Media makes mountains out of muddy molehills

I've been following the coverage of the primary campaign at first with interest and now with increasing disgust, as the pundits gleefully make mountains out of muddy molehills in the whole Clinton-Obama thing.

I watch the clips, I hear the ads re-played on different political shows [Hardball, Countdown] and all I see is some tough campaigning and a bit of bickering.

So it's a real surprise to then hear the pundits ranting about how this will tear the Democratic party apart! how can they possibly unite again after all the dirty politics, mudslinging, race-baiting, blah-blah.

"Dirty politics" are lies and character assassination, i.e. the Swiftboating against Kerry.
It's breaking and entering, i.e. Watergate.

The sniping between Clinton and Obama? is just campaigning -- it would barely register if the media didn't make such a big hoo-hah about it.

I've actually been impressed that the Democratic frontrunners have said such nice things about each other on occasion, considering they're all competing for the same job.

It's a campaign. They are competitors. They *should* draw comparisions and distinctions.
They *should* call each other out on half truths or misleading accusations.

But they shouldn't have to go around and around in circles over the same relatively insignificant comments just b/c the media keeps analyzing it ad nauseum.

It would be really helpful to the electorate if journalists could focus on the policy issues and plans presented by the candidates, instead of drumming up a phony frenzy.

The "race issue" wasn't one until after New Hampshire, when the pundit pack started wondering, endlessly and almost unanimously, about the so-called Bradley Effect -- just a theory, unproven (and maybe unprovable), but suddenly everything from the Clinton camp that could be interpreted as less than positive about Barak Obama was labeled racism.

Just FYI, I'm a Barak fan, but I like all the Demo candidates, and I'll be happy to vote for any of them. But I'm still trying to understand how Bill Clinton saying it would be a "gamble" to vote for Barak Obama because he has less experience than Hillary, could possibly be considered racist....

...whereas Obama can suggest that he'd need to see Bill Clinton dance before he could fairly evaluate whether Bill is a "brother."

Now, that was a very funny comment, imo (and by the way, I'd pay big bucks to see *that* dance contest! the Democrats should consider it as a possible fundraising event) -- but wasn't Obama making a direct link between race and a racial stereotype? (i.e. blacks are good dancers)

Can you imagine the uproar if someone from the Clinton camp said anything like that?

I realize analyzing the nuances of economic proposals or health care plans or mid-East policy requires much more thought than just repeating the same blather about strategy and is Bill hurting Hill and should Barak have gotten down off his pedestal to reveal (gasp!) he's a politician! etc. etc. etc. -- for one thing, such analysis doesn't lend itself readily to endless sports metaphors.

But I wish the political shows would leave the exaggerations and blowhard stuff to Fox Noise.

Oh, and would someone PLEASE retire the oh-so-cute references to "singing Kumbaya"!? It was clever and amusing and apt the first 5 or 10 times it was used, but now it's really, really stale. Find something new.