Clinton Bashers Who Are Now Obama Bashers

McCamy Taylor

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Sat Feb-13-10 10:57 PM
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Clinton Bashers Who Are Now Obama Bashers

Yes, this world would be a pretty easy and pleasant place to live in if everybody could just mind his own business and let others do the same. But a wise old black faggot said to me years ago: 'Some people are shits, darling.' I was never able to forget it.

William S. Burroughs

It is a lot easier to tear down than it is to build up. Journalism that resorts to name calling is flashier, more crowd pleasing, more likely to get noticed. The problem with muck raking journalism---tearing down is all it knows how to do. Once one target is neutralized, it goes after another. It does not much care who gets hurt, as long as it can be the standard bearer for a consensus opinion. And for journalists on the left, very often that opinion is anti-status quo.

Keeping that in mind, it should come as no surprise that some of Clinton's biggest news media critics--and Obama's biggest supporters---have changed their tune now that their man represents the establishment.

During Selection 2008, I wrote a lot about the press. I did a journal about how the corporate media torpedoed John Edwards’ campaign way before he had a chance to do it himself. I did multipart journals about media attacks on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. If you are interested in reading any of that ancient history, just Google my name, the candidate’s name and “Press”.

Today, one year after Obama’s inauguration, I thought it would be fun and informative to see what vocal Hillary bashers on the left are writing about our president, a man whom many of them embraced as Our Savior. The folks who thought that Obama ran a perfect campaign should be lauding him for delivering exactly what he promised, right? Because you have to admit, the man has been consistent. Except for back pedaling on a promise not to impose fines on folks who opt out of universal health insurance, he has kept most of his promises. Candidate Obama was for immunity for warrantless wiretappers. President Obama is for immunity for criminals who committed their sins in the name of waging war against terror. Candidate Obama was for nukes and cap and trade. President Obama has delivered on all these promises---to the joy of Exelon and GE/MSNC, two of his biggest corporate sponsors. Candidate Obama was against gay marriage. President Obama still has a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in place in the U.S. military. Candidate Obama was all in favor of the bank bailout. President Obama continues to lavish corporate welfare on the nation’s business elite. Candidate Obama said he was going to escalate the war in Afghanistan. President Obama has escalated the war in Afghanistan. Candidate Obama wanted to reach out to Republicans across the aisle. President Obama continues to court the GOP, no matter how many times they slap his hand.

Since he ran “the perfect campaign”, that means that all these campaign promises met must make him the “perfect president”, correct? And all his left wing news media fans, the ones who wrote such nasty things about Senator Hillary Clinton, must be wearing their fingers to the nubs defending him in the press.

Here is a link to The Press v. Hillary Clinton Part 4: Friendly Fire . Many of the quotes in this piece were originally posted in that journal and you can find links to the sources there.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4999375

I. Arianna Huffington on Authenticity

During the election, Huffington complained that Clinton was a phony:

Hillary Clinton is determined to single-handedly remove every last vestige of authenticity from American politics.”

“Hillary, phonier than Alberto Gonzales' Senate testimony on domestic spying, sucking up the media oxygen”

“The sacred scrolls of her inauthenticity are legend and legion”.

Note that Clinton’s attempt to find common ground with Republicans is one of Huffington’s main charges against her.

Now, two years later, what is Huffington writing about Obama? You guessed it.

In “Obama, State of the Focus Group”, Huffington writes about

“The president's Pander-palooza”

and says

It felt less like an overriding vision for the country, and more like an attempt to deliver at least one applause line for every constituency in the country.

She complains about the bank bailout:

The rest of the people, the ones Obama has a chance of reaching, are angry because the vast majority of that money went to -- and continues to go to -- rescuing Wall Street, which has thanked taxpayers by reducing lending, recording record profits, paying out massive bonuses, and using our money to pay lobbyists to scuttle financial reform. That is what is putting voters on the electoral warpath.

But, Ms. Huffington, Obama supported the bank bailout before he was elected, back during his “perfect campaign”. Seems to me that Ms. Huffington does not know her own mind. She just makes it up as she goes along, following whatever trend will please her liberal readers. That makes her a “phony” and her online journal a “Pander-palooza”.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/obamas-state-of-the-focus_b_439732.html

II. Margaret Carlson on Arrogance

Margaret Carlson will always have a special place in my heart for the flippant way that she defended the media atrocity that was “Gore is a Liar”.

"You can actually disprove some of what Bush is saying if you really get in the weeds and get out your calculator, or you look at his record in Texas," Time magazine columnist Margaret Carlson told radio morning man Don Imus at the height of the campaign. "But it's really easy, and it's fun, to disprove Gore. As sport, and as our enterprise, Gore coming up with another whopper is greatly entertaining to us."

