The best part was when a reporter responds by asking the Hillary spokesman if they are using SNL as their assignment editor and the Hillary spokesman said they are!

yeah, the snl thing is pretty hilarous, actually

Your story just two posts down had pretty much the exact same quote didn't it? What was the point of posting this again?

I don't see how you can blame "the Media" for taking the Drudge report seriously after it took the Clinton campaign all day to come up with an even halfway concrete denial of the story.

Yet Clinton is not above using Drudge to push what her campaign wants when it thinks it is to their advantage. From an October New York Times article:

Clinton Finds Way to Play Along With Drudge By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 — As Senator Barack Obama prepared to give a major speech on Iraq one morning a few weeks ago, a flashing red-siren alert went up on the Drudge Report Web site. It read, “Queen of the Quarter: Hillary Crushes Obama in Surprise Fund-Raising Surge,” and, “$27 Million, Sources Tell Drudge Report.”

Within minutes, the Drudge site had injected Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fund-raising success into the day’s political news on the Internet and cable television. It did not halt coverage of Mr. Obama’s speech or his criticism of her vote to authorize the war in 2002, but along the front lines of the campaign — the hourly, intensely fought effort to capture the news cycle or deny ownership of it to the other side — it was a telling assault.

Mrs. Clinton’s aides declined to discuss how the Drudge Report got access to her latest fund-raising figures nearly 20 minutes before the official announcement went to supporters. But it was a prime example of a development that has surprised much of the political world: Mrs. Clinton is learning to play nice with the Drudge Report and the powerful, elusive and conservative-leaning man behind it.

...

Singer's bloviating is nothing if not convenient, and hypocritical.

Greg, how can you elipses out the SNL reference? It's a QUOTE from Singer:

"a point that has been certainly backed up by the 'Saturday Night Live' skit that opened the show this past Saturday evening, which I would refer you all to."

Referencing an SNL skit to back up their media bias assertions? It was not just the "taunting" of Broder that made Milbank's point, but the contrast between doing that and then asserting the SNL skit as a counter. How absurd!

I think this is the right thing to do-- focusing attention away from the Clinton campaign and toward drudge-- though of course it would be nice if they could be bothered to explicitly deny the claims in question...

I still call BS. Even for a campaign seemingly this disorganized, it does not take 7 hours and two highest-ranking campaign officials' complete absence of denial if they did not in fact send it. Why could Williams not just say "we absolutely did not sanction anyone here to send this and this is in no way official campaign policy. If we do find out that someone did in fact send it from here, that person will be fired." Hell, she could have said that AND still unleash the disingenuous attack on Obama for even questioning Clinton's campaign. But she did not. It took 7 hours for Wolfson to say that "he was not aware of anyone sending it" which absolutely means that it was a trial balloon.

But predictably the MSM, suffering as it is from Battered Spouse Syndrome, is cowed to the Clinton campaign's hints of press bias. All day today has been about "why have there not been as many negative stories about Obama?" and not one pundit or "analyst"--not a single one--has presented the logical follow-up: what if there just are not as many negative things to report about Obama?

Or the day before when they were all talking about Clinton's tirades over the weekend: everyone was trying to gauge whether the attacks would "work" or "backfire"--without ever addressing the veracity of the attacks!

That is not to say that Clinton is treated fairly by the media: I would say that she is getting a free ride on the policy side whereas everyone is definitely beating up on her on the personal side.

There have been all sorts of idiotic stories like the "cackle" (which actually could have been legitimate--is she avoiding the question?) and her "coldness" or "calculated tears" but on the other hand, no-one has seriously scrutinised Clinton's claimed "35 years of experience" either. Obama is constantly referred to as "inexperienced" or "lighter on substance" which, just by judging the policy proposals of the two available on their websites, is clearly not the case.

The Clinton campaign believes it is the press' responsibility to publicise their talking points (and they graciously allow that the opponent should be allowed equal time to have their talking points presented so You Can Decide™ instead of, I dunno, factually and objectively report stuff. Thank goodness for the Internet but if the MSM does not start getting their ducks in a row, they will be history.

