Posted on 01/04/2010 7:00:10 AM PST by rhema
When I cranked up the computer that morning and typed “Sarah Palin” into the Google News search engine, there were about 18,000 “hits” covering the period of the previous 18 hours. November 17, of course, was the official unveiling of the former pro-life GOP vice presidential candidate’s memoir Going Rogue. I purchased my copy at 10:30 a.m. (I learned later, from the Associated Press, that Going Rogue sold 700,000 copies its first week, and that HarperCollins increased its initial printing run from 1.5 million to 2.5 million.)
That morning the Washington Post had three stories (which took up almost the entirety of the front page of the “Style” section), two snarky op-eds which competed for the “honor” of trashing the former Alaska governor most maliciously, and a curmudgeonly column by the media columnist Howard Kurtz. Other prominent newspapers had their say—mostly “No!”—about her 413-page book, which became a bestseller based on pre-orders months before it was published.
I could devote the next couple of thousand words to giving you a sampling of the torrent of deeply personal insult, but why bother? Let me instead try to figure out what’s going on. What is it about Sarah Palin that brings out the absolute worst in people who don’t require a lot of provocation to be ugly in the first place?
Is it tooting our own horn to say that it begins with her strongly pro-life position? I think it is self-evident that while the Media Establishment would have loathed Palin anyway, what changed distaste and disdain into loathing was her unapologetic support for our cause. (The hysteria over her willingness to stand up publicly for life is intertwined with resentment over the simple fact that all this attention was going to the “wrong” kind of woman—a.k.a. someone who was not a pro-abortion feminist.)
This gets very complicated, if you think about it very long. Palin invited being drawn into the media’s crosshairs because she was both a mother and a governor who potentially could be the vice president of the United States. If that sounds wildly out of step with 21st-century America—dissing a woman for having both a family and a prominent career—it tells you how much many commentators hated having her on the Republican presidential ticket.
Then, Palin compounded her offense by carrying a baby she knew had Down syndrome to term. Instead of hailing her for her strength, courage, and pluck, almost the entire Media Establishment went after her hammer and tong. (They piously inquired how could she be a good mother to her other children, let alone be vice president, if she made the “mistake” of not aborting this child. The section in Going Rogue where Palin talks about what went through her heart and mind when she learned that “Trig” would have Down syndrome is amazing reading that makes you admire the Palin family immensely.)
If that weren’t bad enough, Palin’s unmarried teenage daughter, Bristol, had become pregnant. When this became known (as Palin writes in Going Rogue), “I was amazed at how many liberal pundits seemed floored by a pregnant teenager, as if overnight they’d all snuck out and had traditional-values transplants. The talking heads began to parrot one line: ‘If Sarah Palin can’t control her own daughter, how can she serve as vice president?’”
What they couldn’t understand, and never will be able to understand now or ever, is that none of us is so foolish as to believe that our own families are not susceptible to making the same mistakes everyone else makes. Our unmarried daughters can get pregnant and pro-life women can contemplate having abortions. And they don’t get pregnant on their own.
Palin writes that when the news about Bristol’s pregnancy broke, “The tone some reporters (and many bloggers) seemed to want to set was one of ‘hypocrisy’”—which is for many of the chattering class the only “sin.” That we sometimes—or even many times—fall short of our aspirations is not hypocrisy. It is reflection of something with which pro-lifers are thoroughly familiar: the human condition.
Like you, I have followed Palin’s career since she was chosen to be Sen. John McCain’s running mate. That I admire the heck out of her does not mean that I think she was incapable of making mistakes or that she didn’t make mistakes during the campaign.
Referring to her interview with CBS’s Katie Couric, Palin writes, “I have had better interviews ... I choked on a couple of responses, and in the harried pace of the campaign, I mistakenly let myself become annoyed and frustrated with many of her repetitive, biased questions.”
But that Palin is human, like all the rest of us, seems to activate the worst impulses not only in the usual suspects, but also in some whose hostility you wouldn’t expect. Why?
The condescending media stereotype of Palin as a hopelessly out of her league lightweight was set in stone following her interviews with ABC’s Charles Gibson and (especially) Couric. This gave free rein to bash her unmercifully, and by extension all of us who attended the “wrong” schools and who regularly fail to be invited to the “right” parties.
(Am I exaggerating? Is this the same “whining” that her critics hammer her about? The full fury of a legion of reporters and commentators and bloggers say things about her and her family that they wouldn’t say about Nidal Hasan. If she responds, Palin is “whining.” If she doesn’t, of course, she is a wuss. Palin can’t win. But I digress.)
While Palin’s defenders—and even some of her more sober-minded critics—often mention the blatant sexism at work, the assault on her is equally driven by classism. When I skimmed some of those 18,000 hits, again and again I read about how scandalous it was that a one-term governor could have the audacity to even think about running for President.
How dare she! After all, Palin is “not one of us,” a trespass for which she can never, ever be forgiven.
Speaking of audacity, how about that one-term senator who seems to have given his full attention to the Senate for about a year before he began running for President? While Harvard-educated Barack Obama is constantly touted as our first president of Mensa-like intellect, what stands out is that without a Teleprompter, he is dazzlingly inarticulate.
