Idiot Media Coverage of Palin - One of Many to Come

I'm going to have a lot to talk about in the wake of the announcement of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the VP nominee of the Republican Party. There is so much misinformation floating around about her that correcting it could be a fulltime job.

Today, I will start small. The following is an excerpt of a discussion on Friday's (Aug. 29) PBS NewsHour between NewsHour host Jim Lehrer and New York Times columnist David Brooks. Brooks was responding to a question by Lehrer whether Palin could draw in more women:

"DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I do, and the fact that she is working class. She is, as she says, a hockey mom, which I guess is tougher than a soccer mom. She -- you know, her husband's a member of a union. She said she works with her hands. She's not a pretentious person. You know, they were not going to nominate Mitt Romney and have the two wealthy guys. So that's good. And I think the second thing -- and, again, this is all contingent on the fact she does well, which we really don't know."

OK. She's "working class." According to the Council of State Governments, the governor of Alaska makes $125,000 per year. That's a pretty nice salary. In addition, her union husband is now in a non-managerial position at British Petroleum, after being a production supervisor (not exactly a low paying job). He also owns a commerical fishing business. So, while the Palins have 5 children, they are not working paycheck to paycheck like many Americans are in this economy.

She "works with her hands." Will the duties of the VP in a McCain administration include carpentry or plumbing?

She's "not a pretentious person." So, we should be confident about her being VP to possibly the oldest president in our history because she is not pretentious?

It could be argued that Joe Biden is pretentious. If something happened to Barack Obama if Obama became president, does that pretentiousness lessen Biden's qualifications to be president?

Then Brooks continued in his analysis:

"DAVID BROOKS: But I thought she did well today. But the second thing to be said is she is an under-45 Republican. That means she's unwedded to Reaganism. She's a -- she's evangelical, but she's pretty progressive on gay and lesbian issues. She's for drilling in ANWR, but she talks about global warming quite a lot. She's got different categories in her head than, I think, the older conservatives who are pretty much down the line ideologically."

"Progressive" on gay and lesbian issues? She is ardently against same-sex marriage, and has spoken out against civil unions and benefits for same-sex couples. What she did do was veto a bill from the Alaska state legislature that would have banned state benefits for same-sex couples, a veto that came about because the Alaska Supreme Court had already indicated such a ban would be unconstitutional. That's an interesting interpretation by Brooks of being "progressive" on gay and lesbian issues.

"She talks about global warming a lot." Yes, she does. She does not believe, as much of the scientific community does, that humans have had anything to do with global warming.

But Brooks' best line is: "She's got different categories in her head than, I think, the older conservatives who are pretty much down the line ideologically." She is anti-abortion, even in the instance of rape and incest. She is major supporter of gun rights as a lifelong member of the NRA and hunts (hopefully better than our current VP). She is pro-death penalty. She filed suit against the federal government to prevent designating the polar bear as an endangered species because it could have a negative impact on the oil industry. She believes creationism ought to be taught alongside evolution.

In what way is she different ideologically than older conservatives?

Supposedly she is a reformer, having run against the incumbent Frank Murkowski because his administration was so corrupt. But, was her desire to run against Murkowski fueled by her desire to clean up Alaska's government, or by the fact that he passed her over when he appointed his daughter Lisa to fill his Senate seat when he took over as governor in 2002? After all, one of her first acts as mayor of Wasilla (after a resounding victory where she garnered 909 votes) was to fire the police chief, a city official who supported her competitor.

After all, you know what they say about payback?

Idiot Peggy Noonan editorial

In Thursday's Wall Street Journal (August 28), Peggy Noonan wrote the following:

"The general thinking among thinking journalists, as opposed to journalists who merely follow the journalistic line of the day, is that the change of venue Thursday night to Invesco Field, and the huge, open air Obama acceptance speech is…one of the biggest and possibly craziest gambles of this or any other presidential campaign of the modern era. Everyone can define what can go wrong, and no one can quite define what "great move" would look like. It has every possibility of looking like a Nuremberg rally; it has too many variables to guarantee a good tv picture; the set, the Athenian columns, looks hokey; big crowds can get in the way of subtle oratory. My own added thought is that speeches are delicate; they're words in the air, and when you've got a ceiling the words can sort of go up to that ceiling and come back down again. But words said into an open air stadium…can just get lost in echoes, and misheard phrases." [Boldface text is mine]

Now consider the same passage with a minor edit:

"The general thinking among thinking journalists, as opposed to journalists who merely follow the journalistic line of the day, is that the change of venue Thursday night to Invesco Field, and the huge, open air Obama acceptance speech is…one of the biggest and possibly craziest gambles of this or any other presidential campaign of the modern era. Everyone can define what can go wrong, and no one can quite define what "great move" would look like. It has too many variables to guarantee a good tv picture; the set, the Athenian columns, looks hokey; big crowds can get in the way of subtle oratory. My own added thought is that speeches are delicate; they're words in the air, and when you've got a ceiling the words can sort of go up to that ceiling and come back down again. But words said into an open air stadium…can just get lost in echoes, and misheard phrases."

Did the passage really lose any of its meaning about the difficulties of holding Obama's acceptance speech in Invesco Field? No.

What the passage did lose was a gratuitous linking of Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler. "It has every possibility of looking like a Nuremberg rally" suggests that Obama's speech at Invesco Field was the equivalent of Hitler's 1934 speeches during the 1934 Nazi Party Congress at Nuremberg (captured for all eternity in Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda film, Triumph of the Will).

Noonan makes her living with words, so this reference was no mistake.

And, it's inexcusable. To equate the first African American major party candidate for president with a madman who ordered the extermination of millions of people is not just over the top -- it's totally irresponsible.

Ms. Noonan owes Barack Obama an apology, and she owes us some time off from her column until she re-learns what the boundaries of fair political discourse are.

Idiot Fox Media Story

With all the speeches and stories at the Democratic National Convention, what does Fox News feature on Greta Van Susteren's program last night -- the fact that Stanley Kurtz has looked a minutes of board meetings of an educational group that Barack Obama and former Weather Underground member William Ayers attended together. These minutes establish how "close" the two were. In addition, the group eventually failed in its educational mission, raising "questions about how the money was spent," according to Kurtz, a reporter for National Review Online.

We have two wars in which our brave soldiers are serving and dying, troubling times with Russia and Georgia, a record budget deficit looming, oil over $115 a barrel, an astronomical number of home foreclosures, 150,000 veterans who are homeless and over 40 million (and maybe as high as 47 million) people without health insurance, and the issue Fox News wants to talk about is how well Barack Obama knows Bill Ayers?

Nice to have one's news priorities right.