Prime time viewers got their first look at Republican VP designate Gov. Sarah Palin -- and she came out swinging.
I'm really surprised at the attacks Republicans are leveling at the media. Gov. Palin went after them tonight, and Sen. McCain and his spokespeople earlier. McCain has always seemed to receive pretty favorable coverage from the media, but for some reason the campaign has now decided to go on the attack.
I think it's more in response to the great speeches we heard from the Democratic convention last week. Clearly the Republicans have to try and hide from the past eight years, so maybe the best way to do that is to try and play "the victim" card and claim the media is biased.
Joe Klein posted a pretty strong response to this:
The story of the day out here in Minneapolis is the McCain campaign's war against the press. This has been building for some time. Those of us who have criticized the candidate--and especially those of us who enjoyed good relations with McCain in the past--have been subject to off-the-record browbeating and attempted bullying all year. But things have gotten much worse in recent days: there was McCain's rude, bizarre interview with Time Magazine last week. Yesterday, McCain refused to an interview with Larry King, for God's sake, because Campbell Brown had been caught in the commission of journalism on CNN the night before, asking McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds what decisions Sarah Palin had made as commander-in-chief of the Alaska national guard. (There was an answer that the unprepared Bounds didn't have: she had deployed them to fight fires.) [...]Good for you, Joe!
There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God." The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.
I also have to comment, however, on the apparent awakening the media has on the issue of sexism. CNN's Campbell Brown, who just yesterday took on McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds in what some are describing as 'finally doing her job', has suddenly decided that sexist comments are really offensive. Apparently a spokesperson for Sen. Harry Reid described Gov. Palin's speech as "shrill." Brown, looking to Gloria Borger for affirmation, commented that shrill is never used to describe men, only women. Gee, I wonder why she didn't think of that when it was being leveled at Sen. Hillary Clinton? Come to think of it, a lot of the commentators have suddenly decided that their might be sexism in some of the coverage of women candidates. Get outta town!
I hope the MSM will heed Klein's advise and not let up on the McCain/Palin ticket. The public needs to know exactly how they plan to dig the country out of the mess left behind by George W. Bush.
10 comments:
Can you hear me clapping, screaming and sending you accolades from here???
Brava BAC.
I don't normally like Joe Klein but he is SO right.
Sexism? Ugh. I don't know if you rad my (very foul mouthed I admit, i was angry) post from yesterday, but Sarah Palin is no friend of the feminist.
In fact I referenced that she would be one of the women in The Handmaid's Tale that would hold you down.
She abandoned women a long time ago, in favor of herself and some power hungry egotism.
Let's not forget that Campbell is Senora Senor and we know where that road leads to... Straight to the GOP.
Absolutely.
Although personally I think pretty much every speech given last night was shrill. Regardless of the gender of who happened to be speaking.
Especially Crazy Rudy.
It's one of the oldest tricks in the book to levy blame against the media. They're an easy target, certainly.
In honesty, however, being criticized from every direction, rewarded infrequently for the things that do go right, and frequently misunderstood just in general kind of goes along with the territory of being a politician.
She'll be given some degree of media adulation because the media wishes to seem impartial and provide the same degree of praise to the GOP as it did for the Democrats. But I doubt this persists more than a perfunctory length of time.
And yes, I do believe Democrats gave the best speeches this time around.
Oh BAC, if the media decides to tell us "exactly how [McFossil/Palin] plan to dig the country out of the mess left behind by George W. Bush," I can tell you with all certainty that it'll be a damn short story! These two will only dig the hole deeper!
Dguzman - which is precisely why I want them to ask!
BAC
I heard nothing substantive last night in that orgy of Democrat-bashing they called a convention. Palin just trotted out all the most mean-spirited things she could say about Obama and mixed them in with her rah-rah personal story and some adulation of McCain.
As for the sexism, how ironic is this? The talking heads are now talking about themselves and sexism toward Palin - Jon Stewart last night had some great justaposed clips showing the same ones ripping into Hillary with the same sexist rants they were now tut-tutting about.
Tut-tutting, that is, in reference to criticism about Palin.
Well, I don't think Palin was out there to impress any of the Democrats, she was helping McCain to solidify his base...and she succeeded. They were looking for a spark to energize them and she gave them the red meat that she wanted. As far as her speech being mean spirited towards the Democrats, nothing IMO was more mean spirited than having the media attack her children, so I can't blame her for giving back.
If she were a Democrat, and making that same kind of speech about a Republican, she would be heaped with praise by all of us. In fact, she'd be Governor Ann Richards who had a similar speaking style, if I recall.
I just try to put this into perspective and let it go. Conventions are for the Party and neither one of them can please the base of the other.
Not to sure if going after the media was a good idea. We'll see what happens with that in the future, I guess.
I doubt if I'll watch McCain's speech tonight, he puts me to sleep.
Oh..on one note, Sarah Palin gave most of that speech without the teleprompter that wasn't working well. That's pretty impressive, she kept her cool. This happened to Obama once and he was stumbling and mumbling all over the place. He needs to work on that. I'm positive that McCain wouldn't be able to pull that off, either.
Mary Ellen - I just read a report from a newsperson on the scene who said there were no significant problems with the teleprompter. Just wanted to toss that in so we don't give Gov. Palin more than is due.
She had a job to do -- deliver red meat to Republicans -- and she did it. It's going to be an interesting 8 weeks!
BAC
BAC - You make an excellent point about the double standard. I think the better descriptive word may be "harsh." That doesn't seem to have the same overtones that "shrill" has.
And Palin was a television newscaster - she's trained to be in front of the camera and crowds. I would hope she can deliver a speech well.
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