I HOPE YOU'RE SITTING DOWN: SHOCKINGLY, POLS OTHER THAN THE CLINTONS HAVE CLOSE MEDIA TIES

So I guess I was supposed to be appalled today at this story from the Washington Free Beacon:

A little-known private foundation controlled by Bill and Hillary Clinton donated $100,000 to the New York Times’ charitable fund in 2008, the same year the newspaper’s editorial page endorsed Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary, according to tax documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon....

The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund is a charity affiliated with the newspaper that assists underprivileged New Yorkers. It is run by members of the New York Times Company’s board of directors and senior executives.

The Times’ editorial board endorsed Clinton against Democratic challengers John Edwards and Barack Obama on January 25, 2008, writing that she was “more qualified, right now, to be president.”

At the time, there were reports that the Times board had leaned toward endorsing Obama, but was overruled by then-chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. ...

Well, if that was intended as a bribe, it seems like money foolishly spent. Look at the results of the 2008 primaries. The Times endorsement wasn't worth much.

We're supposed to be aghast at this, but meanwhile we overlook the fact that Mitch McConnell's wife, Elaine Chao, is on the News Corp board of directors. You say Hillary had a contested primary in '08? McConnell had a fairly serious primary challenge in 2014 from a teabagger named Matt Bevin. Do you supposed maybe it helped McConnell at Fox News that his wife had been on the News Corp board since 2012? (I'm not discussing the general election because Fox would have backed McConnell against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes no matter what.)

And now there's a big presidential contest taking place in the Republican Party -- and if you were watching NBC News tonight, you could have seen Jeb Bush's mother being interviewed by Jeb's niece, who's a regular NBC correspondent:



Yeah, I know -- Chelsea Clinton used to have an NBC gig, too. But the point is that this sort of political-media incestuousness is not unique to the Clintons. It just seems as if we talk about it only when it involves the Clintons.