Apparently the media’s overt sympathy for Democratic candidates is so taken for granted that anything less than glowing adoration and cooperation is viewed as hostile. That’s at least one explanation for John Heilemann’s odd evaluation of Hillary Clinton’s campaign launch on Monday's Morning Joe.
According to Heilemann of Bloomberg Politics, Hillary is fighting a two front war. "She’s running against herself And she’s running against the press...the Clintons’ relationship with the press has never been great. She’s believes the press corps is incredibly hostile to her. She has some reason to believe that the press corps is unduly or disproportionately hostile to her...she is been subject to not that flattering of press coverage....[S]he got something in that week that I don't think I've seen her ever have before....[S]he had mockery."
While it is true that Hillary hasn’t recently experienced the level of press adoration that Obama enjoyed, it is a stretch to say that Clinton has "reason to believe that the press corps is unduly or disproportionately hostile to her" simply because the did not give her a sufficiently glowing reception.
If this is sufficient to meet Heilemann’s definition of "hostile" media, one can only imagine how he would describe the racial attacks on Marco Rubio, the death wish for Ted Cruz, and the cries of misogyny against Rand Paul.
Should Heilemann be too afraid to leave the MSNBC echo chamber, he can get a mild taste of the media's anti-Republican flavor by listening to his fellow echo-chamber occupant Joe Scarborough, who claimed that the Republicans at the New Hampshire GOP Summit, "didn't talk policy. They didn’t talk specifics. We have no idea what they stand for other than they're against Hillary Clinton and they're against Barack Obama."
No one talked policy? Joe must have missed the part where Ted Cruz said he wanted to institute a flat tax and abolish the IRS, policy positions which had nothing to do with Hillary or Obama.
In case Heilemann is still unconvinced that Hillary is getting a comparatively warm press reception, he can always turn to David Ignatius of the Washington Post, who made this inept comment, "I do think if the rest of the Republican field spends all its time banging on Hillary Clinton, you’re going to have this sort of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs thing where they're running around, you know hitting her, and she's all alone on the Democratic side."
Ignatius was apparently so caught up in his anti-Republican tirade that he somehow managed to botch a reference to one of the most well known fairy tales in history; the seven dwarfs never brutalized Snow White.
That alone should be all the evidence Heilemann needs to see that Hillary has no room to complain about the press.
