Media matters...or does it anymore?

No, its not a tween bitching about her hotter classmate on Myspace - its Maureen Dowd writing for the New York times. And is there any difference between said tween and Pulitzer prize winning Maureen? Not really, if the barometer for judging is Maureen's columns over the past few months.

Check out the titles of some of her recent columns - "Watch Out, Meryl Streep! She’s a Master Thespian', "All about Eve", "Is she a Trojan rabbit", "Surrender already Dorothy". Oh yea, the terms Trojan rabbit, Master Thespian etc etc applies to a woman who is a former first lady, currently powerful senator, and almost won the democratic primaries (till the establishment chose to bury her)

If this is the kind of trash talk from a female journalist, you can imagine the nature of the commentary from male journalists. Seldom have I seen any character assasination to the scale of what has happened in the recent past. Mike Huckabee did exactly the same thing as Hillary - he chose to stay in the race, till McCain reached the requisite majority of delegates. Was there even a whimper of protest? Not really.

And if you still do not buy into my rant against misogyny, do check out this youtube montage that Judith Warner mentioned in her blog in NY times (she is my new favorite now).

If the tables were turned - if it had been Barack who had won all the major states like California, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and a claim to the popular vote majority, and if he had been asked by Hillary's supporters to get out of the race, can you imagine the backlash and accusations of racism?

After obsessively following the primaries (I have been a rabid Obama supporter from 2004), I completely stopped following any of the races after March 18. My reason was simple - the only response the mainstream media could come up with for Obama's historical speech on race was this - "Did he throw his grandma under the bus?".

I gave up then, and did I miss a thing? Absolutely not. And by not listening to the news or reading political blogs, I got back two whole hours back every day; I could easily stay informed by skimming the headlines for a few minutes and listening to NPR radio on my way in to work.

The pathetic primary season ends...no wait...the media will still extract as much viewership as possible from speculation about the vice presidential candidates. Does anyone have any inside information or the ability to accurately predict who the Veep candidate from either party will be? Absolutely not - but do expect to see endless speculation and tripe from "panelists" who speak with more certainty about Barack's intentions than he himself would.

Will we see any real debate by the media on the pros and cons of the candidates' views on economic reform, education, national defense, and the environment? I am not going to hold my breath. But at least, I can delete Maureen's feed from my google reader page. Thank God for Paul Krugman, and NPR!