The press had a finger on the scale for Obama, both in the primaries and the general election. They gave him more favorable attention than they gave his opponents. They defended him from attacks, unfair and fair, and criticized his opponents for making them. I don’t think that’s disputable or surprising.

Bill Clinton also benefited from a friendly press corps. With their baby boomer background, more liberal views, and Ivy League lawyer credentials, the Clintons fit the mold of many of the baby boomer reporters. In time, of course, the press would turn on Clinton. In the 1992 campaign, however, it seemed to me that some news outlets allowed their zeal for change to undermine their high standards of journalistic objectivity. (The pattern would later repeat with another exciting candidate promising change, Barack Obama.)

In time, of course, the press would turn on Clinton. In the 1992 campaign, however, it seemed to me that some news outlets allowed their zeal for change to undermine their high standards of journalistic objectivity. (The pattern would later repeat with another exciting candidate promising change, Barack Obama.)

good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.

I didn't expect that anyone would be interested in my kind of writing. I was interested, and this was for me enough.

Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.

In most of my campaigns, I find it is best not to mention my opponent by name because, by doing so, it just gives him a chance to get into the headlines.

Cynics criticize, and winners analyze

You can’t control what sort of criticism you receive, but you can control how you react to it.

I have the job and the title and the letters after my name that black people are so fond of calling our educational credentials. Still, there is some tension about how I got here and what I do here. I feel the tension from colleagues who cannot process why I receive so much attention. I feel it from publics who cannot fathom why I do not get more attention or different kinds of attention. Editors want me to be a journalist. Journalists want me to stay as far away from their beat as possible. Publishers want a black woman on their pages without the expense of adding one to their mastheads. No one quite knows what to make of the work that represents the intellectual journey I took from little black girl to black woman who thinks for a living.

I was basically good. Not understood, and not even liked, but even so, just, and better than just. I was merciful.

I worried about the growing opposition, but publicly my posture was to take the offensive and concede nothing to my critics. When a reporter later asked me why I got a forty-year tax abatement, I answered, “Because I didn’t ask for fifty.

I like to watch the news, because I don't like people very much and when you watch the news ... if you ever had an idea that people were really terrible, you could watch the news and know that you're right.

I caught the rest of it in one of those snob columns in the society section of the paper. I don't read them often, only when I run out of things to dislike......I threw the paper into the corner and turned on the TV set. After the society page dog vomit even the wrestlers looked good.