{"id":369393,"date":"2010-02-27T09:45:27","date_gmt":"2010-02-27T14:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=69157"},"modified":"2010-02-27T09:45:27","modified_gmt":"2010-02-27T14:45:27","slug":"come-saturday-morning-tradmed-motto-%e2%80%93-%e2%80%9cdouble-standards-r-us%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/369393","title":{"rendered":"Come Saturday Morning:  TradMed Motto \u2013 \u201cDouble Standards R Us\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-69423\" href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/2010\/02\/27\/come-saturday-morning-tradmed-motto-double-standards-r-us\/scales-2\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-69423\" title=\"scales\" src=\"http:\/\/static1.firedoglake.com\/1\/files\/2010\/02\/scales.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"231\" height=\"236\" \/><\/a>Gene Lyons is fond of saying that the media follows what he calls &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.arktimes.com\/blogs\/arkansasblog\/2008\/02\/she_stoops_to_conquer.aspx\">the Clinton Rules<\/a>&#8221; when discussing anything pertaining to our forty-second president.  As has been documented repeatedly over the years, the members of the press judge the Clintons by a much harsher set of standards than those they use for Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>But really, the Clinton Rules don&#8217;t just apply to the Clintons and their associates, but to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/opinion\/conason\/2008\/04\/18\/debate\/\">the entire Democratic Party<\/a>; they are <a href=\"http:\/\/mediamatters.org\/columns\/200802220015\">always judged by a higher, harsher standard<\/a> than are Republicans.   We&#8217;re reminded of this on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis &#8212; so much so that it takes something exceptionally blatant to stand out from the constant GOP\/Media Complex drone.<\/p>\n<p>Something like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/02\/25\/us\/politics\/25chemistry.html?ref=us\">this piece by the NYT&#8217;s Mark Leibovitch<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div class='wbq'>\n<p>Beyond all the hand-wringing about hyper-partisanship that accompanies every discussion here these days, a more subtle \u2014 and perhaps pertinent \u2014 reality hangs over the much-anticipated Blair House confab: Mr. Obama and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill appear to have no personal chemistry whatsoever.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Boehner and Mr. Obama have not held a single one-on-one meeting since Mr. Obama\u2019s election, according to Mr. Boehner\u2019s office. Representative Eric Cantor, the House Republican whip, has described Mr. Obama to colleagues as \u201cthin-skinned\u201d and quick to bring up Republican criticisms of him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Oh, go gag a maggot, why don&#8217;t cha?  Guess what?  Obama&#8217;s predecessor, George W. Bush &#8212; you remember him, the guy who finished out his term with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2009\/01\/16\/opinion\/polls\/main4728399.shtml\">approval ratings on a par with the plague?<\/a> &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/writ.news.findlaw.com\/dean\/20060714.html\">treated both Republicans <em>and<\/em> Democrats like ashtrays<\/a>.  It took until <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/06\/11\/world\/americas\/11iht-letter.1944925.html\">the summer of 2006<\/a> before he could be bothered to take notice of either.<\/p>\n<p>Remember, <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2006\/11\/26\/lott-rove-divide\/\">it was Bush and his brain Karl Rove<\/a> that in late 2002 and early 2003 took advantage of the furor over Trent Lott&#8217;s remarks on Strom Thurmond to have him removed as Senate Majority Leader and replaced with Bill Frist, who was far more subservient to the Bush White House than was Lott &#8212; who though a Republican still insisted on this whole separation of powers thingy.   That&#8217;s not the act of a president with a nice warm and fuzzy relationship with his Congressional counterparts.<\/p>\n<p>(This was a furor, by the way, that happened only because some of the then-brand-new liberal bloggers like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eschatonblog.com\/2002_12_01_atrios_archive.html#90023494\">Atrios<\/a>, who still remembered how the press helped <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/al-franken\/reflections-on-the-wellst_b_15459.html\">Trent Lott<\/a> and the GOP <a href=\"http:\/\/www.democraticunderground.com\/discuss\/duboard.php?az=view_all&amp;address=104x212245\">demagogue and smear Paul Wellstone&#8217;s memorial event <\/a>five weeks earlier as it was happening, yet were expending far less time and energy on Lott&#8217;s Thurmond statements.  Just as they hijacked Joe Lieberman&#8217;s Department of Homeland Security idea after first opposing it, Rove and Bush used the Lott-Thurmond hoo-ha to cow Senate and Congressional Republicans into submission.  But I digress.)<\/p>\n<p>So please, TradMed, stop it with the &#8220;ooh ooh Obama doesn&#8217;t play nice with Republicans&#8221; crapola.  Bush treated Congressional and Senate Republicans far worse than Obama has so far.<\/p>\n<p class=\"tagList\">Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/tag\/bushco\/\" rel=\"tag\">BushCo<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/tag\/congress\/\" rel=\"tag\">Congress<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/tag\/gene-lyons\/\" rel=\"tag\">Gene Lyons<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/tag\/gop-media-complex\/\" rel=\"tag\">GOP-Media complex<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/tag\/media\/\" rel=\"tag\">Media<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/tag\/msm\/\" rel=\"tag\">MSM<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/tag\/obama\/\" rel=\"tag\">Obama<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"akst_link\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/share-this\/share-icon-16x16.gif\" alt=\"Share This icon\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=69157&amp;akst_action=share-this\"  title=\"Email, post to del.icio.us, etc.\" id=\"akst_link_69157\" class=\"akst_share_link\" rel=\"noindex nofollow\">&nbsp;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gene Lyons is fond of saying that the media follows what he calls &#8220;the Clinton Rules&#8221; when discussing anything pertaining to our forty-second president. As has been documented repeatedly over the years, the members of the press judge the Clintons by a much harsher set of standards than those they use for Republicans. But really, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4940,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-369393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4940"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}