TPM's Greg Sargent has some interesting thoughts about my new story on Hillary Clinton and the media:
With the Freak Show there's literally no room for error -- once a story gets written into the Freak Show's script there's no going back. So the idea is to move as quickly as possible to strangle these stories before the Freak Show gets a hold of them. This is what's largely driving Camp Hillary's aggressiveness with the press. No mystery here.
Absolutely. Last week's TipGate fiasco is a fine example (which I tried to work into my piece as we were wrapping it up, but time and space wouldn't allow it.) But if you haven't read the piece, I don't present this attitude as a big mystery--I merely try to explain it, and also show how it flows from Hillary's personal experiences dating back 15 or more years.
Although I would add one thought: The Maid-Rite tip story shows how, to some extent, the battle against the freak show is a hopeless one. The Clinton campaign responded swiftly and pretty convincingly to the claim that they hadn't left a tip that day. But the political world still spent a couple of days talking about it.
A semi-related micro-thought: There's been a lot of talk lately about how the Clintonites have successfully co-opted Matt Drudge in this campaign. But lately I've noticed, and so have a couple of friends, that he's been pretty hard on Hillary lately, flogging the tip story as well as the current imbroglio about question planting. I wonder if the recent Times story on his Hillary love might've led some of his consverative pals to rattle the cage....
[Drudge photo via Wikinfo]
--Michael Crowley