"But there's TONS of criticism of Sarah Palin in the mainstream media! You'd have to live in a HOLE to think they're pulling their punches with Sarah Palin!" Right? Well, it's yet another MSM case of 'water water everywhere but not a drop to drink'.
Here's an illustration of the same phenomenon as it occurred during the 2004 election campaign. During the Republican Convention of 2004, the mainstream press really showed, at least superficially, that they were on the job, watchdogs of American democracy, or at least
seemed to be if observed by a certain superficial angle. A representative item of coverage was how Bush's own use of the word "occupation" to describe the US in Iraq contradicted the GOP's insistence that Kerry's use of the word bespoke a certain
traite francaise, as it were, a lack of REAL American patriotism.
But the MSM at that point, as they did from April until at least well into September, but ESPECIALLY obviously at the Convention, carefully evaded any serious examination, let alone debunking, of the flimsiness of the FlipFlop spin. Kerry's record, after all, on NAFTA as well as on the Patriot Act (while I strongly disagree with his less-than-progressive position on both) had been quite consistent over the relevant period. And the 'voting for it before I voted against it', however awkwardly, described the ordinary process of legislative haggling, in which one votes for X version of a bill and against Y version of the same bill. The GOPers who criticized him had for the most part voted AGAINST the same measure before they had voted for it! But a really serious debunking of the FlipFlop spin would have to await Jonathan Chait in
The New Republic in OCTOBER, by which time -- after FIVE MONTHS as the MAIN GOP line on Kerry -- the whole spin had hardened into a national cliche and this critique (which the venerable
New York Times never, even then, picked up on directly in any op-ed pieces critiquing the FlipFlop spin or indicating any serious controversy about it -- w/a total of ZERO op-ed columns on it) came simply too late. So the press, while carefully preening their collective image of critical distance from the major parties, (one might say for at least some of the press, especially from the GOP) was not so much a loyal opposition as a craven pseudo-opposition.
I didn't start making a huge fuss about this myself until September 04, and probably should have both noted and pressed the issue sooner (for all the difference it could ever have made). But here the proverbial pile is still fresh and steaming. Sarah Palin was unknown to most Americans, including myself, prior to August 29, and already we aren't one week into September and the pattern is clear:
The issue of the politics of pork and earmarks, a hallmark of Palin's career (successfully seeking and backing them) and of her campaign (posing as a crusader against them) is a case in point. On the 'bridge to nowhere', the inescapably obvious point that, in fact, Palin had strongly supported the huge boondoggle as long as such support was politically feasible and strategic has been noted widely. But how prominently,
including in particular in the New York Times who were so central in making the 'bridge to nowhere' a poster-issue for disgraceful porkbarrel politics, has the sweetheart deal that the Democratic Congress (elected into power in the same year that brought in Palin as Governor of Alaska) lavished on Alaska when they ditched the bridge been focused on significantly, and its importance noted? After all, this wasn't a case of 'thanx but no thanx' even then -- it was a case of trading off a public embarrassment to the political system
for a deal even MORE lucrative to the state government of Alaska (and beneficial to Palin's career, perhaps?) than the bridge to nowhere had been. Now Alaska had all the money, and de facto freedom to spend it any way they wished. Indeed it accounts, by my calculation for about 1/3 of her huge tax rebate to Alaskans, maybe more.
If ANYONE who reads this email knows of any SIGNIFICANT AND
PROMINENT coverage of this sweetheart deal and discussion of its import ANYWHERE in the major MSM, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I myself am aware of none -- and usually such things would find their way to such sensitive pickers up of political scuttlebutt of this kind as Democratic Underground. One would think it would be constantly repeated there (I don't follow every DU thread).
One might also mention a slightly lesser example of the MSM pulling their punches, as they did in 04 w/W Bush, even while carefully cultivating the contrary image, and protestating furiously -- as Cohen of
The Nation did when I pointed this out on WNYC radio -- that any such claim is bogus and conspiracy thinking. Perhaps the other major theme of Palin's politics is her standing as the supposed champion of small-town America, against the same old elitist snobs who we all know make up anything to the left of Joe Lieberman in the US. The public was spoon fed on the meme of Wasilla-as-Mayberry, when in fact it is really an example not of small town America but (apparently -- I confess never having been within 1000 miles of the great State of Alaska myself) of suburban sprawl, vaguely akin to "Long Island style". According to
Wikipedia (which is a little more free of the yoke of 'getting with the program' than other media), 35% of the workforce of Wasilla works in Anchorage, high even by the standards of most bedroom suburban communities. And a leading Alaska guidebook author describes it thusly in
The Nation :
Wohlforth, Charles (August 29, 2008). "Dispatch From Alaska: Palin? Really?". The New Republic. Retrieved on 2008-08-30. “I had written a Frommer's travel guidebook about Alaska (I live in Anchorage and was on the Municipal Assembly here at the time). In the book, I frankly described Wasilla as a place to skip, 'the worst kind of suburban sprawl of highway-fronting shopping malls and gravel lots.'”
Now, doesn't all this claptrap from Palin about the 'character' of small-town America that Wasilla embodies seem just a LITTLE bit bogus in this context? Not to knock this rapidly growing (apparently nearly tripling in population over the last 15 years) suburb of Anchorage, but come on, people .... FAKERY is FAKERY.
I have said it before and I'll say it again -- we have seen the face of 21st Century
faux populist demagogy in US politics and her name is Sarah Palin. But of at least as great importance (for surely whether McCain wins or loses, she'll remain a major force in the national Republican Party) is the discreet charm of the
systematic craven pseudopposition of the MSM.
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