Bloggers are talking about Hillary Clinton’s latest tactics and the boffo sales for Grand Theft Auto IV.
She said what? Hillary Clinton gave an interview to USA Today Wednesday in which she argued her now-anemic case for continuing in the Democratic race: “I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.” She then cited an Associated Press piece that “found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in [Indiana and North Carolina] who had not completed college were supporting me.” Bloggers can’t contain their anger.
Andrew Sullivan is incredulous: “Does she hear herself? ‘Working, hard-working Americans, white Americans.’ ‘Whites in both states.’ If a Republican said this about a black opponent, his career would be in jeopardy for racism.” Sebastian at Obsidian Wings agrees, and Workbench calls Clinton’s comments “offensive.”
Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money is aghast: “See, Obama’s coalition is bigger. But Clinton’s is broader, because it consists of more Real Americans and fewer [insert adjectives from RNC attack ad here] elitists and Shiftless Negroes.” Amen to that, saysOliver Willis, an African-American and an Obama supporter: “Even professional haters like Pat Buchanan and his ilk aren’t so balls-out about racism. You’ve been getting your ass handed to you and especially among black voters. This shows me once again that we - who are apparently lazy and shiftless non-Americans based on your definition - have yet again been a leading indicator.”
“The Clintons are using racism to try to win the nomination against a black man,” says liberal John Aravosis at AMERICAblog. “And our party leaders are okay with it. (Well, in all fairness, our congressional leaders said that Hillary had better not adopt a ‘negative tone.’ They never said she couldn’t adopt a racist one.) Is it any wonder blacks aren’t voting for Hillary? They shouldn’t vote for Hillary, ever again.” But Markos Moulitsas at DailyKos isn’t surprised: “She’s already ignored and belittled every state and voter demographic that doesn’t support her. So it only follows that since in her world, the only things that are important are things that support her, she’d ignore election results in favor of the one (outdated) poll that confirms her manufactured reality.”
Kim Priestap at Wizbang condemns her: “The Clintons are not accustomed to losing and it seems they’re going to make the Democratic party pay for not choosing her. This primary may end up in court by the time the dust settles.”
Should Obama pay Clinton to get out of the race, which A.J. Sparxx at PoliPundit calls a “slobberknocker”? The Huffington Post’s Thomas Edsall raises the possibility. And Ann Althouse smacks it down: “Clinton spent her own money on her campaign. How is it permissible for Obama to refill Clinton’s personal bank account? I don’t know the election law here. I am simply asking why this outrageous bribery is even allowed.” Josh Marshall, who also thinks Hillary wouldn’t want to be the vice president, makes the obvious point about why it’s a bad idea: “[U]sing more than $10 million raised in large part by small individual donations to pay back the Clintons who appear to be worth many tens of millions of dollars simply seems wrong. … [T]hat is simply too much money raised from small givers to give to people who loaned it with full knowledge of the odds and have more than enough money to really know what to do with.”
Finally, Matt Welch at Reason’s Hit & Run writes: “I sincerely hope Hillary takes it all the way to the convention, even if that means I won’t be able to watch cable TV for a few months. Few prospects would delight me more than seeing the Clintons stand up on a national stage in front of the political party they’ve long dominated and then get showered with richly deserved boos.”
Read more about Hillary’s new strategy. Slate’s “Deathwatch” isn’t giving Clinton very good odds these days.
Grand Theft a boon to the economy: Grand Theft Auto IV has sold 6 million copies and reaped more than $500 million in its first week on the market, breaking every record for video games.
Headerfile does a little math: “But think about this: the last release of GTA (Vice City Stories) was in Oct 2006, so they’ve been working on this latest release for at least 1.5 years. Let’s say it was 2 years. Let’s say they had 100 guys working on it averaging $100k each. That’s $20M over 2 years. Let’s double it to account for overhead expenses. So in 1 week, they’ve arguably made an 1100% return on their investment.” And Michael Gay at Lost Remote compares the haul to Spider-Man 3’s $381.6 million weekend take: ” ‘As I’ve written off and on over the years, video games are becoming interactive movies, and they’ll ultimately replace most of the traditional Hollywood movie industry.’ Grand Theft Auto appears to be the first to realize that possibility.”
Salon’s Machinist reports: “[T]here’s another stat worth noting – ‘Iron Man’ took in more than $100 million at the box office over the weekend. There’d been some speculation that ‘GTA’ would cause young men to stay indoors this week, lowering the take at the cinema.”
Visual Nightmare points out that haters must be disappointed: “Everyone was probably waiting to see if RockStar would get back at the devil known as Jack Thompson, who’s driving a campaign over getting rid of the blasphemy that the game is. Apparently he’s the only one by the looks of those numbers.” Global Nerdy links to a video that imagines what the crisp, realistic graphics would have been like, circa 1990.
Read more about Grand Theft Auto IV.
