I'm on vacation

I'll be out of the country until March 14th so I'm taking a break from blogging. I'll leave you with this quote from one of my favorite Times columnists, Gail Collins, on the results from Tuesday's primaries.

"The white male vote, which keeps shifting, was split. I’m beginning to suspect that the white males have realized that they’re either going to be accused of racism or sexism and have therefore made a secret pact to take turns."

Thanks to everyone for visiting and commenting. I look forward to resuming the conversation in a week.

More on McCain smear

Even the New Republic found it strange that the Times would even publish such a piece. The New Republic, for God's sake. You can read their take here. Thanks to AY for the tip.

New York Times smears McCain

Here is a link to the New York Times’ 3000 word smear-job on Senator McCain. I’d be angry if it weren’t so typical. Everyone should read it just to see how lame the charges are, but if you don’t feel like it, I’ll summarize for you: an unnamed number of unnamed people “affiliated” with McCain’s organization were concerned that he and a 40-year-old female lobbyist were “too close.” No facts of any kind are offered in supports of these concerns.

This takes up a pretty small portion of the overall story, which is mostly an attempt to make McCain’s effects on behalf of campaign reform and other ethical issues appear to be either self-serving or hypocritical.

The institutional character of the Times is a little like the heart of the audience it serves: very insular and out of touch with most of the country. The story will play well on the upper west side and among Bennington, Bard and Brandeis grads everywhere. This has been a pretty uplifting election so far; I was hoping the spirit of it might have infected the media, as well, but the Times must have gotten its inoculation against decency.

The New York Times says: “It’s Hillary and McCain”

It may not count that much with voters, but the endorsement of the New York Times is probably the one most coveted by the candidates, and the editorial board announced their selections for the New York primaries today: Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

Mrs. Clinton was no big surprise. She is, after all, the junior Senator from New York and has had the paper’s endorsement for both her Senatorial campaigns. They also had nice things to say about Senator Obama and John Edwards.

Senator McCain’s selection and the reasoning behind it was much more entertaining. To paraphrase, the Times position is: “Custom dictates that we endorse a candidate in the Republican primary as well. We hate them all, but the least odious is John McCain – who apparently served in a war, or something.”

They had nothing good to say about any other Republican candidate, and they beat Rudy like a red-headed step child.

Meanwhile this morning the Today Show gave Sen. Clinton a very hard time, and in my opinion, unfairly so. It was both shallow and misleading. It’s hard to make Hillary a sympathetic character in my eyes, but Matt Lauer and his producer did a heck of a job of it this morning. In an 8 minute segment there was not a single question relating to issues. Why don’t they just stick to diets, tabloid murder-mysteries and travelogue?

Link to NYT Clinton endorsement
Link to NYT McCain endorsement
Link to Clinton Today Show segment