Welcome to the most polite, eggshell-sensitive presidential campaign in 36 years: SHHHhhhhhhhhhh. You may quietly mention the male candidate's name, but for heaven's sake don't say he's black, which he is, because that would be playing the race card.
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One of your colleagues, Times columnist Paul Krugman, agrees with media scholars that the national media tend to inflate even mild comments by the Clintons into the explosive potential of hand grenades.
A recent and outrageous example of twisted media interpretation that Krugman points to is MSNBC's David Shuster, who said of Chelsea campaigning for her mother, "doesn't it seem Chelsea's sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way."
Maureen's hysteria and Shuster's pornographic wit are out of sync with the behavior of the candidates themselves and wildly out of proportion with the real dirty campaigns of the recent past.
http://www.annistonstar.com/opinion/2008/as-columns-0217-bayerscol-8b15t0531.htm