campaigns

Hil Makes Friendly With Backstabby Press

Pareene · 03/03/08 11:07AM

Hillary Clinton is never, ever, ever going to stop campaigning. If she wins Ohio and Texas, she will obviously soldier on. If she wins Ohio but not Texas, she will slightly less obviously soldier on. If she wins neither, she will probably still soldier on. Meanwhile she's getting all punchy in her speeches, she's thrilled that everyone is making fun of her 3 a.m. phone ad, and she's getting friendly with the press again. Even the members of the press who have written or are in the process of writing embarrassing books about her! According to the New York Times, Hillary even pretended to be happy to see Gail Sheehy, a woman who has made Senator Clinton's public life miserable almost since she entered public life.

Tyra Grills Roly-Poly GOP Also-Ran

Pareene · 02/29/08 01:51PM

Mike Huckabee, who is still going around pretending to run for President, who also used to be fat, got skinny, and is now getting fat again, and who is also a crazy religious nut who hides his paleolithic views behind a delightful sense of self-deprecating humor and convincing charm, was on Tyra today. Because Tyra is America's Official Ambassador To the Gays, and because she's not afraid of the tough questions, she asked him to explain his position on the Homosexual Agenda. Huckabee responded with impressive candor while saying absolutely nothing (except that homosexuality is a choice and a sin). Maybe this is why Tim Gunn was sad! (Also we kind of want Tyra to moderate the next presidential debate! She's... more reasonable and serious than Tim Russert, and asks more pertinent questions. What a country!) Video below. Also: most important photograph ever, attached.

Hillary Bakes With the Devil In the Pale Moon Light

Pareene · 02/29/08 10:10AM

During Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential run, he was accused by Democratic rival Jerry Brown of funneling money through his wife's law firm. Hillary Rodham Clinton, responding to the charges by affirming that her business was one she took seriously, famously said, "You know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life." That quote, replayed endlessly, debated in columns across the country, was one of the first Hillary Clinton missteps seized upon by Republicans as proof that Hillary was a terrifying, corrupt, ball-crushing feminazi bitch. All this is a pretend-think-y historical intro to two funny Hillary Clinton photos, btw. One of which, above, is on her campaign site right now, in an inexplicably SPLOID-esque (or lolcat-esque) sans-serif-text-on-odd-image thumbnail. The other is on top of Drudge, and it's below.

Hot New Web Game: 'Slate's' Delegate Counter

Pareene · 02/28/08 12:17PM

Slate, perhaps trying to make up for past errors in judgment, presents the vaguely useful and wholly inoffensive Delegate Counter, with which you can try to calculate which Democratic candidate will win the nomination with uninformed guesses as to the margins of victory in upcoming primaries. Shorn of context, polling, and relevant news, you see that the Democratic Process is a random numbers game, and that's before we even get into the "superdelegates." It serves also as an uncomfortable reminder that the primaries will just never end. [Slate]

Hillary Clinton Is Funny! (And Why She Shouldn't Be)

Pareene · 02/27/08 01:35PM

Hillary Clinton, who generally comes off way as more prepared and well-spoken than Barack Obama in their televised debates, has, naturally, received quite a bit of flack for her occasional attempts to crack jokes. These jokes—"change you can Xerox" and "no one asks me if I want a pillow"—are mostly harmless, but her delivery is terrible. Despite this, her family and friends insist she is actually a funny person. And they're right. In the clip above, she is very funny. The only problem is that she's also sarcastic, in the real sense of the word, and not the Michelle Obama sense of the word. That is maybe the worst possible way to differentiate yourself from Barack Obama, who inspires sarcastic people with his earnestness. We, with help from Jon Stewart and Ellen DeGeneres, shall explain why.

The Tabloid Primary

Pareene · 02/27/08 10:37AM

Our nation's supermarket rags are tentatively dipping their toes into political coverage (with about the same amount of dignity and substance as you'll find on most 24-hour news networks, ZING), proof either that America's celebrity-industrial complex has grown so unwieldy as to demand that everyone in the public sphere be covered in the same inane fashion or demonstrating that people care nearly as much about the fate of our nation as they do about Spears fetuses, and the tabs need to cash in on this new "politics craze." Who knows!

'Salon': Obama is Chris Tucker, McCain is Jackie Chan

Pareene · 02/26/08 03:47PM

In case you missed it, Salon's lead story today is about how Americans like John McCain and Barack Obama because they remind them of an interracial buddy cop movie, like Lethal Weapon. No, seriously! John McCain is a grizzled old vet, just one campaign away from retirement! Barack Obama is a wise-crackin street-smart sassy black guy, minus most of those descriptors that aren't "black." Also, dudes like guys, and John McCain and Barack Obama are both guys. Hi, Kurt Andersen! Anyway, it's all about sexism, according to this dude, in Salon. Fun bonus: the worst piece of photoshop ever committed to pixels. It's supposed to be Obama and McCain as Danny Glover and Mel Gibson, but that's obviously the wrong interracial buddy cop movie. McCain is a "maverick" and a little bit crazy, yes, but he's also 100 years old, like Nick Nolte in 48 Hours (and every other thing he's ever been in). [Salon]

Drudge Still Controls Media, Hil Still Mad

Pareene · 02/26/08 11:00AM

Hillary Clinton strategist Harold Ickes and spokesman Phil Singer had breakfast with the Christian Science Monitor, David Broder, Maureen Dowd, Mark Sheilds, and other "eminences grises of the Washington Press Corps" yesterday, and the Washington Post's Dana Milbank wrote up a nice little summary of the contentious event. The Clintons are not very happy with how the press has treated them, you see, and Phil Singer is especially angry. Singer is mad that the newsmedia listened to that silly Matt Drudge when he ran that silly photo of Barack Obama in a terrorist apron that (Drudge says) was sent to him by a still unknown Clinton staffer, and then they made a big issue of this photo, except they made, in Singer's mind, the wrong issue out of it, as they all sort of used it as proof that the Clinton campaign is grasping at straws. Singer, quite sincerely, expressed his regret that the newsmedia did not instead take their cue from last weekend's new Saturday Night Live, which was on balance rather nicer to Senator Clinton.

