More Hillary / RFK Stuff

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/05/why-krugman-is.html

Andrew Sullivan's take on Paul Krugman's defense of the Hillary's RFK gaffe.

I watched the Meet the Press Sunday roundtable, the Fox News Sunday roundtable, and Keith Olbermann all react to the Hillary RFK assassination comment. We're at a very strange time in our political history. Fox News was founded in the 1990's as a seeming counterbalance to the perceived left-wing cable news organizations, at least "the media" is one of the favorites whipping boys of conservatives. So here comes "fair and balanced" Fox News, which means we lean conservative. Now Fox News is like the pro-Hillary channel. I was amazed that all of them thought it was no big deal.

The Meet the Press group was a little more disturbed by her comments, although the analysis tended toward "well, this kills her bid to be Vice-President."

Then there was Olbermann. Look up his rant on YouTube, May 23, and he's doing his thing. Keith is a good performer when it comes to red-faced rants. He imagines himself a latter-day Edward R. Murrow, I guess, right down to his sign off of "Good night and good luck." When you disagree with him, these rants come off as grandstanding, hypocritical, phony, hateful, etc. it's hard for me to tell when he's really feeling righteous indignation since he seems able to morph his feelings on a dime. One second he's pretending to be an impartial observer on election-night coverage, then Countdown starts and for the next hour his show might as well be called "I Hate Bill O'Reilly."

His Hillary rant probably cemented in her campaign's mind that MSNBC is the pro-Obama channel. So they go to Fox News, where Terry McAuliffe is fawning to Chris Wallace, "You guys are fair and balanced." Did you ever think you'd see McAuliffe saying that to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, and not sarcastically? Didn't Bill Clinton wag his finger in Wallace's face last year?

Back to Keith. He's not one I seek out, but I had to agree with a lot of what he was saying. Hillary said out loud what no one should, no political figure anyway. She gave oxygen to the thought everyone's having, but no one wants to be out there, publically, for one whack nut to seize onto and make his own. Barack Obama has Secret Service detail on him for a reason. If they killed JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and tried to kill Reagan, Ford, Nixon, and others, isn't Barack Obama the perfect candidate for a psychotic loser to try to make an infamous name for himself?

Hillary's lack of apology is the one that I still can't comprehend. She can't be that politically tone-deaf. But now her people are already accusing the Obama camp of exploiting it, so the political wheel continues to spin.