Well, you knew the corporate media’s coverage of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential run would be bad–but did anyone expect it to be this bad?
Sanders plans a trip to New Hampshire this weekend and will have a more formal campaign launch in Vermont. The Washington news conference Thursday included classic Sanders moments, the 73-year old senator held a folded paper in one hand and hunched over the podium. A breeze caught strands of his white hair, emphasizing a feature that’s commented on almost as frequently as Clinton’s various coifs.
“The hair kind of throws me for a loop,” offered Robert Palmer, a Burlington resident who was strolling with his dog near Lake Champlain Thursday, taking advantage of crisp clear weather. “Brush it. Fix it. Do something.”
Palmer wasn’t the only one to bring up Sanders unkempt look with no prompting. Dwight Stauffer, a 49-year-old shopping for collard greens at a Burlington market that specializes in local food put it like this: “He looks like Einstein.”
Yeah, let’s focus on his hair. Not his views–which, as Thom Hartmann points out, are well within the American mainstream. Not his leadership. Not his ability to potentially supplant Hillary Clinton as the likely Democratic nominee. His freakin’ hair.
Does this sort of clownishness ever end?
After reading this…this…stuff, I have a new appreciation for such figures as MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, who treated Sanders’s candidacy with actual respect:
It’s good to see Schultz and Sanders discuss such issues as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Sanders and Rep. Alan Grayson (among others) have condemned as a clear and present threat to the middle class. With the exception of Schultz, corporate-media coverage of the TPP just isn’t there. You’ll find more stories about Sen. Sanders’s hair.
UPDATE: Speaking of the TPP, Rep. Grayson fiercely condemned President Obama’s support for the deal in his April 30th appearance on investigative journalist Brad Friedman’s now-daily BradCast. This is definitely a must-listen.
