bleungberg.com

NBC’s respected Washington bureau chief Tim Russert has died of a sudden heart-attack in his office at Washington. Tribute programmes and retrospective shows are all over the cable new networks. Naturally, colleagues and friends are contributing to those shows, with the usual suspects Barbara Walters, Bob Schieffer, Ted Koppel lining up to pay tribute to the anchorman.

And then there’s Senator John Edwards.

Good grief, this vain, vanquished politician just pops up whenever the opportunity arises. Someone should tell him that he’s not running for president of the United States anymore, and has next to no chance of being the next vice-president.

For years, the two sides hated each other.

But in order to derail the Democratic Presidential nomination campaign, the right-wing media in the US galvanised its followers in doing everything they can to sabotage Barack Obama’s presidential bid. That meant ’supporting’ Hillary Clinton even though they have a long history of mutual loathing.

Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Dick Morriss, Howard Stern, Brit Hume and even the grand dame of the right Ann Coulter all endorsed Hillary, or at least, urged their followers to pour in to support Mrs Clinton, mess up the Democrats, prolong the in-fighting, and allow John McCain an easy passage to the conventions in July.

We therefore enjoyed numerous negative, mud-slinging and dirt dug up on Obama in the past few months, and contrast that with the largely favourable coverage of Mrs Clinton on the radio, Fox News and in the New York Post or Washington Times.

Sadly, it didn’t come off. And now, they have to spend the next half a year deciding what to do with a black dude who will probably win, and a very old right-wing hawk who is apparently too liberal for them.

What a tough choice for O’Reilly and his chums to make!