That Kool-Aid must be sweet

  I’m trying to stay away from public thoughts about the Democratic primary, because nothing good can come of me taking an open stand on it. But a quick perusal of the headlines this morning after the Pennsylvania primary — classic, stupid example here — prompts me to sally forth in some small way.

It’s like clockwork by now, as predictable as the sun rising in the east: Hillary Clinton dominates Barack Obama — I mean crushes him, mops up the proverbial floor with him — in another large, electoral-vote rich state, yet the mainstream media the next morning is dominated by even more feverish calls for her to drop out, and even more smug “analyses” of why she can’t win the nomination.

It’s become something of a phenomenon, a lesson in irrational mass hysteria akin to the great tulip mania in Holland in the 1600s. I literally have lost count of how many times the media has assured us, usually the morning after another huge Hillary win, that there’s no way, no physical possibility, that she can be the nominee.

Never in my life have I seen another person, candidate, or sports team counted out so prematurely, so many times. At some point you just have to ask what gives.

I have swung from explanation to explanation. Being in the profession myself, I know how badly the media — which is massively, hugely white — wants to avoid even the hint of an accusation of racism. Maybe that dynamic comes into play with the mainstream media’s almost desperately fawning adulation of Obama, but it cannot possibly account for all of it.

I then thought classism might be the cause, since Obama’s obvious appeal to well-educated, liberal “creative class” Starbucks drinkers makes him an equally obvious fit for most journalists, who fall squarely into that niche. But that can’t be all of it, either.

I know the media have hated the Clintons with a passion for a long time — classism again, I’m pretty positive, since the Clintons have always portrayed a blue-collar image — but not even that can explain the immense irrationality, the sheer solipsism of demanding that a candidate who is only slightly trailing to drop out, often right after said candidate wins a big primary.

In the end, I can only settle on simple misogyny. The media is not only massively, hugely white, it’s also massively, hugely male. Yeah, the pretty anchorwoman is a ubiquitous stereotype, but you can almost rest assured that her producer, her boss, her boss’s boss, and the owner of the company are all men.

I have said for years that misogyny and sexism are more pervasive problems in America than racism — if not in intensity, than surely in scale. There’s historical support for my position; remember that African-American men got the right to vote half a century before any American women ever did.

Surely there is much racism in this country, and none of it should be tolerated. But it’s just as true that in my lifetime I have seen much more progress on racial issues than in the equal treatment of women. I’m hardly the first to say this, but I believe it’s true: Sexism is the last acceptable “ism” in America.

Perhaps I’m biased on this, since I’m not African-American and I’m the father of two daughters. But we can only really speak from personal experience, eh?

In any case, if anyone else has any better explanations, I’m all ears. But clearly something really weird is going on, and the only people clueless about it are the ones dispensing the weirdness.

How weird is it? Let’s put it this way: I now have to go to Fox News to get objective coverage of the Democratic primary. That’s weird.

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