During the presidential campaign last fall, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speculated that no “elite television journalist” ever asked Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin about her “actual career in Alaska”:
The media paid as little attention to her record in office as they did to that of their preferred candidate, Barack Obama, choosing instead to craft an image for each of them. Perhaps Todd Purdum’s recent hit piece on the accomplished Alaska Governor prompted this thought from our reader Leah, expressed in an e-mailed:
Obama and Palin as two sides of the same coin, their records and accomplishments (or lack thereof) are ignored, one is loved for being handsome, young and debonair, the other hated for being young, beautiful and very talented.
Pretty much sums it up. Like columnists for Hollywood fan magazines, the better part of the reporters covering the 2008 presidential campaign and now currently covering the President and the Governor of Alaska are more interested in image than substance. Obama is cool and hip, uses a blackberry, Palin is, her looks notwithstanding, old-fashioned and hypocritical, with trailer-trash in-laws.
I really don’t need bother reading Purdum’s piece because he’s not interested in reporting honestly on the Governor of Alaska, but feeding the media narrative about the incompetence and arrogance of this good-looking, happily married conservative woman. I mean, can you trust a guy who claims that, as Bill Kristol puts it (quoting Purdum)
. . . “several” Alaskans independently told Purdum that they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders? I don’t believe it for a moment. I’ve (for better or worse) moved in pretty well-educated circles in my life, and I’ve gone decades without “several” people telling me they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Noting how different reporters how come to different conclusions about Palin’s mood, Jim Geraghty, paraphrasing the President’s words about himself*, wonders if “Sarah Palin is now a blank slate, upon which national magazine writers project whatever negative narrative they prefer“. Just as much “news” reporting about Obama says more about those doing the reporting than does it does about the President, so does much journalism about Palin say more about the journalist than it does about the Governor of Alaska.
In his Palinpalooza, Robert Stacy McCain finds finds this all relates to the media’s double (or triple, as it were in 2008) standard:
The problem with the MSM is not that it has no standards, but that it has two standards. Or perhaps — considering how the MSM savaged Hillary Clinton in the primaries last year — we can now say there are three standards: One for Republicans, one for Obama, and one for Democrats who get thrown under Obama’s bus.
This McCain has read the Vanity Fair article and commented on it so you don’t have to.
* From the President’s second book The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, “I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
RELATED: In her excellent post on Big Hollywood, Myrna Sokoloff dubs Obama “The Smile“:
From my perspective in Hollywood, I see that people respond to him like they do to a movie star. It’s the face, the eyes, the smile, not what he says. This phenomenon shows up in the polls. His personal popularity holds around 60%, but if you ask about specific policies, Americans don’t agree with him. Americans by wide margins do not want to close Guantanamo, are against affirmative action, and against late term abortion. The majority want him to cancel the stimulus and hate the bailouts!
Read the whole thing.
It is not a “choice”, it is a necessity.
The media had to ignore Palin’s record, otherwise known as her experience, qualifications and accomplishments because that would mean they would have to cover the fact that Obama had NONE of those.
Obama is an image, a marketing campaign and NOTHING more. he could not win a campaign on experience and qualfications, because he has none. And man does it show.
What is with the right’s frantic desire to rewite history?
Any websearch shows that she got great coverage and McCain was lauded as smart for choosing her. It got him to shoot up the polls and things looked great.
Unfortantly she opened her mouth and proved herself an idiot. Further, it was not the media who made up her lies about the bridge to nowhere.
