Posted on 11/30/2008 5:34:34 AM PST by radar101
A recent YouTube clip that featured her being interviewed while, unbeknownst to her, a turkey is slaughtered in the background, was the site's most-viewed clip over the last week. Photo: Composite image by Politico.com
Three weeks after the Republican ticket suffered a sweeping defeat at the polls, Sarah Palin continues to dominate search engine queries, cable news and online video sites.
The only American politician who generates comparable interest is President-elect Barack Obama. No one else is close.
Palin was the most popular Lycos search from the week she joined the ticket continuously through last Sunday, some two weeks after the election, when she was dethroned by Paris Hilton, the celebutante whom John McCain famously compared to Barack Obama.
The Alaska governor now ranks fourth, just one spot below Obama, on the weekly Lycos 50 list.
“People are still searching for her in record numbers,” said Kathy O’Reilly, a spokeswoman for Lycos. “How bizarre is that? Obama is the president-elect after the most historic election of all time and you’d think he would be dominating search activity and he only now is going ahead of her.”
See Also Publishers bet big on ‘Obama as hero’ What’s next for the GOP? How will Obama use new media?
Palin has been the subject of intense online fascination since her introduction as the Republican nominee on Aug. 29. In September, the Anchorage Daily News reported a 928 percent spike in traffic, according to Nielsen Online. Her mid-October “Saturday Night Live” appearance drove the show’s highest rating in 14 years, and her Oct. 2 debate with Joe Biden was the most watched vice presidential debate ever — drawing more viewers than any of the three presidential debates between McCain and Obama.
The scope of the GOP ticket’s loss — and the role her critics assigned to her in that defeat — hasn't cooled interest in Palin. She ranked as the No. 2 top news search at Ask.com this week and No. 2 (after Obama) among newsmakers on the AOL 2008 year-end hottest searches list, and she occupied two slots on Politico’s list of the site's 10 most searched terms. Palin also ranked fourth among Yahoo searches, behind “Black Friday,” a Czech model and a contestant on the hit television show “Dancing with the Stars.” She was the only politician on the Yahoo top 20 list.
A recent YouTube clip that featured her being interviewed while, unbeknownst to her, a turkey was slaughtered in the background was the site's most-viewed clip over the last week. Two of the top 10 video moments of 2008, according to Truveo, an online video search engine, also involve Palin — a “Saturday Night Live” skit that mocks her and the governor’s ill-fated interview with Katie Couric of CBS.
“It’s astounding that someone who should have faded into the background after the election is not only making headlines but being searched for in record numbers online,” said O’Reilly. “People still have a fixation with her, for whatever the reason.”
Palin's continuous presence in the news has played a role in the unabated levels of search activity. First she was buffeted by anonymous criticism from the McCain camp after the ticket's defeat, then she cut a high profile at the Republican Governors Association meeting one week later. In between, she sat for an interview with Greta Van Susteren of Fox News and delivered the show's largest audience of the year.
According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, Palin was the second-leading newsmaker for the week of Nov. 10-16, trailing only Obama and ranking ahead of President Bush, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and McCain in the number of stories about her.
“As long as she’s still in the mainstream media, it will continue to fuel her presence online. She’s sort of fanning the flames just by showing up,” said Phil Noble, president of PoliticsOnline and a pioneering consultant in online politics. “The other issue is that at some point people become permanent celebrities. She may have just reached that status.”
The polarizing role she played in the presidential campaign may also be driving the enduring fascination with all things Palin.
“People are projecting their values onto Sarah Palin, and in some sense, she reflects them back,” said Mark Corallo, a Republican media strategist. “She’s a conservative, she’s young, and she’s attractive. She speaks to something that’s been missing from the Republican Party.”
David All, a Republican new media consultant, notes that the uninterrupted attention offers Palin an unprecedented political opportunity even if a good portion of the curiosity comes from her detractors.
“There’s a heckuva lot of wind out there for Sarah Palin. Now she has to put up a sail to catch it,” he said. “She can use that Internet bully pulpit to help change the hearts and minds of folks. She has a unique opportunity to build up something massive.”
It basically puts her supporters in a position of having to explain and defend her actions. I think we've all had enough of doing that with regards to President Bush.
Is she supposed to give the Turkey a special ride to the Governor’s Mansion to replicate the White House “turkey reprieve”? Or go to a farm and say “this one won’t be loaded on a truck today to go to the slaughterhouse”?
And it is the Sarah Palin haters who have made this a most watched clip.
I wonder if Youtube would be so willing to let a clip of the Islamic slaughter of animals for food (by blood letting from the throat until the animal drowns in its own blood) remain on their site. They seem to have a thing against violent videos and things that are not politically correct.
That would be a start. I just see this as one of those situations where about 5 minutes of planning (or even changing the camera angle) would be useful in avoiding unneeded controversy.
The problem we have is that the libs succeeded in making Gov. Palin look like some whacked-out idiot from some hick state. When we are put in a position of having to defend such things, it makes us look bad too.
It’s much ado about nothing, this turkey pardoning flap. Are we suddenly more virtuous when we don’t see the animals that are being killed to feed us?
Why did camera man select that angel set-up by msm?
. FNC ran a segment on this earlier today and the rat side was just salavating to pass it off as just religious guys on our side pumping her numbers up.
You can tell the rats are scared sh_tless of her. And they should be.
Why bother to defend lies, we know better. Let the DBM run scared. We will win with her over and over.
It's the "much ado" part that is the problem. Gov. Palin now has the MSM doing everything it can to make her look bad. While you and I don't have a problem with our food being slaughtered so that we can eat it, a lot of other people, even fellow carnivores, will see this as cruel and insensitive. The MSM is going to play that up as much as it can to make Gov. Palin look as bad as possible.
We shouldn't be "helping" the MSM by giving them these sorts of gifts.
Just like Reagan if you are the real thing,love your country, tell the truth, believe in Capitalism and have a little bit of charisma,the rats will cower and that person will win--everytime.
I can attest that the depicted procedure is necessary. If this process is skipped, it becomes even more difficult to properly cook the bird.
You can tell the rats are scared sh_tless of her. And they should be.
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The Duke might have asked, “Do yuh reckon they see storms brewin’ in her eyes?”
They can run clips of Tom Turkey becoming Thanksgiving Dinner all day long, the one thing that matters far more then that is Dec 1, Saxby Chamblis, Gov Palin is touring the State with him in a whirlwind tour.
If Chambliss wins, Governor Palin will have political chops, she delivers votes and victories, and the media will face a choice, attack her and lose viewers, or deal with her as a national political figure worthy of overlooking not her fault type stuff.
Exactly!!She is and will always will be a force to be reckoned with,IMHO!
If you can field strip a Moose what’s the big deal about Turkeys.
Hey there’s some rules around here and there’s a heck of a lot better photos than that one with the article!
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