicles were needed to protect their landing site.

Surely such an omission - in order to create such a gratuitously mocking kicker - bespeaks bad faith, motivated by a disdain for Clinton, a partiality to Obama or both.

The same partiality could be seen in the viciousness with which pundits then proceeded to denounce Clinton's Tuesday night speech. All day long, the Obama machine mercilessly brought pressure upon her to concede, trying to rob her of the most fleeting moment to savour her final upset victory in South Dakota. All day long, the Obama machine trotted out superdelegates in an effort to deny her even 48 or 72 hours to make her case one last time to those who remained uncommitted. Obama and his handmaidens in the media seemed intent on humiliating her, refusing her a fair chance to exit on her own terms, with dignity.

Still, Clinton did her best Tuesday night to preserve some poise and class for herself and for her supporters - who, lest we forget, are every bit as numerous (and arguably more so) than Obama's. Her speech beautifully balanced pride in her historic accomplishment, high praise for her rival - she called him "extraordinary" - and, most inspirationally, a determination not to throw in the towel quite yet.

To Democrats who despaired over Gore's self-abasing concession speech to George Bush eight years ago (a speech that the pundits, incidentally, lapped up), and to all Americans who spent the next eight years craving a Democratic leader who would not go gently into the night, Clinton's insistence on departing on her own terms - not Obama's, not the media's - was heartening. Anyone of fair mind had to know that in good time she would duly recognise Obama as the victor. But she surely deserved one last shot to make her case. Surely her 18 million supporters deserved one last night of celebration.

Yet the talking heads jeered. They denounced her for not conceding - even though they had known ahead of time she wouldn't. They called her narcissistic - even though all politicians, by putting themselves forward as leaders of movements, possess an inherent grandiosity. They said she was trying to squeeze more dollars from her supporters - even as they scorned her husband for raking in millions so effortlessly.

It's hard to imagine that if the situation had been reversed, and if it had been Obama delivering his last victory address, the media would not have resounded with paeans to his historic candidacy. It's hard to imagine anyone calling him graceless for relishing a last moment in the sun after all he had achieved, on behalf of so many people.

But then, for a long time now, Hillary Clinton has had a hard time catching a fair break.