Fighting Dirty

Voters have been clear: we don't want a negative campaign; we want to talk about issues, not in-fighting. So the candidates are trying to rise above the fray, but that doesn't mean that there's no fray. Before there's a VP candidate to sic on the opponent, there are familial surrogates to do the dirty work. JFK had RFK, which allowed him to seem so golden. Hillary has Bill. And . . . Barack has Michelle:

"Our view is that if you can't run your own house, you certainly can't run the White House."

Damn. In her defense, she was talking about how she and her husband put their children first, how even in the midst of all this campaigning, she's home every night to put them to bed, there every morning to get them off to school. She claims that she was only talking about her own family, and not taking a swipe at Clinton.

I hope that's so, because if it was a back-handed suggestion that because Clinton's husband committed adultery, she is not fit to be President, well, I think that's ugly on a number of levels.

When is the Fourth Estate going to respect what voters keep saying they want? If we want news, we have no choice but to continue consuming what they spew out, but this whole "attack" hype was generated by media clips of Michelle Obama's comment, divorced from its context, labeled as a probable swipe at Senator Clinton. Yes, it got my attention . . . but left me feeling disgusted by the cheap trick once I'd read the context.

Then again, while it's true that in context she was talking about her own family, in an election like this one, the obvious comparison is always implied.