Obama's Gay Lover Can't Pass Polygraph

Pareene · 02/25/08 05:25PM

Larry Sinclair, Barack Obama's alleged former gay sex partner, was paid $10,000 by WhiteHouse.com to take a polygraph test, which he failed. Turns out the weird ugly rambling toothless gentleman from YouTube might not be telling the whole truth when he claims he gave Obama a blowjob in 1999! We've been getting odd emails from internet crazy types with AOL email addresses touting Sinclair's claims since we first ran his video last month. The crazies were very excited for his polygraph test, and if he'd passed it, WhiteHouse.com promised him $100k. Related: Dear WhiteHouse.com, we had a kinky three-way with Hillary Clinton and Ron Paul at the Limelight in 1985. (Ron was gentle, Hillary selfish.) Bonus nutty email attached.

Tina Fey Endorses "Bitch" Clinton

Pareene · 02/25/08 04:35PM

Tina Fey hosted the first post-strike SNL this weekend. We didn't watch, obv, but we shall risk incurring the wrath of Alex Balk by mentioning Fey's uncharacteristically sincere endorsement of Hillary Clinton, one of the very few convincing ones to be found in the national media of late (we just caught it online, the way everyone else will). Fey, SNL's first female head writer, may convince a few of those Barack-loving youngs to support America's potential first female president. (SNL's first black head writer could not be reached for comment, because that'll be the day.) Clip after the jump!

That Scenario Is Called 'Hell'

Pareene · 02/25/08 01:06PM

"There's a scenario where you have five candidates. You could have a hypothetical Paul on the right and Nader on the left and Bloomberg in the center and a Democrat and a Republican," he said. He added that he thinks that "there is a very substantial opening and opportunity" for Mr. Bloomberg. [NY Sun]

Obama-in-Dress Photo Backfires on Clinton

Pareene · 02/25/08 11:21AM

A photo of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama wearing sort of an apron-looking thing and a funny turban? A Hillary Clinton staffer asks (according to Drudge): "Wouldn't we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were HRC?" Uh, sure. Sure we would. The photo, from 2006, shows Obama "fitted as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya." It was sent around by Clinton's press office (once again, according to Drudge) this weekend, in an apparent attempt to prove that the Illinois Senator is a Muslim terrorist who wears a dress. Mischievous Matt Drudge gave the story an amusing anti-Clinton spin. Because his relationship with her is complicated.

Plagiarism Scandal Taints Dem Debate

Pareene · 02/22/08 10:47AM

Did you watch the Clinton/Obama debate last night? We didn't! But apparently it went like this: Hillary was all "Obama is a plagiarist hope you can Xerox lol" and the crowd sorta booed but the media decided it was the best zinger ever and Obama was ok but no zingers at all! And Hillary had a rousing and inspiring closing speech that she totally plagiarized from "Lonesome" John Edwards as the following YouTube clip clearly shows.

Drudge's Bloodlust

Pareene · 02/22/08 10:42AM

Having grown bored with the "Hillary is a scary bitch" narrative and not inclined to push the "McCain is a lobbyist-fucker" story, Matt Drudge has finally found his Obama peg: he will be shot. [Drudge]

Rest of Media Shamed 'Times' Into Running McCain Story

Pareene · 02/21/08 04:05PM

The New Republic's story-of-the-story of the New York Times' story of how John McCain might've fucked lobbyist Vicki Iseman is up, and, as could probably be predicted, it's the story of Bill Keller being a total pussy and not letting his reporters go with all the awesome juicy stuff they were totally sure they had nailed down, provable or not. It's also the story of how now, basically, the standard for publication at the Times has slipped measurably closer to, say, ours.

What The Undecideds Read (When They Read)

Pareene · 02/20/08 02:34PM

Those mythical "swing voters" love O: The Oprah Magazine (advantage: Obama!) and the Hallmark Channel (advantage: Hillary!) and Nascar.com (advantage: Hephaestus, the god of fire!), according to Advertising Age and "an Experian Consumer Research analysis of Simmons National Consumer study." AdAge's Ken Wheaton says the results of the study ought to lead the Dems to nominate Hillary Clinton, because she'll appeal to "Conservative Democrats"—who are apparently educated women who watch Lifetime and spend no time on the scary internet—because these women "might have liberal views on immigration and the environment, but tend to be pro-life and religious." Pro-life, unlike both Dem candidates, and religious, like both Dem candidates. See how it works? Oh, and there's a fancy explanatory PDF. Click to enlarge the relevant bits. [AdAge]

Bill Clinton's Red Face of Courage

Pareene · 02/18/08 05:20PM

(Please forgive the lack of a "YouTube has changed the nature of modern campaigning" think piece here, as we are not Howard Kurtz.)