By DAVE HAMRICK
Editor-at-large

Do you ever wonder who is running for the U.S. Senate from Montana?

Or Georgia, for that matter.

If you go by news coverage, you would think there's only one Senate race in the country — I'm sure you can guess which one I'm referring to.

The phrase “liberal media bias” has lost its meaning and its impact through frequent use. Pity. It so perfectly describes the fawning with which the national media are treating Her Majes... I mean the first lady's attempt to use the fame that comes to her because of her husband's career to launch her own.

Name one other scenario in which a candidacy for Senate, announced by a person who has never held any kind of elected office and who is seeking votes in a state in which she has never lived, would get national media attention.

The whole “will she, won't she” farce that was played out over the fall was (excuse the expression) hilarious. Yet it was treated quite seriously by the network TV organizations, often preempting real news.

By the way, if I had cared enough, I would have predicted she would not run. All the signals being sent indicated she was backing away. Then that whole circus happened in which she botched a direct question in front of TV cameras and a live audience.

Yes, I'm saying she botched it. If you watched her answer, she in no way intended that to be taken as an affirmative answer. “The answer is yes... I intend to run...” She emphasized the word far more in her inflection than I did with my underline.

My theory is that she also intended to follow that line with: “but the final decision has not been made,” only the caveat got drowned in the audience reaction, and suddenly she had stumbled into an announcement.

But the most comical aspect of it all was that the networks all ran the “announcement” as their top story.

In the face of all the newsworthy goings on in the world, you have to ask yourself why. And then you have to realize that there's only one logical answer. The people who make those decisions desperately want to see Hillary Clinton elected to the Senate as a stepping stone to the presidency.

Later those same networks, along with some national magazines and newspapers, made a big deal out of New York's routine arrest of some homeless people.

The reason many of those people are on the streets is because a liberal Congress passed a law back in the '80s that made it illegal to keep mentally ill people in institutions against their will.

So all the folks in the institutions got dumped on the streets without any ability to care for themselves.

New York's arrests take place only if the homeless people being arrested refuse to go to shelters and refuse to do a little work to pay for their keep.

If a similar arrest had taken place in Worcester, Mass., maybe we wouldn't have buried six firefighters last month.

But, back to the main topic. Considering that similar arrests take place in just about every major city everyday, the national attention given in New York is puzzling at best.

Even with Senate-level politics driving the story, the national media generally leave those kinds of events to the local and statewide media in the area directly involved.

The existence of a liberal bias among the national media is no longer in question, nor is the willingness of many news organizations to abandon ethical considerations and openly present their personal opinions in the guise of objective news coverage.

The only questions are how far they will go, and whether the majority of people in this country will ever catch on.

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