Sarah Palin

Cafferty To Blitzer: Don’t Make Excuses For Her (Sarah Palin)!

Posted by on September 26, 2008 at 2:14 pm. 1 Comments :

This has to be enshrined as one of the premiere moments in television news.

CNN’s Jack Cafferty rolled tape of Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric. Couric asked Palin about the expense of the White House’s Wall Street bailout proposal. Palin gave a rambling and non-responsive answer. But what came after is even more startling.

When the camera returned to Cafferty he merely stared into it for a few profound seconds and then said that that was one of the most pathetic things he has ever seen. He said if you aren’t afraid that she is a 72 year old heartbeat from the presidency, you should be.

Then Wolf Blitzer tried to cover for Palin by saying that she was just trying to squeeze a lot into her answer. To which Cafferty replied:

“Don’t make excuses for her. That was pathetic.”

Cowed, but still deferential, Blitzer said it wasn’t one of Palin’s best moments. Does anyone have an example of one of Palin’s best, unscripted moments?

This is more evidence for why it so important for McCain to loosen the chains on Palin and let her speak. Most of the media doesn’t have the honesty and courage of Cafferty. But our nation’s future is riding on this: The Palin Watch

Addendumb: Later on Blitzer’s program he interviewed Lou Dobbs about tonight’s debate. Dobbs defied the reality that he is an anchor for one of the most prominent news enterprises in the world when he said…

“Imagine what it would take for the liberal national media to declare McCain the winner.”

Did he mean the same liberal national media for whom he works? Or maybe Fox News? Or GE, or Disney, or Viacom, or Simmons, or Comcast, or Tribune, or AP, or ….. ? The same media that employs Blitzer, Palin’s official apologist? Besides, Dobbs must not have heard that McCain won the debate before it even started.

Free Sarah Palin From Rupert Murdoch!

Posted by on September 25, 2008 at 11:06 am. NO Comments :

While John McCain is consumed with personally resolving the nation’s financial crisis, Sarah Palin is cavorting with the glamor set (elitist?) and the uber-conservative media barons who are propping up the Republican ticket:

“Sarah Palin schmoozed with controversial media tycoon Rupert Murdoch at a swanky charity gala here Wednesday night.”

And just because I may have to much spare time on my hands:

Free Sarah Palin

Silence of the Palins

As for John McCain’s promise to suspend his campaign so that he can concentrate on saving America by bailing out Wall Street … like much of what McCain says, it isn’t true:

McCain ads are still running.
McCain’s surrogates are still making the rounds on TV.
McCain is still scheduled to attend a Beverly Hills fundraiser Wednesday.

So much for saving America. Perhaps these campaign commitments are why he doesn’t have the time to debate Barack Obama tomorrow.

CNN’s Campbell Brown: Free Sarah Palin

Posted by on September 24, 2008 at 8:08 am. 7 Comments :

It would be a mistake to get too bogged down on the Republican spokesmodel for vice-president, Sarah Palin, but this commentary by CNN’s Campbell Brown is notable for diving straight to the point:

This is also notable because Brown herself has not been a particularly bright light in the media sky. She has a history of leaning rightward in her reporting and is married to former Bush flack Dan Senor. But giving credit where it’s due, Brown has nicely summarized an argument not often heard with regard to the sequestration of Palin from the press – sexism:

“Tonight I call on the McCain campaign to stop treating Sarah Palin like she is a delicate flower that will wilt at any moment. […] Free Sarah Palin. Free her from the chauvinistic chains you are binding her with. Sexism in this campaign must come to an end. Sarah Palin has just as much a right to be a real candidate in this race as the men do. So let her act like one.”

The only problem with Brown’s demand is that the reason the Palin/McCain camp is treating Palin like she may wilt is because that’s what they are afraid she will actually do. They have calculated the risk of keeping her closeted with the risk of letting her out and concluded that they must keep that door shut tight.

Palin/McCain Camp Bars Press From UN Meetings

Posted by on September 23, 2008 at 10:36 am. NO Comments :

Continuing their strategy of stonewalling the media, Palin and McCain are refusing to admit reporters into the meetings that Palin has scheduled at the United Nations. Palin’s UN visit includes chats with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. The campaign is hoping to enhance her foreign policy cred by having her spend a few minutes with a couple of U.S. allies.

Whatever public relations boost they intended to score with this stunt is going to be severely limited by the fact that they consider the press to be persona non grata. According to the AP:

“The campaign told the TV producer, print and wire reporters in the press pool that follows the Alaska governor that they would not be admitted with the photographers and camera crew taken in to photograph the meetings. At least two news organizations, including The Associated Press, objected and were told that the decision was not subject to discussion.”

CNN, whose camera crew were assigned to cover the event for television news organizations, threatened to pull out of this sham photo opportunity if their producer (who is also a reporter) was not allowed in. As that would have denied Palin the all-important TV exposure for which these events are staged, the campaign relented (I guess the decision was open to discussion after all). But he will still not be allowed to ask any questions.

Without submitting to questions from the press, Palin’s tea party does nothing to inform her or the public. She is no more a foreign policy expert today than she was yesterday, and voters are no better acquainted with her qualifications to be vice president. Of all the questions that won’t be asked, there is one that is rising in urgency: What are they afraid of?

