Campaign 2008

Bill Clinton — Old Media darling.

By J. Wesley ⋅ June 3, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Quoted on Instapundit:

“As somebody said, ‘The Clintons were the media’s old darlings. The reason for the negative media attention is that she is now standing in the way of the media’s new darling.’”

There’s obviously some truth to this. The MSM Obama-love is pretty slobbery at times. But I think there’s a deeper truth if we flip it around a bit. The Clintons were OLD MEDIA darlings. Clinton mesmerized America with his magical BS during a time when both the Internet and Republican alternative media were in their infancy. The Clinton song and dance was a simple one — stonewall tough questions and then lie, lie, lie. It worked more often than not. The Clinton magic doesn’t work any more because we’re in a New Media era.

Nowadays, someone is always waiting online to fact-check your spin. It’s amazing that a “co-presidency” that was crippled by a New Media source — the Drudge Report — completely failed to reckon on the power of New Media. As an example, consider the whole “Hillary vs. the Serbian Snipers” fiasco. Or think back to Bill Clinton’s ham-fisted use of the race card during the primaries. The Clintons really were clueless about how such things would play out in a new era. On the flip side, they also failed to reckon on the positive side of New Media — while Obama was wooing the Nutroots and raking in millions online, Hillary seemed to be campaigning circa 1992.