Very Bad Journalism: Clinton a PC, Obama a Mac

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 3/18/2008 07:52:00 PM
Dear readers, you can rest assured that I too like creating memorable taglines like the one above. However, I think that I have a responsibility to ensure that the content of the post illuminates the title. There is an article in today's New York Times that purports Missus Clinton as a Microsoft clone while Barack Obama is a sleek Macintosh. Notwithstanding my use of Windows Vista with no problems whatsoever and successfully updated today to Service Pack 1 status, it irks me that the media wants to get away with this sort of character assassination. I do not want to go over the entire article, but here is an example of egregious favoritism. Here is a snippet from the accursed piece:

“Hillary’s is way more hectic, it’s got all these, what look like parody ads,” said Ms. Twemlow, who is not a citizen and cannot vote in the election. [Well, neither can I.]

Jason Santa Maria, creative director of Happy Cog Studios, which designs Web sites, detected a basic breach of netiquette. “Hillary’s text is all caps, like shouting,” he said. There are “many messages vying for attention,” he said, adding, “Candidates are building a brand and it should be consistent.”

So the Clinton site has all caps. Is it an example of uncouth netiquette as the critics cited above yammer? Well, let's take a look at the polished effort of that sleek 21st century candidate, Barack Obama:

Gee, there seems to be plenty of "shouting" going on there as well, eh? Very bad show, New York Times. Overall, I rate the Clinton site higher for its usability than the Obama one--the latter has way too much dead space to look "pretty" which it really doesn't. Form over function--draw your own conclusions.