Diane Sawyer gets very low marks from this LA Times journalist for the The Punch and Judy Dean Show that aired last night:

Out of the 96 questions that Sawyer asked, 90 were about personality and temperament and only six were even vaguely about issues; virtually all 96 were hostile and negative.

When Dean tried to move the discussion to matters of substance, Sawyer inevitably pushed it back to negative fluff. ("I just want to make sure that I come back on a couple of things --” one thing, you said that --” that you decided that you've got to be yourself. That you've got to return to being what you really aren't. What were you that was not who you really were?")

Dean's natural response should have been, at some point, to have cut Sawyer off: "Excuse me, I'm tired of answering these superficial questions. Can't we talk about issues that matter to the American people?" Had he done so, however, it would have appeared to confirm the rap on him as a hothead. So the Deans were forced into the frame supplied by Sawyer -- as a father who gets excited at his son's hockey game can't be trusted; a woman doctor who doesn't watch much TV isn't really a normal American.

[link via Atrios.]

In better news for Dean, a government employees' union is spending $1.6 million to help him get the nomination.