Today’s paragraphs come to us from Michele Cottle, writing for The Atlantic. They are about Hillary Clinton.
I won’t introduce them further; you have to read this cold to get the full impact:
Considering Clinton’s own complicated relationship with the media (actually, it’s not that complicated—she hates us), it was heartwarming to hear her passionately defending the Fourth Estate. Admittedly, she couldn’t resist taking some shots at coverage of the 2016 presidential race. She brought up “the Russian disinformation campaign” and how it “has been abetted to some degree by the way politics has been covered.” She pointed to studies “showing how the mainstream political coverage was influenced by the right-wing-media ecosystem and other factors to depart from normal journalistic standards,” and she name-checked the Harvard professor Thomas Patterson for calling “the false equivalency in the coverage ‘corrosive’” and saying “the relentlessly negative news has had a ‘leveling effect that opens the door to charlatans.’” Even so, she couched her criticism in praise for some media outlets that have recognized their mistakes and taken the “brave step” of “publicly examining” their screw-ups and working henceforth to “avoid the errors that helped put Mr. Trump in the White House.” Coming from Clinton, that’s practically a mash note.
All told, her PEN performance was cool, crisp, and destined to make news—which it did. (“Can Hillary Clinton Break the Internet?,” Vanity Fair asked of her “shrewd” new media strategy.) Which left me wondering, and not for the first time: Isn’t there someone who can convince this accomplished, inspiring, barrier-breaking superwoman to stop whining about 2016?
Ok, let’s summarize:
-Hillary Clinton hates the media – the same media which have spent decades covering for her every indiscretion, every lie, every rationale she used to explain away her husband’s sexual predations, every condemnation of his victims, every stupid comment she has made, every angry comment and every whining excuse for every failure – up to and including the first paragraph above.
-Oh, and let’s never forget that she is accomplished (what accomplishments, Michele?), inspiring (to who? You?), barrier-breaking (what barrier did she break, other than being the first woman presidential candidate via a fixed primary system?) superwoman (Superwoman??????? Ok, sure, and I’m the Green Lantern).
You cannot beat the Hillary-adoring media for entertaining commentaries. Even when they are telling her to please just shut up. Michele Cotter, therefore, wins Paragraphs Of The Day for the sheer amusement value of what she wrote.
