In a follow-up to the follow-up, the Associated Press revealed that the restaurant owner had been left a tip which through some mistake had not been shared out, and it was not a bad one: $100 on a total bill of $157! So no story. And yet … the NPR piece had also followed-up a terribly sad case of a woman whose brother is suffering from cancer and who had turned up at a Barack Obama rally looking for solace. The candidate had addressed her, and held her hand. He kind of promised to write the brother a note as well (“if I have time”) but, you guessed it, the note never came. And yet this woman refused to be even slightly cross. “I do the same thing with friends of mine,” she said.
Now here is the point: the Clinton story has the candidate looking bad even though she actually behaved just fine; the Obama story ends with the candidate genuinely forgiven and honoured though, frankly, he fell down on the job. Does this tell us something bigger and more important about charm and politics? Such as, you either have it or you don’t and money (or even a good tip badly administered) cannot buy it?
Or just possibly, it tells us something bigger and more important about the news media — at least if you accept The Daily Howler view. The “conventional Washington wisdom” is that Hillary could win the presidency, so the MSM needs to emphasize her negatives. And Obama can’t win the presidency, so the MSM needs to build him up so he’ll take the nomination from Clinton and lose to the Republican a year from now.
Just sayin’. If you don’t believe me, ask Al Gore.
Update: NewMexiKen wrote the above before seeing today’s Daily Howler:
Sadly, the facts are clear: Your ‘press corps’ is full of trivial people, and trivial people love trivia. They don’t give a sh*t about how health care works. Readers, they already have it! Instead, they like to tell stories about people’s character. There’s an older word for this trait. They’re gossips.