Freak Show Media

Why is Hillary so tough on the media? Well, maybe it's because they keep trying to come up with bogus "scandals" in an attempt to capsize her campaign.

it's really not hard to explain why Camp Hillary is so aggressive with the media: The Clintons have been getting slimed by the big news orgs for over 15 years. Just look back over Campaign 2008 alone and ponder all the bogus Hillary stories we've had. Here's a partial list:

* Hillary's alleged failure to tip the Iowa waitress
* Hillary's phony southern drawl

* The supposed 20-year-plan by Hillary and Bill to take over the world, or at least deliver them both the Presidency, as alleged by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta and denied by the one person who supposedly had first-hand knowledge of their dastardly plot

* The baseless claim that Hillary eavesdropped on political opponents in 1992

* The bogus media claim that Bill Clinton accused Hillary's Dem rivals of "swiftboating" her

* The media's hyping of Hillary's supposed refusal to release Presidential records, a tale that was taken apart in today's Washington Post and which wasn't matched by any similar media outrage about Rudy's refusal to release his Mayoral papers

And on and on. Putting aside the Hillary campaign's more routine efforts to spin the press, the real story here is that the Clintons have been swimming against the media slime-tide for far longer than any of her Dem rivals. As a result they have a more immediate grasp of the media echo chamber/Freak Show dynamic at play, which is that once bogus stories are injected into the media bloodstream there's literally nothing that can get pundits and commentators -- and even some self-described journalists -- to stop repeating it.

John Edwards and his hair know this, and Obama the flag-pin-hating Muslim is learning it, but the Clintons have been living and breathing it for years and years.

And yes, we might as well add the issue of "planted" questions to the list since talking to young people and finding out what they'd like to ask the candidate is generally considered good advance work by most campaigns.