Triangulating Blitzer: “Don’t Pick On Hillary!

The press has spent years handling Hillary Clinton with kid gloves, and in doing so, they’ve created a bit of a media monster.

Writing in The New Republic Michael Crowley relates that Mrs. Clinton has treated the press badly since the early 1990’s (although Crowley does blame George W. Bush for that. Really.)

“When there’s a story they don’t like, they seize on it and turn it back on the reporter, and make it about the reporter.” (As First Lady, Hillary called for a public “frontal assault” against The Washington Post’s lead Whitewater reporter, Susan Schmidt, according to the Post’s Howard Kurtz, though the plan was never enacted.)

Several sources report hearing that the Clinton campaign has bragged about forcing one reporter at a major news organization from the Hillary beat. The boast, which one source heard from a senior Hillary aide, is incorrect. But the claim has become a part of insider Washington lore. Like the tale of the killed GQ story, it has only enhanced the dark mythology of the Hillary machine–a mythology the Clintonites don’t dispel. “They brag about scalps that they take, ” says a Democratic operative who has heard such tales.

Mrs. Clinton and her team have managed the press through various means – denying access, etc. At the last Democrat debate, Tim Russert dared to ask Mrs. Clinton a real question, and then to allow another candidate to actually respond, substantively, and then to press Mrs. Clinton for clarification. For that Russert was called “unprofessional,” among other things, and for the next two weeks Hillary ran between “they’re picking on me because I’m a girl” to “they’re picking on me because I’m the frontrunner,” to “Bill! Help!” Whether Bill Clinton was helpful is still up for debate. His response was to tell the world that Hillarycare was his failing, not hers, but never explained why – if that was true – he’d allowed her to take a bad rap for 14 years.

Now we read (“breaking on Drudge that Wolf Blitzer is “being warned” not to “gang up on Hillary” at the next Dem debate. When one considers that “ganging up on” Hillary seems to mean (in like of the Russert debacle) “asking Hillary questions the same way you’d ask questions of anyone else, and allowing open debate” you see that this is really pretty outrageous. We’ll have to watch, now, to see if Blitzer follows orders and tiptoes around Mrs. Clinton, or if the Clintons have finally overplayed their hand and the press hits back.

Either way, Clinton has set the press up to look bad. If Blitzer kowtows to Hillary, he will be ruined as a “wuss.” If he treats her like the other candidates (which is all Russert did) he will be denounced as “mean, spiteful,” etc. Another bad man.

She is a creature of the press’ own making. They can unmake her too. If they dare. In that TNR piece, some journalists sound completely frightened of the Hillary machine. Meanwhile, the college student who broke the “planted questions” story talks at length, and she sounds pretty credible. Brave kid.

Sez Jonah Goldberg:”…can someone please explain to me, how asking the junior Senator from New York state whether she agrees with the governor of the state (and a close political ally) on the question of drivers licenses for illegals is even remotely wrong, never mind some sort of vicious, Nazi-like, personal assault on truth, decency, and Hillary Clinton’s integrity? I really, really, don’t get it. ”

Triangulating Blitzer: “Don’t pick on Hillary!