To the Media – Please, Keep It Up

03 Sep, 2008 by McQ

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How badly might all of this negativity about Gov. Palin backfire on the media and the Democrats? Well first look at the “sampler” of what passes for objective media analysis this week:

Here is a sampler of media comment on Governor Palin this week:

– Eleanor Clift, the McLaughlin Group: “If the media reaction is anything, it’s been literally laughter in many places across newsrooms.”

– Sally Quinn, Newsweek: “It is a political gimmick . . . I find it insulting to women, to the Republican party, and to the country.”

– E.J. Dionne, Washington Post: “Palin is, if anything, less qualified for the vice presidency (and the presidency) than [Harriet] Miers was for the court. But there is one big difference: Palin passes all the right-wing litmus tests.”

– Maureen Dowd, New York Times: “They have a tradition of nominating fun, bantamweight cheerleaders from the West.”

– Ruth Marcus, Washington Post: “But as a parent in the media, I also know that the Palins assumed this risk. Anyone who watched coverage of the Bush twins’ barroom exploits knew that the avert-your-eyes stance toward candidates’ children has its limits.”

– Charlie Cook, Beltway pundit, on PBS’s “Charlie Rose”: “I had a friend that had a young person tell them that they had three interviews to get a job as a server at Ruby Tuesday! So this is like putting a whole — for someone that hasn’t played on a national — Geraldine Ferraro had more — Dan Quayle had undergone more scrutiny, had played on a bigger stage than this. This is putting an enormous risk on someone he didn’t know. And he has to just pray that it works!”

Who was caught with their pants down around their ankles not knowing much of anything about a person who had been mentioned, seriously, as a prospective running mate for John McCain. It certainly wasn’t the right – in fact most Republicans had hoped for such a pick.

No, it was the media. They had already figured the probable pick based on their stereotype of the Republicans. It had to be another white guy.

They were sure that the pick would probably come from someone well known in political circles and about whom they could whip up a diatribe at the drop of a hat. It wouldn’t be some provincial governor and it certainly wouldn’t be a woman. So Sarah Palin may have been a name on McCain’s list that he treated seriously, but it certainly wasn’t one the media (or Democrats) chose to take seriously.

So what’s all the fuss about then? Well the disdain from the media is being fueled in part by the fact that they didn’t do their job and, in fact, weren’t prepared when Palin was named.

Patterico comes to the same conclusion:

I think I know exactly why we’re hearing all this utter nonsense about how Palin supposedly wasn’t vetted.

The spoiled little children in the media are throwing a widdle tantrum because they weren’t kept in the loop.

So if they didn’t know anything about Sarah Palin, and if they didn’t expect McCain to pick Palin, then it stands to reason that McCain didn’t know anything about Sarah Palin, and McCain didn’t expect himself to pick her.

Guess what, media? Some of us had heard of Sarah Palin before, and were hoping that she was exactly who John McCain would pick.

Because the media paid no attention to her and knew nothing about her, the feeding frenzy is a natural result. So are all the so-called “negatives” coming out at once. They have too – as Paterico says, a person who was listed as a serious candidate for VP was virtually ignored by the media. Consequently, now that they have to scramble to cover her and everything that should have been known about her through the media and well prior to her nomination suddenly is coming to the fore.

And if the best that can be found is trooper-gate and hubby belonging to 3rd party and getting a DUI 20 years ago, well, let’s face it, it ain’t Tony Rezko, Jeremiah Wright or Bill Ayres, is it?

Another part of the media disdain is plain old, every day, vanilla elitism. She went to school in Idaho for heaven sake. She’s the governor of Alaska! She hunts!

No Welsley. No blue-blood, north-eastern family connections. Nope – a real, honest-to-goodness, no BS, mother of 5 who has faced down every problem that other mothers have faced (and, like her are still facing) and has still had time to do something outside of that and succeed wildly. The media can’t have that because it breaks the stereotype so carefully nurtured of the “conservative woman”. So with blinders fully in place, and completely ignoring how well they describe the top of the ticket on the Democratic side, they claim she’s a lightweight, inexperienced and a diversity pick.

And they think the rest of us who hail from flyover land, and didn’t attend elite universities or stake our lives in the mire of politics and Washington DC are just too damn dumb to recognize what’s going on here.

All I can say is keep it up folks. You couldn’t be a better ally for the Sarah Palin’s of this world, because as you attempt to denigrate her accomplishments and minimize her experience, you clearly display your obvious bias while brilliantly backlighting the very same problems in Obama you claim hurt Palin.

And while you do that, we’ll keep reminding you that if what you claim disqualifies the person who might be a heartbeat away from the presidency, what does it say about the glaring lack of even Palin’s qualifications for he who would be president?

[Crossposted at QandO]