Seriously, does Mrs. Clinton deserve all this bashing? How long can Obama keep up the fast pace in the political fast lane? The Talk Show and Radio hosts are really shooting off at Hillary rather in a syncopated cacophony of missed shots, IMHO:
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On his syndicated radio show, Michael Savage played a clip from a Hillary Clinton campaign speech and then disgustedly turned it off.
“Can you believe this?” he asked. “She has no qualifications whatsoever other than gall. She’s running sheer-ly on gall.”
Another popular conservative talkhost, Rush Limbaugh, argued the New York Senator is so dependent on her husband that he vowed to refer to her henceforth as “Mrs. Bill Clinton.”
On its face, none of this is new or surprising. For eight straight weeks, the 2008 presidential race has been one of the top five stories in PEJ’s Talk Show Index. Last week, it was the No. 2 story on the radio and cable talk shows, filling 17% of the airtime from March 4 to March 9.
And the most-discussed candidate has consistently been the unofficial Democratic frontrunner and former First Lady. (From mid-January until now, she played a significant role in nearly 50% of all the talk segments devoted to 2008 campaign.) And much of that has been not been flattering.
Last week, only the verdict in the Scooter Libby trial (at 28%) generated more talk airtime than the presidential campaign. And in a week in which the metastasizing Walter Reed scandal did not really catch fire, some verbal pyrotechnics—an Ann Coulter insult and a battle between cable TV hosts—were among the 10 leading talk topics.
The fact that Hillary Clinton took something of a pounding last week wasn’t big news. But an examination of the talk outlets revealed an interesting twist to that pattern. Whatever the motivation, some of those conservative hosts are not only using their microphones to blast away at Clinton. They are also embracing, or at least saying nice things about, Barack Obama, a liberal Democrat whose primary virtue in their eyes may be that he can defeat Clinton for the nomination.
Whether heartfelt, strategic or simply faint praise, this Obama mini-love fest may strike some as sounding strange coming from some icons of conservative talk.
After criticizing Clinton’s March 4 speech in Selma Alabama on his radio show, for instance, Hannity said Obama’s address advocating more personal responsibility “was echoing Bill Cosby…In a call to action, Barack Obama sounded a lot like Cosby.” As the host was quick to note, “I love Bill Cosby.”
On his March 5 show, Limbaugh was also eager to award the battle of Selma to the Illinois Senator. “Obama upstaged Mrs. Clinton yesterday,” he declared firmly. “Drew a larger crowd, didn’t speak with a fake southern accent, didn’t screech."
Speaking on the March 5 edition of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes,” columnist Robert Novak struck that theme.
“I think [Hillary Clinton] is scared to death of Senator Obama, who is really a very fresh face, and very attractive,” Novak fairly gushed. “He’s a phenomenon.” ....]
SOURCE: http://journalism.org/node/4582