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5920188/the_press_vs_al_gore

You have to give the woman points for honesty. She is not ashamed to admit that journalism in the U.S. is less about distilling the truth than it is a game journalists play for their own amusement and advancement.

Carlson had an axe to grind with Clinton. Her main complaint was that the New York Senator was arrogant.

“The more a frontrunner's status is premised on electability, the more a candidate forgoes appealing to old- fashioned voters who still care about where you stand and who you are, in favor of nailing down those who just want to get over the messy primaries. Forget about falling in love and just fall in line, the better to unite against the real enemy on the other side.”

Funny. I would call Carlson the arrogant one. It takes some pretty big cojones to get on radio and brag to the world that your profession likes to make shit up.

I am not the only one to call Carlson arrogant. In response to an email in which the journalist sounded more like a paid political consultant:

“I covered the Clinton White House for 8 years and don’t think it would be good for the country to go back there”

Taylor Marsh wrote:

Nice email, huh? A reader sent it to me. Really exposes the arrogance of Bloomberg News's Margaret Carlson, doesn't it? Op-ed columnists, however, can say whatever they want, but they should not split hairs about the true motives behind their agenda, which is manifest through articles and subsequent cable tv talking head performances. Carlson also obviously doesn't think there will be any repercussions for sharing her anti Hillary Clinton agenda. She also doesn't seem to care if a reader knows she's out to get the Clintons, as long as it's not known in the wider world. After all, she can't interrupt her commentator gigs or her poison pen Bloomberg columns targeting the Clintons. There's work still to be done. This is what Clinton is up against. A traditional news media that has no integrity or ethics, while passing themselves off as "reporters" and unbiased analysts, while they're actually conning the public.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/taylor-marsh/margaret-carlsons-anti-hi_1_b_87017.html

Can’t wait to see what Carlson has to say about President Obama.

If Brown should win today’s special election, you can believe the most extreme analysis on the craziest cable show. In Massachusetts, voters saw what Obama is doing and went out to stop it.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a5G2a5TmX5hU

Oh, so Massachusetts was a referendum on Obama? Even though he has high personal popularity among Democrats. Silly me. I thought it was victims of Massachusetts style health care reform telling the country “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” And what’s that about “what Obama is doing”? Is she saying that he is not responding to the will of the electorate. That he is…dare I say it…arrogant?

III. Robert Scheer on War and Peace

Here is what Robert Scheer at The Nation wrote about Clinton in Hillary the Hawk:

No matter how much many of us who oppose the war in Iraq would also love to elect a female President, Hillary Clinton is not a peace candidate. She is an unrepentant hawk, à la Joe Lieberman. She believed invading Iraq was a good idea, all available evidence to the contrary, and she has, once again, made it clear that she still does.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070305/truthdig

Good thing American’s had a choice between the “war candidate” and the “peace candidate”.

The first obligation of Obama as president is to be a peacemaker, since he as a candidate seized that mantle, successfully exploiting his early opposition to the Iraq War, which his closest rival, Hillary Clinton, had supported. Obama, as opposed to her flirtations with U.S. imperial arrogance, has stuck to a vision of a complex multipolar world in which the military option is to be chosen only as a last resort.

http://www.noozhawk.com/robert_scheer/article/092409_robert_scheer_saving_the_obama_revolution/

In other words, the Iraq War is bad and the Afghanistan War is good---because everyone who was paying attention heard Obama say he wanted to send more troops into the latter country. Everyone, that is, except Robert Scheer.

Barack Obama’s faux populism is beginning to grate, and when yet another one of those “we the people” e-mails from the president landed on my screen as I was fishing around for a column subject, I came unglued. It is one thing to rob us blind by rewarding the power elite that created our problems but quite another to sugarcoat it in the rhetoric of a David taking on those Goliaths.

http://www.taintedsaints.com/2009/12/09/robert-scheer-dear-barack-spare-me-your-emails/

His complaints? Obama has escalated the war in Afghanistan, Obama has catered to the banksters and Obama is making a mess of health care reform. He laments the money he sent to candidate Obama---

But wait! Candidate Obama said that he intended to escalate the Afghanistan War, Candidate Obama helped win passage of the $700 billion bank welfare package and candidate Obama’s vision of health care reform was always limited compared to that of “Hawk” Hillary and John Edwards.

You know, I think that “peace mantle” which Scheer claims Obama seized was actually draped across his shoulders by a bunch of journalists who were too busy wishing and hoping and praying to actually pay attention.

IV. Village Voice, Harpers and Daily Kos On Sexuality

If you refer back to my journal, I describe how individuals at The Village Voice, Harpers and Daily Kos spread rumors about Hillary Clinton being a closeted lesbian.

Maybe the Voice and others are having second thoughts about trashing the “gay” candidate?

Here is one called “Obama Defends DOMA: Pisses Off Gay People”:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/06/obama_defends_d.php

Or how about “Has Obama Shafted the Gays?”

