Skip to content, or skip to search.  Skip to content, or skip to
search.  The N-Word  Who went negative first? Who cares? The
real problem is that both candidates are running safe, one-
dimensional campaigns.   So we've entered the inevitable
Officially Nasty phase of the campaign. It arrived, in
comparison to your average campaign, at least three weeks early;
but by the logic of this baggy marathon of a race, the only
surprising thing is that it didn't hit a little earlier. The
Officially Nasty phase includes, almost as if by law, an inning
or two of finger-pointing about who "went negative" first, in an
effort to claim some sort of moral high ground that of course
doesn't exist in campaigns. This, too, is unsurprising, except
that it has to be said that the Lazio camp is the hands-down
winner of the René Magritte ceci n'est pas une pipe, Surrealism-
in-Advertising Award for taking last week's attack ad against
Hillary Clinton -- which carried so much negative voltage that
the Daily News put it on its front pa