Snobosphere just hated Hillary's speech

The next day, I would learn how badly the speech went over with pretty much everybody I know. My nephew, a person not much given to rage, was enraged. Bloggers whom I respect have been merciless—e.g., Jim Fallows (“This is a new low”), Andrew Sullivan (“classless, graceless, shameless, relentless”), Matt Yglesias (“utterly unconscionable”), Jonathan Chait (“incredible,” and not in a good way), and Ezra Klein (full text of his post: “I think Clinton may be willing to offer Obama the vice presidency”). At the Guardian, Michael Tomasky called it “the most abrasive, self-absorbed, selfish, delusional, emasculating and extortionate political speech I’ve heard in a long time.” And various friends of both sexes have used words derived from digestive difficulties: disgusting, sickening, nauseating.

That's Hendrik Hertzberg, a confessed Obamaphile, in the New Yorker--and that doesn't even count The Journalist Formerly Known as E.J. Dionne who said, "Hillary Clinton talked her way out of the vice presidency on Tuesday night."

Let's leave aside Hertzberg's taste in bloggers--these are some "whom I respect," he says, a list which includes Andrew Sullivan, the guy who squeezes his own butt on the Bill Maher show, and Yglesias and Klein who try to out-do each other in saying the same thing as Markos and Marshall.  And what are we to think of Tomasky, who unwittingly reveals his own anxieties when he calls Clinton's speech "emasculating"?

Hillary was charged and found guilty of a great crime:  Refusal to capitulate and insufficient obeisance.  Who does she think she is?   She should be singing:  '"Crown him, crown him, crown him King of Kings!"

People simply ignored the fact that this was primary day and she had squeeked through to another narrow 30 point victory, this time in the South Dakota primary.   

They regarded her mention of a popular vote victory with particular disdain.  You can see why.  These and other media critics were the same people who were once exercised over the possibility that superdelegates would "overturn the will of the people" and make Clinton the nominee, when, of course, what eventually happened was that the establishment weighed in for Obama and made him the nominee.  You can see, then, why Hillary's mention of a popular vote victory made them squirm.  Hypocrisy bites!

Comments

[redrabbit]

I think I'm gonna miss Rik Hertzberg most of all.

[John Petty]

I'm going to give Hertzberg a pass. I still like him, although he does get to burbling a bit when he talks about Obama.

[redrabbit]

Exactly, which is why he will probably be hard to take over the next several months, and if Obama wins in November, can we expect the same razor sharp commentary on an Obama administration from Hertzberg as he's delivered on Bush's 8 years?

[John Petty]

Probably not at first. It will be interesting to see how the High Liberals react if Obama is elected and proves not to be quite what they expected.