By Brigitte L. Nacos
The pundits, the correspondents, and the boys and girls on
the bus(es) on the roll for John McCain and Barack Obama are now close to
realize their dream for this election year: media darlings McCain and Obama
will face each other in November. While the stars of television, print, and
blogosphere rejoice, I couldn’t stop laughing when I read Jim
Rutenberg’s New York Times article “Pundits Declare the Race Over,” in which he mentions Tim Russert
and Walter Cronkite and the Drudge Report as if they were one of a kind.
Nothing could be further from reality: Russert and Drudge are no Walter
Cronkite! Nor are the other non-journalists among the fourth estate who love to
call themselves “correspondent,” “journalist,” or “press.” But whether one
likes it or not, today’s pundits have enormous power—because of
their perceived and real influence on the general public, on voters, and on the
media-obsessed political class.
I wonder when the know-it-all guardians of our national
interest will begin to second-guess their concerted efforts to demonize Hillary
Clinton and their contribution to her now all but certain defeat. Soon, they will not have Senator Clinton to kick around any more to feed their constant stream of irrelevant but hyped up “breaking
news” about the presidential contender they love to hate.
Without Hillary Clinton in the mix, the mainstream media and especially the cable networks' political infotainment casts will soon need to pick a
Hillary substitute to keep their good-versus-evil campaign narrative going.
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