On Hillary and the Talking Heads Who Hate Love Hate Her

I've got a new piece up at The Guardian's Comment is free America, "Mad men in cable news land." It's about the coverage leading up to and through Hillary Clinton's speech last night, and what it revealed about the media, and what it revealed about her:

And then the coup de grace, as Olbermann noted that "people have questioned what Senator Clinton's motives might be going into this speech," then pondered, sincerely, "Is it possible, and I know in this cynical year it seems almost silly to ask this question, but is it just not possible that she could genuinely believe that the nation can't sustain itself with another four years of Republican rule and that that's the motivation going into tonight's speech for her?" This is what it had come to at last – the possibility that Clinton has integrity was being discussed like the remotest possibility in the multiverse, something "silly" to consider, the idea that Clinton is motivated primarily by not wanting Republicans to win presented as the zaniest outlier of all conceivable motivations.

It was, perhaps, too much to expect that reason could penetrate the MSNBC bubble inside which Olbermann is cloistered – and supporting evidence for the void of said reason soon presented itself in the gruesome spectre of Pat Buchanan, still considered an appropriate national commentator, despite the fact that he should long ago have been relegated to the dustbin of history, unfit to comment on bullfrog racing, no less the Democratic convention.

When we catch up with the manic Matthews again, he is in full meltdown, barking at Clinton supporter Lisa Caputo questions about how the Clintons are going to win the White House back for the Clinton family. Caputo laughs at his suggestion that the Clintons have a "restoration plan" to recapture the White House. "I'm SERIOUS," he insists. Yes, that's precisely the problem, you crazy, crazy man.

Read the whole thing here.