New York Magazine writer John Hellemann looks at the potential reasons why Obama has come under so little scrutiny in Election 2008 while Clinton has received nothing but. The author looks at the current state, potential causes, long-term effects and more.

From the article:

Divergence in tone is one thing, double standards are another. And it’s the latter that most galls the former advisers to the other, now-departed, Democratic candidates. “Obama has been able to get away with a stunning amount of hypocrisy that would get called on her,” says one such operative. “They’ve run the nastiest, most deceptive pieces of paid media: the mailer they did lying about her health-care plan, with the Harry and Louise look-alikes. The idea that it took Hillary growling Tony Rezko’s name in a debate to get any national coverage. How he complained in Iowa about 527s and then had them supporting him like crazy in Nevada and California. And nobody says a peep about it. It’s fu^&ing comical!”

There are countless other examples of this syndrome, both large and small. The way that Clinton’s famous fumbling of a question about whether illegal immigrants should be allowed to have driver’s licenses in a debate last fall was hammered on for weeks—whereas Obama’s flubbing of the same question in the next debate was essentially let slide. The way that Obama’s evisceration of his rival in his stump speeches was applauded by the media—whereas Clinton’s plunge into negative territory was widely condemned. The way that Clinton was roundly criticized for being inaccessible, and thus unaccountable, to the press—when Obama has since January been even less available for questioning than she.

The article largely comes to the conclusion that it is the meta-narrative of each candidate that is responsible for this disparity. Obama is a new commodity who is surging up, Clinton is a known commodity that has no room to go but down and all the stuff inbetween that fits into both camps just writes itself. The PR, the message crafting played into the coverage. Rather than reporters looking for the answers, they went with the spin to help build pre-existing notions. Obama rising up from nothing, Clinton stagnating from the top.

I call it all terrible reporting, bias and a sign of just how indiscernible this nations Fourth Estate is from the three branches of government, corporate America, and the Liberal sections of the Entertainment Industry and Academia. But that is just my take.