The talking head pundits at MSNBC and CNN are on a pro-Hillary riff after apparently feeling shamed by NBC's Saturday Night Live skit two weeks ago that portrayed Sen. Clinton as a hapless but bright, cheery victim of their bias and Sen. Obama as a bumbling, blank moron (played by a weirdly blackened-faced white man).

In particular, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who I usually find to be tactlessly accurate in his colorful, smashmouth manner, and MSNBC Chief Washington Correspondent Norah O'Donnell, a thinly disguised Hillary supporter who seemingly half-tears up and trembles on-camera when Clinton loses, have spent much of the past week glorifying and publicizing every fake outrage and minor moment promoted by the Clinton campaign camp to vilify rival Barack Obama.

Take, for instance, the one-sentence faux pas by frustrated Obama staffer Samantha Power who commented to a Scottish reporter about Sen. Clinton, "She is a monster... that is off the record... she is stooping to anything."

Let's analyze Power's off-the-cuff remark: Sen. Hillary Clinton is obviously not a monster, but her campaign has, indeed, engaged in monstrously dishonest and unethical behavior lately.... behavior dubbed "trial by smear" by Jonathan Chait at The New Republic. The New York Times wrote of their Democratic endorsee on March 5th:

"Mrs. Clinton’s camp continues to be responsible for most of the nastiness we’ve seen this primary season, and there were signs that they were drawing the wrong lesson from Tuesday’s vote: that 'red phone' ads and hardball tactics will win the day."

And Times columnist David Brooks astutely observed:

"Clinton can’t compete on personality, but a knife fight is her only real hope of victory. She has nothing to lose because she never promised to purify America."

Matthews and O'Donnell abetted each stab of the Clinton knife of Bush-style fake outrage over this non-incident by ooohing and aaahing on Hardball over "ugly" behavior by the Obama camp while shaking their heads in sad disbelief at Sen. Clinton's tragic victimization. (See Clinton plays Victim and Victimizer by Roger Simon at Politico.com.)

In their serious-faced discussion, the two MSNBCers never once mentioned that ugly behavior (think South Carolina and Nevada) is major, planned component of the Clinton campaign strategy, and that by all objective measures, the Clinton camp easily eclipses Obama-ites in the ugly campaign incident count.

But here's what amazed me most about the stunningly pro-Hillary tilt of Matthews and O'Donnell over the trivial "monster" comment... they treated Samantha Power as just another dizzy, inexperienced staffer without referring to her formidable credentials. Or especially, to her substantial credibility.

In fact, 37-year-old Samantha Power is a Pulitzer Prize winning non-fiction author, a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, and the Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy in the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.

Ms. Power speaks with great intelligence and credibility, albeit as a novice in diversionary political spin. (Watch her recent, mesmerizing interview with Charlie Rose, if you harbor doubts about this woman's staggering intellect and insight.)

That Matthews and O'Donnell merely flashed a photo of a wind-disheveled Power and mentioned only her name in passing indicates that either they intentionally underplayed her considerable credibility, or they hadn't done their homework, and didn't know who she was.

In either case, Chris Matthews and Norah O'Donnell automatically presumed the rightness of Hillary Clinton's stern, camera-ready rants about one short sentence unrelated to campaign issues, uttered in naive confidence, thousands of miles from U.S. shores.

Sloppy, Slanted Journalism
This isn't good journalism. At best, it's sloppy, rag-tag reporting, designed to hype ratings and to, consciously or unconsciously, help Hillary Clinton's sputtering campaign for the presidential nomination.

Or to purposefully make-up for stupid anti-Hillary comments made in recent months by MSNBC, including by correspondent David Shuster (Remember the Chelsea Clinton "Pimped Out" fiasco?) and Matthews' January 9th remarks that the reason why Hillary Clinton is "a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around."

Regardless of the reasons, cable political news coverage by the top talking heads is rapidly becoming hard to ever believe. And CNN and FOX News are no more credible than MSNBC.

If it weren't for smart and rational, non-partisan analysis by MSNBC's Chuck Todd and CNN's John King, those two cable giants would lose all pretense of non-subjective election race coverage.

At this rate, and despite all forecasts to the contrary, NBC, ABC and CBS nightly news and top print newspapers just might yet stage a comeback as leaders of political news coverage.

God knows... at this urgent time in our country's history, we desperately need some source of political news devoid of pundit shrillness, partisan hackery and sheer sloppiness. News we can actually believe.

Related Reading
Profile of Chris Matthews, Host of MSNBC's Hardball
Tim Russert - Judge, Jury & Limelight Hog: Top Five Worst Moments of the MSNBC Democratic Debate
Hillary Clinton's Saturday Night Live Bump (Political Humor at About.com)

New York Times, March 8, 2008: Confronting the Kitchen Sink by Bob Herbert
The New Republic, March 6, 2008: Go Already! by Jonathan Chait
New York Times, March 7, 2008: Playing by Clinton Rules by David Brooks
Politico.com, March 3, 2008: Clinton plays Victim and Victimizer