Love and fierce loyalty for their chosen primary candidate? Yes. Party membership? Not necessarily--not all are Democrats. Can we assume they share core beliefs in the need for affordable healthcare, ending the War in Iraq responsibly, and providing real solutions to real and pressing problems of their voters? I hope so.
But there's one thing that both Obama and Clinton supporters have in common that may well help unite us.
Follow me below the fold.
All supporters of Clinton and Obama alike have had their illusion that the mainstream media is "fair and balanced" shattered for all time. "News" is no longer an objective reporting of facts as I learned in journalism school in the late 1960s; it is creation of drama by reporting competing spin. It is comprised of talking points by talking (or screaming) partisans, put forth by hosts that do not give their panels the respect of uttering a full sentence without interruption.
Clinton supporters have cried misogny and sexism against the media, and rightly so.
Obama supporters have cried "politics of personal destruction, smears, and petty distractions" against the media, and rightly so.
Both camps observed that media coverage of McCain did not challenge his record. Nor did it push personal destruction memes the way it did agains the Democratic candidates. The media have given McCain a pass. Some pundits have even said the message was controlled by the Corporation--whether it was pushing a McCain bias, a Clinton bias, or an Obama bias.
Voters deserve better. We ALL deserve respect. That starts with the candidates. It continues with their supporters. And COULD be realized with a media more invested in reporting truth and analysis than in keeping the country divided with spin, exit polling data, and repeated talking points that have no basis in truth.
Case in point. I had occasion to talk to a Wall Street Journal subscription agent today and somehow, we got into a respectful conversation about the end of the primary with Obama's nomination. The man was absolutely uncredulous that I--a 58-year-old white woman--could support Obama. He deeply believed the media talking point that ALL older white women have supported Clinton.
My point is that the media have kept us divided, and to the degree that we can just turn it off--and rely on print media and the internet--we can begin to heal. It won't be easy. Many of us are addicted. We ignore our racing heartbeats and our elevated blood pressures, when the talking heads disrespect our candidate of choice. We rage and stew in our own anger, perhaps even displacing it on others.
As long as we accept what the mainstream media dishes out, however, nothing will change. When ratings dip--as Bill O'Reilly's reportedly has--the media may have to look at itself and see what's no longer working. What will become of Faux News when the White House isn't telling it what to report?
We Clinton and Obama supporters--together--are the People. And we have the Power to remedy what is dividing us. Change won't be easy, but if each one of us takes one small step to demand respect--not partisanship and spin--from the media, perhaps we can begin to heal as a nation.
One thing is for certain. None of us will get the respect we seek if we let the media continue to slice and dice, distract and divide us. As a community, we can make real change possible. We need to. Desperately. Now.
(This is my first diary, so please let me know if there's something wrong with this effort.)
UPDATED with report from Ben Smith at Politico.com:
Sen. Barack Obama on Thursday batted down rumors circulating on the Internet and mentioned on some cable news shows of the existence of a video of his wife using a derogatory term for white people, and criticized a reporter for asking him about the rumor, which has not a shred of evidence to support it.
"We have seen this before. There is dirt and lies that are circulated in e-mails and they pump them out long enough until finally you, a mainstream reporter, asks me about it," Obama said to the McClatchy reporter during a press conference aboard his campaign plane. "That gives legs to the story. If somebody has evidence that myself or Michelle or anybody has said something inappropriate, let them do it."
Asked whether he knew it not to be true, Obama said he had answered the question.
"Frankly, my hope is people don’t play this game," Obama said. "It is a destructive aspect of our politics. Simply because something appears in an e-mail, that should lend it no more credence than if you heard it on the corner. Presumably the job of the press is to not to go around and spread scurrilous rumors like this until there is actually anything, an iota, of substance or evidence that would substantiate it."
So was it even acceptable to ask the question?
Before Obama could answer, communications director Robert Gibbs interjected: "You just did."
"That is my point," Obama said. "I just think people have to think about it before they ask."
NOTE: Obama's clearly right that this is how stories for which there's no evidence at all make it into the public eye. So I'm not linking or detailing the rumor, since there's just zero credible evidence for it. This is probably a silly old media vestige, of course; Google has no such standards. And Obama's discussion of it is, more broadly, news: As he acknowledged yesterday, beating back whisper campaigns is perhaps the central challenge his campaign faces.
By Ben Smith 04:55 PM