1115.org

Four weeks ago, I had posed the question: What is the source of all this Clintonite bitterness towards Barack Obama that we keep hearing about? When it became clear that our itinerant population of Clintonite troll readers were shall we say not equipped to actually answer the question, I patiently launched an long program of investigative research. The only explanation I ever turned up was the argument (sure to appeal to three year olds everywhere) that Clintonites were so bitter towards the Obama campaign because the media had treated Hillary Clinton so unfairly.

That was former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe’s explanation for why Bill Clinton doesn’t pick up the phone when Barack Obama calls.

That’s also the reason being given for why several large Clinton contributors are still sitting on the sidelines and not listening to Hillary’s exhortations to contribute to Obama.

Sen. Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, faces dissent from dozens of top fund-raisers and other supporters of former rival Sen. Hillary Clinton, who are angry over how she was treated during their bruising primary battle and are hesitating to back Sen. Obama.
[…]
The Clinton holdouts are typically most angry about what they say was the media’s sexist treatment of Sen. Clinton during the campaign.

Maybe it’s just me, but it certainly seems to be increasingly clear that the media is now treating Barack Obama so unfairly. Obama, apparently, can do nothing right, and McCain can do nothing wrong.

McCain jokes — and not for the first time, either — about killing Iranians (not the really bad guys, either, but ordinary man-on-the-street Iranians), and the media doesn’t just chuckle indulgently but rises to his defense.

McCain presents a budget plan which contains no numbers whatsoever, and the media doesn’t exactly explode in a collective guffaw. In fact, it’s not even the story of the day. The headline on the front page of the LA Times the next day is “Obama’s agenda may not add up.”

This was after the McCain campaign released a major document about how they’re going to address what everyone regards as the central issue facing the economy today, and claimed once again with a perfectly straight face that “John McCain can cut taxes by about a trillion dollars, eliminate the AMT, keep two wars going indefinitely, increase the Pentagon’s budget, and eliminate a $410 billion deficit in four years.” No wonder they decided it was best to leave numbers out of it.

The examples of media’s blind love for John McCain (or, if you will, the media’s knee-pad adulation) go on and on. And maybe I’ll add to them later in the day.

Obama, on the other hand, gets the short end of the stick every time.

Obama talks about how bilingualism would serve our children well in the global economy job market, and not only do conservatives predictably explode in “patriotic” apoplexy, but the media makes sure everyone hears about Obama’s outrageous remarks.

Obama reaffirms that he will take conditions on the ground into account when implementing the planned withdrawal he has committed to, and the media enthusiastically retails the McCain campaign spin that Obama is abandoning his previous Iraq policy.

Just like they faithfully retailed the McCain campaign spin that Gen. Wesley Clark had attacked McCain’s war record rather than the McCain campaign’s repeated claim that his war experiences somehow qualify him to be president.

So the question is this: if the Clintonite bitterness stems from a sense of fair play (rather than, say, childish frustration at being beaten in the primaries), then shouldn’t all these bitter Clintonites now rally round Obama, and rail against how unfairly the media is treating him vis-a-vis McCain?

I guess what I’m saying is: Aren’t we in the process of finding out what is the source of the source of Clintonite bitterness?