The Associated Press, once upon a time a nonpartisan source of straight-shooting news, went after Going Rogue as if there were no tomorrow. Eleven reporters assisted the main writer in fact-checking the book. (This obviously reminds us of CNN “fact-checking” a Saturday Night Live sketch that ever-so-mildly criticized Obama. Wonder what that tells us.)
Palin supporters have refuted the charges, but that is not the point. Think back to the way the media treated Obama’s two books.
Did anybody “fact-check” them, or were they too busy writing (as did the New York Times of Dreams from My Father) that Obama’s “appreciation of the magic of language and his ardent love of reading have not only endowed him with a rare ability to communicate his ideas to millions of Americans while contextualizing complex ideas about race and religion”? Ah, yes, the “complexity” of it all.
Well, worrying about double standards seems a particularly unproductive use of our time. A far better use would be reading Going Rogue.
“While Harvard-educated Barack Obama is constantly touted as our first president of Mensa-like intellect”
Road apples. If he breaks 110 (before add-on “minority points”) I’ll eat my hat.
In Oct of 2007, Newsweek wrote a very favorable piece on Gov. Palin. Once she became the VP nominee, Newsweek slammed her the first chance they had (along with everyone else)
The media never viewed McCain as a threat to Obama in the 2008 election, so there was never a need to go crazy negative on John McCain.
Once Palin was named to the ticket in August ‘08, the media saw a huge threat to Obama winning the election.
THE FIRST AND FOREMOST REASON the media hyperventilates and has to dump on Palin at every turn is that she is the greatest competition to Obama for the Oval Office. It happened in the 2008 election, and they will continue on the offensive because Palin hasn’t ruled out a 2012 run.
The media will rest easy on Palin if she ever announced that she won’t run in 2012 or loses in the primary.
Until that happens, the media will continue the 24x7 onslaught.
DSC, you are absolutely correct. If Obama was as smart as all the faithful maintain, there’d be a public record of his accomplishments to be proud of and touted from every direction. Instead, the lazy stugots has done nothing of import and everything is locked away.
And they are quite savvy, for instance, setting up John McCain as opposition, using the narcissism of Barack Obama as a front, manipulating, through economic fear, taxpayer money into the pockets of selected Wall Street players, confiscating citizen freedom through mandatory healthcare acquiesence, accommodating desperate illegal invaders into the US to be voters, and funding a contrived threat of anthropogenic disaster; all to herd the potentially independent and creative masses into serfdom.
It really does reek of the Dark Ages, and apparently the majority of US adults are complicit. I guess through laziness.
How obvious is it?
It could have been all different. Were we that stupid or just lazy?
Johnny Suntrade
This is SOP. The media claims that Bill Clinton had an IQ of - what? - 160 or something? I remember the press braying that Jimmy Carter was the most brilliant president ever.
On the other hand, Ronald Reagan was as an amiable dunce, George HW Bush was the malleable WASP, GWB II, a not so amiable dunce.
It goes on and on. Dan Quayle, by all accounts a bright enough guy, was portrayed as an idiot while Al Gore - someone once described the absence of any intelligent life in his eyes as being like “looking into p*sholes in a snow bank” - receives accolade after accolade.
“Instead, the lazy stugots has done nothing of import and everything is locked away.”
What I want to know is why this info hasn’t been “outed.”
Of all potential candidates to the Presidency the unborn’s most resolute ally is Sarah Palin.
fyi
What it revels to me is the behavior of the media towards any candidate the GOP fields for the 2012 Presidential election, be it Palin or any other strong, conservative individual that is well liked by the base.
The media will totally savage them by any and all means at their disposal. But, that isn’t exactly news to most of us that follow the media’s irrational bias.
To me, IQ is about cleverness. Without personal integrity, moral values, common sense, courage, and good judgment, a person will not make worthwhile contributions to the community.
“Without personal integrity, moral values, common sense, courage, and good judgment, a person will not make worthwhile contributions to the community.”
All that is very true. Raw candlepower is far from worthless, though.
I was watching a Hannity show last night and some lefty in the crowd stated it like Palin was a Dummie and no one corrected him.
It is the left who are dummies for not knowing that you can see Russia from Alaska.
Can you see Russia from Alaska?
The geographically challenged liberals are a bad joke.
I used to have a little bit of that feeling when I was younger and doing stuff I shouldn't. Now, I want to be around people who are better than me. I don't want to do things that are wrong. I think it is a maturing process that many liberals unfortunately have not and may never enter into.
I think it is a maturing process that many liberals unfortunately have not and may never enter into.
For me the LEFT has always been about juvenilism, no matter what chronological age; from the whining, to the blaming, to the laziness, to the need for identity, to the lack of self honesty, to the avarice for free money, to the disdain of historical lessons, to the egomania.
Witness Barack Obama, Barbara Boxer, Chuck Shumer, Janet Napolitano, Rahm Emmanuel, the college kids who support them, and on and on.
I have friends, relatives, and neighbors who think I am a bit strange because I cancelled my subscription to our local liberal rag years ago and refuse to read it.
I live in a rural area outside a small liberal city. My wife and I won't shop there with the exception of a few businesses we know are owned by conservatives.
I am sure that there are Freepers who continue to pay the salaries of those who disparage Palin and other conservatives. It's a big mistake and needs to stop.
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