As this Boston Globe editorial puts it, "On gay rights...Obama stands where it is politically smart to stand. He finds the politically sweet spot that placates the left and doesn't alienate the middle."

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/dailymusto/archives/2009/05/has_obama_shaft.php

Dudes, you guys thought it was politically expedient to spread rumors about Clinton’s sexuality in order to derail her candidacy. I do not think you have room to criticize others when they do what is politically expedient . It is not as if Obama hid his association with such homophobes as Donnie McClurkin. You just did not want to see it.

V. Jane Smiley or The Blind Leading the Blind

Her hatchet piece against Clinton was called I am already against the next war. Yes, the irony is delicious. Here is what Smiley had to say about the Senator from New York.

It's become clear over the last week that the more Hillary Clinton is pressed, the more she reveals her true self. The fact that this self is unscrupulous is bad enough, but the fact that her whole campaign for the last year has been predicated on positioning, spin, and other varieties of public relations is worse. In fact, it is not only worse, it is Bushian, and that is the worst. Even though Clinton won two and a half contests of the four staged on Tuesday, her campaign strategists are fighting among themselves, her campaign is in a turmoil, and, it seems, they can't decide which tack to take. Should they try the lying (about NAFTA, about Obama's religion)? Should they try the cheating (trying to seat delegates from the Florida and Michigan primaries)? Should they try the fear-mongering (the red telephone ad)? Should they try the sucking up to Republicans (spelling out similarities between Clinton and cheerleader-for-war McCain)?

We should all be grateful that Smiley is able to see politicians' “true” selves. We need such clear sighted journalists to show us how to cast our votes.

If the public option falls out of health care reform, then it will mean either that Obama is too corrupt to fight for it, and never cared that much about health care in the first place, or it will mean that he is too weak, even with a majority in both houses and a decided victory in an election against clearly flawed opponents. His weakness will not have been in his mandate, but in his character.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/retreat-and-surrender_b_276288.html

Well, at least she did not call Obama “Bushian”. She just called him weak willed and corrupt. Wonder why she did not “see” this back in 2008.

VI. Keith Olbermann, the Starry Eyed Leading the Starry Eyed

What didn’t he call Clinton? She was a liar, a cheat, a racist, “Worst Person in the World” (for doing the same thing Olbermann praised Obama for doing, namely being slow to reject a long time supporter who had made controversial comments).

Olbermann should be as happy as a clam. Thanks to all the mud slinging that occurred on his show, he handed the nomination to Obama---and made it possible for his employer General Electric to reap billions in windfall profit from Obama’s Cap and Trade.

How does he express his joy?

Last night, Keith Olbermann -- who has undoubtedly been one of the most swooning and often-uncritical admirers of Barack Obama of anyone in the country (behavior for which I rather harshly criticized him in the past) -- devoted the first two segments of his show to emphatically lambasting Obama and Eric Holder's DOJ for the story I wrote about on Monday: namely, the Obama administration's use of the radical Bush/Cheney state secrets doctrine and -- worse still -- a brand new claim of "sovereign immunity" to insist that courts lack the authority to decide whether the Bush administration broke the law in illegally spying on Americans.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/08/criticism/

Would I be a spoilsport if I mentioned that Candidate Obama supported the immunity for warrantless wiretappers bill? And that Olbermann knew all about it, even invented some half assed excuse about how Obama was giving them civil immunity so that his justice department could prosecute them in criminal court?

Excuse me while I pick myself up off the floor where I have been rolling and laughing my ass off.

None of these journalists was deliberately trying to mislead the public---except maybe Carlson who has already admitted that she likes to make things up just to flex her journalistic muscles. I think most of them believed that Obama was the Chosen One and that Clinton was the Whore of Babylon. In the process, they created some unrealistic expectations that no president of the United States is ever going to meet unless we the people get off our duffs and do something to reform our elections. The problem is not our candidates. The problem is our system that requires that our candidates raise hundreds of millions of dollars--mostly from special interests---just to get into the race.

Pretty soon, it may be downright chic to bash Obama the way that Clinton was once bashed---for the crime of doing exactly what he said that he was going to do. Forget the issues and policies. Journalists will resort to name calling. Weak, corrupt, phony---because it is always easier for a writer to toss around incendiary words than it is for him to discuss the issues. We may even see the left make the mistake it made in 2000, when folks like Michael Moore claimed that Gore was the same as Bush and a third party splitter vote was a good way to send Washington a message---

Which is exactly what the corporate fascists in America, including those at the corporate media, are hoping for. Obama may be doing his best to placate them, but they know that Jeb Bush or Rick Perry can and will deliver truckloads of corporate welfare. Anyone who doubts that there is a difference between the two parties should probably resist the urge to become a political pundit.