Hard copy heads, soft heads, dramatic prose: color is purple

Sun-Times page one home-delivery head is Mary Mitchell column.

“Obama’s verdict: ‘She delivered.’”

Chi Trib’s is a bit more tentative.

“Did she sell it?”

Wall St. Journal’s is reportorial.

“Clinton calls for unity”

Washington Post (online) digs deeper.

“‘STILL BITTER’ Many Clinton Supporters Say Speech Didn’t Heal Divisions” 

Great speech, says Post,

But when Clinton stepped off the stage and the standing ovation faded into silence, many of her supporters were left with a sobering realization: Even a tremendous speech couldn’t erase their frustrations.

S-T’s using column for head has precedent.  Other day they headlined a Carol Marin column: “Nepotitis!”  No cure, etc.  (I thought Marin was terminally ill with a new disease, but they were talking about nepotism in Illinois politics.)

Trib’s Jim Tankersley does workmanlike job, and that’s a compliment, giving us a good hard lede:

DENVER – It would have made a good acceptance speech. But that was not hers to give, and so, for a highly anticipated half-hour on Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton swallowed defeat and urged her supporters to accept Barack Obama.

Ditto Wall St. online story, rewritten for later deadline, different readership:

DENVER — Sen. Hillary Clinton’s speech to Democrats here Tuesday night was arguably as vital to the party’s hopes for winning the White House as Sen. Barack Obama’s big address will be Thursday.

Meanwhile, back at the online Trib, if you don’t mind throwing up, try Dawn Turner Trice, billed as telling us African Americans ‘felt sucker punched’ — AA’s “and others” actually, just before telling readers, “You tell me.”

Glad to.  Start with the lede ‘graf of her junior-high prize-winning writeup, blog-style:

By the time I raced over to the Pepsi Center tonight, the fire marshals and Secret Service had shut the hall down. Many of the entrances to the main event were cordoned off. The convention hall was filled to capacity. Hillary was about to speak. Hillary in her hot tangerine pantsuit. Hillary with the FIRE in her belly.

Oh my.  We are going all Norman Mailer, are we?  Armies of the night, anyone?  Go girl.

I watched her speech from the press tent a few yards away from the main hall.

I wouldn’t be telling you anything you didn’t already know if I said the first thing you feel (not see—because the feeling hits you in the gut) about Sen. Hillary Clinton is that she’s a complicated figure.

If we already know, why is she telling us?  Feeling hits in gut?  Who would have thought that?  H. is not just complicated, but “a complicated figure.”  Yes.  Leave tight writing for Western Union.

Love her or hate her, she’s tough as hell. It’s hard not to — at the very least — stand in awe of a woman who wins 18 million votes in a presidential contest. She calls it 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling. I couldn’t agree more.

And yet, that gut feeling you get sometimes turns to queasy.

I feel her queasiness.  

Hillary called it 18 million cracks, and Michelle used the phrase.  Quick reference here, pls.  Some of us non-Hillary-fans didn’t get Michelle’s allusion.

Turner T. offers this insightful remark, again in junior-high-winning prose, this time with a bit of Hemingway:

Hillary Clinton was determined to win during the primary. She wanted it—badly. [sic]

Wow.  And the stunning closer:

Hillary Rodham Clinton is a fighter. That’s who she is, through and through. [Blah blah]  Yes, the primary got ugly. It became divisive. She and her husband danced some not-so-fancy footwork around the color line. African Americans (and others) felt sucker punched.

But, in the end, it wasn’t personal. The Senator from New York [dramatic flourish here] delivered a winning speech tonight. It’s time for her newly minted detractors to shake it off?

Shake it off?  Her newly minted detractors?  What the hell is she talking about?

You tell me. 

I don’t know.