For gilles sake let’s start the list of gaffes by the people chosen by Mr Obama. Starting with the blunder of picking for VP the bumbling stumbling Jumpin Joe Biden recently sent out of the country until he stopped embarrasing his boss. Ole Joe told the press he was just a regular guy, who took the train to work and ate breakfast at his local restaurant daily. “Come on by and join me at Sarahs”. Boob, Sarahs had been closed and shuttered for 4 years when Joe invited us all over. Moron. How bout when Ole Joe introduced the veteran at a campaign stop…….”stand up Bud, let em see ya…….oops well let’s stand up for ole Bud since he’s a wounded vet in a wheel chair.” Boob Biden. How about when Ole Joe said Iraq was lost, the surge would fail, and the best solution was to partitian Iraq into 3 seperate enclaves. Dummy. MS Palin isn’t a tax cheat who Obama needed as Treasury Sec , or a stumbling bumbling fool like our VP. She is a successful mom, who put her money where her mouth is and ran for office to fix things in Alaska. Frankly liberals are jealous of her due to her lack of cankles.
Any websearch shows that she got great coverage
Right. Because Trig wasn’t her baby, her eldest daughter was pregnant (ZOMFG!), she’s a stupid Alaskan which isn’t remotely related to the rest of America, and she is grateful to be living in the 57th* state of the Union.
Your definition of ‘great coverage’ needs a bit of work.
*Wait. Didn’t somebody else say that?
Since gille and other lefitsts may be checking in….
“anyone making less than $250,000 a year won’t have their taxes raised one thin dime…..”
Just wanted to keep that one fresh in everyones minds……hehe
If you are a smoker, Obamateleprompter has already skewered you all. Let’s see how trustworthy our young President is.
gillie – sometimes I think you guys in the left are delusional. Palin’s coverage was abysmal… not even Nixon had his family put through the wringer like Palin’s. Old fart that I am, I’ve been paying attention to politics for a while and I can’t think of any politician covered in this way.
And if Palin was a liar, then what say you about Obama’s lies?
The only reason Palin is in the news these day is that the press is in a frenzy papering over the piles of excrement Obama and his pals in Congress are laying down. And that is a big job – I mean even Helen Thomas is getting disgusted.
#4 When Obama said we had 57 states does anyone know if he was on teleprompter?
Gene – As I recall the footage, I don’t know if he was on teleprompter, but it seemed that he was talking off the cuff. It was a town hall event. At least to my recollection.
gilltard,
please quote verbatim any lie Sarah Palin told about the “bridge to nowhere”. You’ll find she didnt.
You liberals lie so ceaselessly that you have forgotten the meaning of the word.
Asking gillie to site sources is like asking President Obama to support Democracy abroad.
gillie proclaims:
In the old scale, the IQ Range Classification of 70-80 was called “Borderline deficiency” and 50-69 was called “Moron” while 20-49 rated as an “Imbecile.” Those below 20 were in the “Idiot” category.
The politically correct left has renamed the whole list and now call the category “mental retardation.” It runs from “mild” to “moderate” to “severe” to “profound.”
Being an unreconstructed liberal, gillie meant to say that Palin “Unfortunately (…) opened her mouth and proved herself (…) PROFOUNDLY MENTALLY RETARDED.
I suppose that gillie would leave Trig out of his assessment, but Trig’s mental retardation does not and will not likely fall to the level of gillie’s assertion about his mother. (Of course, this is assuming that gillie is not part of the Bristol is Trig’s mother cabal.)
If I were to play gillie’s game, I would suggest that gillie’s statement is like that which a MORON might make. Morons are still capable of learning. Others must decide if I am being too charitable.
So Obama sent the bungler Biden over to Iraq today to try to get the three feuding parties, Kurds, Sunnnis and Shiites to work together.
Lordy lordy. Does Obamateleprompter know that it was Biden who proposed the partitianing of Iraq?? It was Biden who assumed the surge would fail and civil war would follow. Morons boobs and bunglers.
This morning it was announced that the Obama depression has lost another 467,000 jobs in the month of JUNE. Unemployment spiking up close to the 10% Obama prepared us for a week ago. My heart goes out to the recently unemployed. Our prayers should go out also to the unemployed now not eligible for unemployment benefits who are no longer counted by these govenment statistics. Experts say the true unemployed during this Obama depression is 16% and climbing higher.