I am so unbelievably tired when Blitzer or some other lazy regurgitator "reports" on how "candidate A said Y and candidate B said X" without ever actually addressing the merits of either claim. Instead of this slightly paraphrased passage:

"Clinton scolds Obama for his actions not matching his rhetoric because Obama sent some mailers that Clinton says are 'flat wrong'"

It is fine to clarify:

"Clinton scolds Obama for his actions not matching his rhetoric because Obama sent some mailers that Clinton says are 'flat wrong.' Independent organizations have determined that the mailers are, in fact, accurate but they do leave out a component: Clinton's plan does make everyone get insurance, although it also offers subsidies in an attempt to make it affordable. It is also noteworthy that the Clinton campaign has sent several false or misleading mailers previously itself."

It is perfectly alright for the media to just outright call BS when they see it. Another problem is that I get this feeling watching some of the shows that a lot of the pundits operate with sort of an implicit understanding of the lies and mischaracterisations that are so ingrained but they do not actually say it out loud. Sometimes they suggest it with a wink and a nudge, but they are doing a great disservice by not just coming out and saying it. I am not sure if this is because they mistakenly think that everyone else understands it too or if they just do not care.

Also, I clearly need to write a post on this topic.

As for the "taunting" language... Broder ought to be taunted, repeatedly and at length.

The "dean" of Washington talking and writing hairdos predicted just about a year ago that Bush was about to rebound...and so on and so forth.

Why anyone continues to take him seriously is beyond me.

What's missing from all this obsessive meta-analysis of Hillary's campaign is a single fundamental: if she had simply run as herself, by herself, for herself, she would have fared better. But she chose instead to fall back on manipulations of processes (suing the culinary workers' union in Nevada), alienating caucus states (all of them but charging on the record that they were undemocratic), race-baiting via husband Bill (Jesse Jackson/South Carolina), stirring up controversy around propositions to cheat (seating Florida and Michigan delegates), never publicly congratulating or acknowledging Obama's 11 straight big wins (casts too favorable a light on him), going darkly and tragically negative (shame on you, Obama photo flap) and doing so after all the positive press she got for her calm-and-steady closer in the Austin debate, and, finally, castigating the media for her poor performance (the last refuge of the desperate. Remember Nixon?).

Why did she do this? What motivated her to ignore her single most valuable asset: herself? Why was she unable to learn and leverage the feedback the electorate was providing her (New Hampshire) to her advantage? Why was she so slow to pick up on the mood of the electorate? How was it possible that she squandered a king's ransom in funding? What does this say about her judgement overall? And how ready is this person, really, for Day One?

Hillary's misjudgments are not Obama's fault. They rest squarely on her own shoulders. And yet, still, even today she does not show any awareness that her missteps are finally her own. She chose to play games over becoming a formidable candidate.

Hillary told a gathering today about how she "got a little hot over the weekend"

Does any one still doubt that it was a staged bit. In other words; The feigning of the Shrew.

What normal personal goes around, days later, actually bragging about how they threw a temper tantrum!

There is not a genuine bone in her body.

Greg, since you asked--what is your argument for not one but two Clinton campaign officials (the TOP folks too, including the Campaign Manager Williams) never once saying "we did not do it" or, hell, "I am not aware that anyone here did it?"

Seriously, I would like to know. Why would they not deny it?

You cite Wolfson offering a denial, and he gave the normal non-denial denial we often see. Usually I do not parse these quite as tightly but it feels to me that you are applying a pretty narrow focus yourself. Highlighting and explaining:

Asked if the campaign had any role, Wolfson said, "No, not to my knowledge...I've never seen that picture before. I'm not aware that anyone else here has. I'm not aware that anyone here has circulated this e-mail."

Not denying. Not offering to discipline anyone after further investigation.

As someone amusingly said, maybe it took them 7 hours to find someone who was not aware of it?

More importantly, though, what or who is "the campaign?"

Wolfson did say, however, that the campaign agreed with part of the message in the email -- that if the same photo had appeared of Hillary, it would have been a big story: "It is a common view among this campaign and our supporters that there is a difference in how the media covers our campaign and how it covers Senator Obama."

"If you have any original reporting to suggest that this campaign was circulating this e-mail, please let me know."

"We've been very clear that we're not aware of it," he added. "Obviously the campaign didn't sanction it, and don't know anything about it."