For those of you that still don’t see the MSM’s incredible negative bias against John McCain’s VP pick, Sarah Palin, I present the current cover of Newsweek magazine. Now, it sure doesn’t offend or disturb me — but I’m definitely NOT the target demographic for the fear-mongering that this cover is designed to incite. Shoot! I think it’s pretty cool! However, inside the beltway and inside the editorial offices back there in ol’ NYC, it’s probably got ‘em all wearin’ Depends to keep the pee spots from showin’! If they’d a shown her aimin’ the thing out of the image frame they’d probably all be race trackin’ their tidy whities!

I think that Newsweek’s view of Palin is summed up pretty well in this comparison of her life’s journey to that of the Dem’s number one position candidate:

Palin is not regarded as an introspective or intellectual type—not the sort who likes to mull the deepest nuances of every issue. In that sense, she’s the anti-Obama. While Barack Obama of Hawaii, Indonesia, Hawaii, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Cambridge, Mass., Chicago and now Washington has been on a well-chronicled lifelong search for his identity, Sarah Heath Palin seems just fine being a woman of Wasilla.

Maybe it’s because Sarah Palin has always known who and what she is, unlike the confused, confounded and still searching Obama? Maybe because she’s her own woman, and a damn strong one at that — and Barack’s looking in the national mirror to find out what kind of man he really is?

In today’s LA Times, the TV reporter Mary McNamara has a hostile Op-Ed printed in the “news” section along with the rest of the campaign articles. Online it’s titled this way: Sarah Palin’s interview with Charles Gibson on ABC — in the dead-tree edition for the local nuttery that subscribe it’s titled: Would-be vice president’s on-air job interview tells us too little, way too late and opens with this hysterical passage:

Those hoping that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin would burst into tears or start speaking in tongues during her interview with Charles Gibson were no doubt disappointed by the first part of her much heralded “first interview” on “ABC World News” Thursday and then in a slightly expanded form on “Nightline.” She did consistently mispronounce the word “nuclear;” but then so did Jimmy Carter, and so does George Bush, and they both became president.

It was a fascinating and unsettling interview nonetheless, first and foremost because it’s been nearly two weeks since Republican presidential nominee John McCain announced the Alaskan governor as his chosen running mate and these are the first non-scripted words the American people have heard from her.

For days now, the media has obligingly reacted as if J.D. Salinger had suddenly decided to break his decades-long silence. Caught up in an anticipatory frenzy usually reserved for damage-control celebrity sit-downs — Paris Hilton on “Larry King,” Tom Cruise on “Oprah”– everyone seemed to forget that this is a vice presidential candidate, a public servant who should not be playing hard to get with reporters and whose main job it is to articulate the positions and policies of her ticket.

And closes with this one:

Still, the inevitable parsing and analysis of Palin’s answers and performance in this interview, however tempting, is almost beside the point. In this case, her actions, or non-actions, have spoken much louder than any words. She didn’t blink, she told Gibson, when McCain asked her to join his ticket. But she certainly blinked after. What sort of reform-minded politician waits two weeks before giving an interview?

Since when it is OK that the American people have to wait in breathless anticipation for its nominated candidates to speak to them en masse? Since when do we have to rely on a single interview, from a single source, to introduce us to a woman who claims she would be privileged to lead us?

In a world that is measured by milliseconds, a broken-up hour is too short to offer, a week is simply too long to wait. Such manipulation of a public moment is simple exploitation. If Palin was trying to prove that she’s just a sense-talkin’ hockey mom from Alaska, she couldn’t have gone about it in a more wrong-headed way.

In his latest Townhall.com article, Hugh Hewitt analyzes the MSM attacks on Palin:

These people hear the attacks on Palin and understand them –rightly– to be attacks on themselves and their families. The dismissal they hear from studio talking heads are directed not just at Sarah Palin’s life experiences, but at theirs. The contempt American media elites feel for their viewers has never been so sharply on display.

This is not an objection to asking Palin tough questions. I don’t think there is a serious objection to Charlie Gibson’s tone or subject matter when he sat down with Palin. She answered all of his many questions with hardly a stumble, as opposed to Obumble’s repeated pratfalls in debates past.

But there is resentment that after a year-and-a-half there is not one interview of Obama –who wants the top job not the understudy role– remotely as tough, with sustained lines of questions on sensitive issues of foreign affairs peppered with probing interruptions. Not one. Obama has always been allowed to filibuster, and every interviewer has retreated from attacks that have put Obama on the defensive. The cowing of the MSM by the left-wing bloggers is complete, and they know better than to push The One very hard.

In regards to coverage of Obama, the MSM was gelded early in this campaign cycle and surely needs to grow a pair. Hillary Clinton was right about one thing at least, and that is the anti-woman bias of their coverage. She resorted to tears in New Hampshire — I don’t think that there is a newsman or woman out there that can reduce Sarah Palin to tears — unless they manage to instill her with tears of rage.

I don’t think that I would ever want to be on the receiving end of that woman’s ire. Metaphorically and all, there are plenty of moose and caribou that found out what I’m talkin’ about!

The Anchoress reacts to the Palin/Gibson interview and gives Sarah a bit of good advice.

As I said earlier, earlier, I think Palin was reasonable to ask “in what respect.” There is some disagreement (or differing perspectives) as to what policies comprise the Bush Doctrine; is it pre-emption? Is it identification of terrorist-harboring nations as partners in terrorism? Palin was smart to ask Gibson to clarify. I think she was being leery of being trapped. Nothing wrong with being a little pre-emptive herself, in that case; she might have said – “in what respect, Charlie, do you mean in this respect or in that respect,” and turned it on him, a little. Hopefully she’ll get more comfortable with these “big time serious journalists” soon and be a little flippant with them. What bothered me more than anything last night was the unrelenting grimness of it. A little humor, either way, would have been good.v

She also has a lot of links to much, much more on this topic.

Continuing . . .

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 11:04 am and is filed under McCain/Palin 2008, Media Bias. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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