The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel today has companion "profile pieces" on U.S. Senate candidates Tammy Baldwin and Tommy Thompson. Admittedly, these are both intended to be fluff pieces, introducing the reader to the personal side of each candidate. I realize I'm not an objective reader, but to me it seems even in fluff pieces they manager to make Baldwin's more fawning and sympathetic. Is there anything in the piece on Thompson that compares with this?

But still, it must sting to be portrayed, as she is in these advertisements, as bellicose and extreme. Here she opens a window on how she remains poised.

"I think it kind of weighs you down if you watch it all the time," she says. "I'm aware of what's up there by having watched it once on a computer screen. But I just steer clear of it because it's really important for me on the campaign trail to have a positive attitude as I'm meeting with voters and people in real time. That's my strategy for dealing with it."

Hum, I don't recall seeing any empathy for Thompson for "the sting he must be feeling" over the vicious things being said about him. And inherent in that statement is the belief that it's false to portray her as extreme(the belicose statement is enitrely subjective). But extreme isn't:

Voting against body armor for troops

Voting against honoring victims of 9/11

Voting against sanctions on Iran until it was politically expedient

Accepting 60k from a group that opposes sanctions

Wanting unversial-single payer, government run health care.

That IS extreme. The media in general in Wisconsin and the Journal Sentinel in particular, have had a difficult time hiding their enthusiasm for Baldwin. Again, both of this pieces were shot with "the gauzy lens." Somehow, the piece on Baldwin seems more sympathetic and defensive of her. Is it just me?