Bring me a basin, quick!

Newsbusters is celebrating the Media Research Center’s 20th Anniversary by offering a daily collection of newsmedia excesses, rants, distortions, etc.

Today they give us what they call the most “notable quotables” – the excessive love some members of the press have expressed for Mr & Mrs William Jefferson Clinton.

Let me go on record to say that these startlingly sycophantic snippets would be appalling displays of lip-smacking bias by responsible journalists were they written/speaken about ANY president. But I believe it has only been for one president that members of the press have managed to induce nausea in singing fulsome praises:

“Hillary Rodham Clinton will define for women that magical spot where the important work of the world and love and children and an inner life all come together. Like Ginger Rogers, she will do everything her partner does, only backward and in high heels, and with what was missing in [Lee] Atwater — a lot of heart.”
— Time correspondent Margaret Carlson, May 10, 1993.

“His sturdy jaw precedes him. He smiles from sea to shining sea. Is this President a candidate for Mt. Rushmore or what?…A single medley of expressions from Clinton may be worth much more, to much of America, than every ugly accusation Paula Jones can muster.”
— Los Angeles Times television writer Howard Rosenberg reviewing Clinton’s Inaugural Address, January 22, 1997.

“She’s ecumenical but prefers Italian and Mexican. The President fixes her eggs with jalapeno peppers on the weekends….Valentine’s Day at the Red Sage restaurant. Even at a romantic outing, the President can be the date from hell, talking to everyone but the girl he brung….Finally alone, they have ‘painted soup’ and the lamb baked in herbed bread. They exchange gifts and touch each other more in two hours than the Bushes did in four years.”
— Time reporter Margaret Carlson, June 1993 Vanity Fair.

You’ll want to read them all. Read ’em and then ponder how inevitable it would be that these same worshipers would relentlessly, unquestioningly trash any GOP president who succeeded Clinton, and basically any member of the opposition party who did not play the maverick.

I’m betting that if you look in the “conservative” press – such as it is – you will not find comparable gushing-unto-quivers reportage about any Republican, not George W. Bush, not Ronald Reagan. Nor SHOULD you. We shouldn’t have to read such romance-novel prose about any politician…or his wife.

It will be interesting to read (as I’m sure Newsbusters will at some point) a similar collection of remarks – by very likely these same people – spewing over-the-top hate and venom at President George W. Bush, with some of it even preceding the 2000 election (which – let us recall – Bush won, in every conceivable scenario as confirmed by the NY Times and a consortium of papers). I’m sure the Newsbusters folks will have no trouble compiling such a list.

In the interests of fairness, Newsbusters should also compile a list of these press folk saying mean things about Clinton and complimentary things about Bush. But I doubt they have the time or manpower to find those rare snips!

Jack Shafer at Slate takes a look at how the Clintons use the press and the press allows itself to be used by them, with starry-eyed acquiescence.

MEANWHILE if you can get yer mitts on the latest issue of America Magazine, they have an interesting piece entitled How the Media Shape Elections by CBS’ Dotty Lynch, who writes:

Walter Shapiro, the author of One Car Caravan, a delightful look at the early phase of the 2004 campaign, when reporters could get up close and personal with candidates, says that this year it is almost impossible to do that. The top tier had entourages with palace guards, canned speeches and television and online ads from the beginning of the campaign.

Well…I guess if the press really wants access, they can just gush a little. Then gush a little more. That must be the key to access, because otherwise, I can’t find any justification for the behavior of the press as illustrated in those snippets!