Fear and loathing in the Clinton restrooms

In response to Clinton Minder Followed NY Times Reporter into the Bathroom:

Matt Continetti has an inspired rant about Hillary’s bathroom minders and the willingness of the media to put up with this passive-aggressive crap, in which Hillary alternately poses as either a helpless victim of media meanies, or the head of the East German secret police.  The funniest passage is where he summarizes the combination of pleading, bullying, whining, and fellowship dumped by Clinton aides on the press at a recent gathering:

I am not entirely without sympathy. Mainstream journalists are under pressures that we are not. They have to pretend for example that David Brock is a serious person. They are implicated in the liberal Democratic project through family or sympathy or ambition. They have to take angry calls from the White House and congressional Democrats and candidates. One of Alana Goodman’s scoops involved a meeting at the D.C. bureau of the New York Times at which Hillary Clinton’s top lieutenants complained about the paper’s coverage of their boss, saying it was too intrusive and critical and that Clinton is not a public figure but an expectant grandmother. Leave Hillary alone, she’s under a lot of stress right now, she still has to wear those glasses at night, we have long memories, all she wants to do is swim, she hasn’t made up her mind about 2016, she’s putting the finishing touches on her book, dinner last Saturday was a lot of fun we should do it again sometime, she’s really a private person and doesn’t like all of this attention, why do you have to be so mean to her, I’m not going to write that recommendation letter for Sidwell Friends, Chelsea’s afraid the bad press may affect the baby, yes I’ll be at Hilary Rosen’s on Friday, we are totally uninteresting and unaffected and blameless and prosaic and apolitical but cross us and we’ll cut your f–ing knees off … Could you have been at that meeting and not laughed?

Emphasis mine, because as brutally funny and spot-on as the rest of that paragraph is, the key sentence is the one that explains why the media puts up with this.  It’s also why they submitted to a Fifty Shades of Grey relationship with Obama.  Remember when observers thought the media-spying scandals would finally drive a wedge between President Boyfriend and his media pets, as the latter finally found their self-respect and cried foul at his efforts to monitor and intimidate the press?  They actually seemed pretty angry about it for a week or so… but now it’s not even mentioned in most of the encomiums they’re banging out for spymaster Eric Holder.

Some have postulated things could be a bit different with Hillary.  She’s shrill, unlikable, and nowhere near as romantically exciting to media liberals as the Lightworker was.  They’re fatigued from carrying his water, which has been showing a bit in his coverage as those approval numbers tumble into the abyss.  They’ll roll their rheumy eyes at Hillary when she demands the same sweetheart treatment, and they’ll be more likely to object when she goes all Vladimir Putin on them after a spate of coverage she doesn’t like.

Don’t believe that for a second.  What Continetti says about the media’s “implication in the liberal project” will largely transcend any personal gripes they have about the way Hillary talks to them, Bill will be on hand to cuddle with them until their hurt feelings subside, their visceral hatred for Republicans will lead them to spike stories that would help people they regard as ideological enemies, and newsroom feminist loyalty to The First Woman President will intimidate grumpy male reporters the rest of the way into Clinton synchronicity.  

But 80 percent of the media loyalty Hillary Clinton requires will be delivered, not just by ideological sympathy, but the simple and tawdry reality of the revolving door between the media and Democrat power structures.  Everyone wants those jobs in a prospective Clinton administration, or their shady “initiatives,” or the offices of Democrat Party heavy hitters who will remember the names of anyone who dares to break a story like those routinely broken by conservative media.  That’s one of the reasons we’re able to push stories through the fog and get some mainstream media coverage – sometimes its material that really bothers the more intellectually honest MSM reporters, but they can’t afford to be seen as the one who broke the story, because the revolving door would become closed to them.  Once it’s gained traction in alternative media, though, they can discuss it without worrying about the blacklist so much.

A modest prediction: because the media doesn’t love Hillary quite they way they used to love Barack Obama, and they’re still a little queasy about the way they had to compromise their integrity to protect him… and because Hillary’s going to keep giving them “bathroom minder” treatment to control her image… they’ll prove just a tad more eager to pick up the stories broken by conservative media.  It will be a marginal difference in attitude, but it might just be enough to make a difference when something big comes along.