No time to post proper on this cold and blustery day – I’ve stayed home from our usual Westhaven-Trinidad Saturday morning jaunt to work (on my one day “off,” woe is me) – but while crunching some buttered and jammed toast, a quick skim of Salon provided this particularly interesting read:

The sorry performance of ABC anchors Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos in this week’s final Democratic primary debate should serve as a signal of the coverage to come. Playing gotcha with Democrats and patty-cake with Republicans will remain basic operating procedure for the mainstream media this year, no different from the past half-dozen presidential campaigns — except that the additional bias in favor of John McCain may make a bad situation worse.

And as Barack Obama should have learned during the debate’s first 45 minutes, if not before, the same fuzzy but obsessive focus on “character” that plagues Bill and Hillary Clinton will be turned on him with equal or greater ferocity by those who once claimed to admire him. He is now subject to the “Clinton rules,” which have long permitted pundits, editorialists and reporters to indict the former president and first lady for sins that other politicians, mostly Republican, may commit with impunity (see Gingrich, Newt, first, second and especially third marriage).

Again, whole read here.