Is there a counter point to this?

from "The Meme Prisoner", by John Heilemann

The implications of Obama’s and Clinton’s respective meta-narratives for their press coverage have been profound. For Clinton, the inability to change the story line meant that any vaguely negative maneuver was interpreted in the darkest possible light, for it reinforced a preexisting supposition. For Obama, however, any criticism could be fended off as a manifestation of grubby old politics. And any act he committed that could be perceived as nefarious created cognitive dissonance. [A] prime example is the case of Tony Rezko, the now-indicted Chicago fixer and slumlord to whom Obama has been linked for many years. “There was no way for the press to believe it wasn’t true—because, you know, it looks like people are going to jail,” [Marion Just, a political scientist at Wellesley] says. “So instead the press dismisses the story as an aberration.”

The trouble for Obama is that the Republicans aren’t terribly likely to let that dismissal stand [. . .] Again and again, as Clinton often points out, the GOP has proved painfully adept at taking compelling, carefully honed meta-narratives and blowing them to pieces. In ways too numerous to mention, Obama has been toughened up by the primary process. But no matter what his handlers say, the notion that he’s been subjected to the most withering press scrutiny imaginable is—how to put this?—a fairy tale. His success has turned in no small part on his skill at avoiding such flyspecking, and on his rival’s inability to muster the same kind of dexterity. If Obama winds up facing John McCain, a man whose meta-narrative is spun from pure gold, he is unlikely to be so fortunate again.

I remember asking a friend (pro-Obama) about when Clinton fired her campaign manager, trying to parse exactly what it means, etc, and his immediate reaction was something along the lines of, "as if that wasn't exquisitely calibrated by the Clinton team." Seriously, has that kind of thing been said about Obama yet? Double-standard is a pretty loaded term, especially in this age of post-identity politics, but what else are you supposed to call it?