At an event for Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley in Boston on Oct. 24, Hillary Clinton told the assembled Democratic faithful: "Don't let anybody tell you that, you know, it's corporations and businesses that create jobs."
This makes about as much sense as "Don't let anyone say that it's governments that tax people." In attempt to dig out of this rhetorical face-plant, Clinton contended at an event in New York on Oct. 27 that she had "shorthanded this point" in a way that confused the public about what she actually meant. But now listen to her "clarification:"
"Our economy grows when businesses and entrepreneurs create good-paying jobs here in an America where workers and families are empowered to build from the bottom up and the middle out -- not when we hand out tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs or stash their profits overseas."
That sounds like a hundred Democratic Party stump speeches, creating the evil Snidely Whiplash corporate villain. It also affirms the obvious fact that business creates employment -- at least in a free market economy. That's not a "clarification" of her incredibly stupid gaffe. It's not fixing a "shorthanding." It's a badly disguised retraction.
To Republicans, this sounded like a more illiterate version of Barack Obama's lame 2012 campaign dismissal of that free market economy when he told business "You didn't build that." Entrepreneurs should always credit their success to government-funded highways and teachers, and never to their own skills in the marketplace. It attaches Clinton to Obama's radical waist, and that's not good when he's sporting the lowest-ever approval ratings for an incumbent president.
Team Clinton knows, however, that it can get away with all of this, at least within the "objective" press. There was no coverage of this ridiculous gaffe on ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR or PBS. CNN twice obsessed over whether Hillary and Sen. Elizabeth Warren should have hugged or posed together at the Coakley event, ignoring the idiotic remarks. The same diversion bubbled up Saturday with weekend talk-show host Steve Kornacki on MSNBC.
The New York Times reproduced the stupid remark in a Sunday story, albeit on page A-13, in paragraph 10, when the reader has lost interest. But that was better than the competition. There was no coverage in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, or USA Today. Even the local Boston Globe skipped over the remark. Reporter Akilah Johnson just offered campaign boilerplate from Hillary, such as: "We cannot possibly rest between now and Nov. 4. ... You don't want to wake up the day after this election and say, 'I wish I could have done more.' "
Ken Thomas and Philip Marcelo filed a story for the Associated Press, and skipped the stupidity entirely. This was their chosen Hillary quote to reproduce, touting Coakley in a close race: "From my perspective, it shouldn't even really be a race. It should not even be close, but we're living during an election season where it's close everywhere ... and that's why Martha needs you."
The people who complain that our news media consumption is too "polarized" -- and their assumption that conservatives depend too much on alternative media -- fail to acknowledge how our traditional "news" media are consistently burying Democrat gaffes they don't want anyone to hear about. When Hillary says something stupid, they want it to be just like that metaphorical tree that falls silently in the forest. Peace and quiet is comforting.
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