Friday, October 3, 2008

Gotcha!

It's not "gotcha journalism" just because you're a moron.

This is the latest coming out of the McCain campaign, the tried and true Republican tactic of blaming the "liberal" media for Sarah Palin's inability to answer questions that were asked of her in the two real interviews that she's given to the press. Yeah, that Katie Couric must be so "in the tank" for Obama since she asked that ridiculously hard question, "what newspapers do you read?" Read very closely because I'm about to tell you something that may seem surprising and I know we've gone over it before, but I assure you, it's true: there is no such thing as the liberal media. Make no mistake, there's a right-wing, neo-conservative media - FOX News, New York Post, Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Review, Weekly Standard, and pretty much every AM talk station you've ever listened - but liberal media? Sorry, doesn't exist. Oh, there's a few tiny outlets for strictly liberal thought like Air America Radio, but if you're looking for hardcore liberal media, you're only going to find it on the internet where any jackass with a keyboard can express his thoughts (oh the crippling irony!) In terms of traditional media - radio, television, newspaper, magazines - it's dominated by three groups: 1. conservatives, 2. extremely lazy reporters, and 3. the dying breed - actual journalists.

I got into a less-than-polite disagreement with someone today who, in so many words, told me that I shouldn't bash McCain/Palin because I don't know them personally, nor can I believe everything the media tells me. The first part of that, not knowing them personally, is incredibly stupid, but I'll forgive it since I provoked the hasty response; the second portion however, did strike a chord, you can't always trust the media. But is it because of a liberal bias? No, it's because of general laziness... or fear. The media doesn't do its job anymore because politicians refuse to talk to the press - if a journalist asks tough questions to a Republican, they're labeled as liberal and their newspaper or TV station will never get another interview with that particular candidate.

Sarah Palin has furthered this to embarrassing new lows by doing a measly two interviews with a non-FOX network since becoming John McCain's running-mate. Here's a woman that was literally unknown to the overwhelming majority of non-Alaskans until five weeks ago and she can't even give interviews without preconditions? Obviously, we all know why, if you saw any of the Katie Couric or Charlie Gibson interviews, you understand that Governor Palin is ridiculously unqualified for her position and quite frankly, is a fucking idiot. Don't get me wrong, Palin is an educated woman and probably knows a lot about Alaska, but when it comes to being on the national stage? Yeah, "fucking idiot" is the proper term to use. Some of her answers were like watching fourth graders try to answer test questions about a book they didn't read - just string together a bunch of words and hope they make sense, even if they're completely unrelated to the topic at hand. She did this in the debate last night as well, though it wasn't as obvious since it was paced so quickly that it wound up being in her favor until people had a few hours to think about it.

"Gee golly Katie, I guess you could say Highlights for Children really helped me shape my world view! That and Guns & Ammo, you betcha!"

So let's just set the record straight, Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson and the majority of the mainstream media are not biased against Governor Palin. Hell, the McCain campaign picked Couric to come out on the campaign trail with Palin for nine days, so whatever happened there, they brought on themselves. I know we were all surprised to see it, but yes, Katie Couric showed some real journalism in her interviews with the Governor. There is no liberal agenda in asking a candidate running for the #2 highest office in the land what newspapers they read or if they can name a single Supreme Court case. Palin froze on both of those because she is clueless, not because Couric is an Obama surrogate. This is journalism, folks - asking candidates tough questions because being President and Vice President are tough jobs. We shouldn't be voting for people just because they make us feel fuzzy inside or because they talk like characters in Fargo.

The McCain campaign knows this and it's why they're doing exactly what I predicted they would do in last night's blog - keeping Palin out of the spotlight for the next 30 days. She won't be on any of the Sunday morning talk shows, she won't be sitting down with anyone else from CBS, ABC or NBC, no press conferences, nothing. She scraped by in the debate last night and managed to halt her freefall into the complete destruction of her credibility, but her handlers know that she is not ready to be on television, let alone Vice President or worse, President of the United States of America.

That's what a John McCain vote gets you on November 4, a Vice President whose own campaign openly acknowledges that she is not even ready to stand up to the former host of The Today Show, yet you're supposed to think she can handle Vladimir Putin and Osama bin Laden.


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