No One Wants To Play With John McCain

Posted by on September 15, 2008 at 3:35 pm. 1 Comments :

As an illustration of how shallow the media analysis is of the so-called “Palin Effect.” a picture is indeed worth a thousand words:

Here are 68 words from the Washington Post:

Republican presidential nominee John McCain held his first rally without running mate Sarah Palin today, and let’s just say there were seats available.

The McCain “Road to Victory” rally was originally scheduled to be a pancake breakfast, but the campaign said there was such an outpouring of enthusiasm the event was shifted to the 15,000-seat Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena.

That might not have been the best idea.

Obviously the “outpouring of enthusiasm” didn’t pour out as advertised. We’ll see how many appearances McCain makes without his lucky charm from here on out.

The John McCain Experience

Posted by on September 13, 2008 at 11:01 am. 2 Comments :

Much of the focus of John McCain’s campaign for president has been on his reputed experience (and just as often, the alleged lack of same for his opponent). But there has been sparse actual examination of how that argument should be measured. Is spending five and a half years in a prisoner of war camp 40 years ago preparation to run the largest governmental bureaucracy in the world? If so, then, as Jon Stewart said, “Guantanamo Bay isn’t a prison, it’s a leadership academy.”

Is 36 years in Congress the yardstick for executive readiness? Or is it two years as governor of the third smallest state in the nation, preceded by the mayoralty of a frosty township of 6,000? McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, appear to disagree on this issue:

For the record:

Palin: “[W]e’ve got to remember what the desire is in this nation at this time. It is for no more politics as usual and somebody’s big, fat resume maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment.”

McCain: “I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training I wasn’t a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn’t a governor for a short period of time.”

So Palin doesn’t think that McCain is qualified to be president, and McCain doesn’t think that Palin is either. This Mutual Unappreciation Society makes for a bizarre and foreboding ticket. And it has to raise the question: Why did he pick her to be a 72 year old heartbeat from succeeding him in the first place?

The paramount cause for concern stemming from this has less to do with Palin’s supreme inadequacy, than it does with McCain’s dangerously deficient judgment. Whether he selected her for her extra X chromosome, her missionary zeal, or her appeal to his base of Neoconderthals, it is clear that his determinative criteria was harvesting votes. He obviously considers winning the election more important than the well being of the country. For that alone he must be rejected.

As always, the media is about 26 miles behind the curve, and it doesn’t seem fit enough to run a marathon. There is a persistently ignorant thread running through the coverage of this race. There is an obsession with trivialities like “who is the pig?” and “what does lipstick represent?” Yet very little inquiry into how the so-called candidate of experience would put the fate of the country into the hands of someone who knows almost nothing about it; who has only crossed it’s borders once or twice; who only met with the top of the ticket once before being crowned. She had a more rigorous competition to become Miss Wasilla.

John McCain’s cynical and desperate ambition to be president borders on the treasonous. He confessed his intention following his first bid for the White House:

“I didn’t decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president”

You know, if everyone just took McCain at his word, no one would vote for him.

Palin Boots McCain From Top Of The Ticket

Posted by on September 11, 2008 at 2:07 am. 4 Comments :

Judging by the treatment Sarah Palin is receiving from the media, a casual observer could be forgiven for assuming that she is the candidate for president and John McCain is her running mate. Wednesday evening she arrived back in her home state of Alaska and all three cable news networks interrupted their programming to air her remarks to an adoring crowd. That’s funny, because I don’t recall the media dropping everything and rushing to Wilmington, Delaware to capture the live broadcast of Joe Biden’s homecoming.

Virtually every report from the Republican campaign trail is about Palin. McCain has become an appendage to whom little attention is paid except to inquire as to how awesome it is to be with Sarah. All anybody is talking about is pigs, lipstick, and mooseburgers. There is very little public discussion of … um, what do you call them … oh yeah, “issues.” This is no accident. The McCain team has finally figured out a way to avoid substance entirely and keep their elderly candidate from getting fatigued. Just give the spotlight to Palin and let her tap dance around the country while McCain catches forty winks in the wings.

A lot has been made (by me) of Palin’s stonewalling of the press. It has been 13 days since she was selected to join McCain and she has still not had a press conference or sat for an interview with a reporter. My Palin Watch widget is documenting how long she is dodging the media. She is scheduled to end that streak with an interview by Charlie Gibson this week. But lost in the shuffle is that McCain himself is nearly as evasive as Palin. Since July 27 (45 days), McCain has appeared only twice on a national news program. That’s a remarkable turnaround for a man who has set records for media whoring.

Palin’s new status as a celebrity pol is confirmed by the attention she is getting from inside the campaign Wurlitzer. She is now attended to by a high-level crew of former Bush, and current McCain, cronies. The cast includes:

  • Taylor Griffin – Bush campaign aide.
  • Tracey Schmitt – Bush campaign aide.
  • Tucker Eskew – Bush campaign aide.
  • Steve Biegun – Bush National Security Council.
  • Mark Wallace – Bush deputy campaign manager.
  • Nicolle Wallace – Bush/McCain communications director.
  • Douglas Holtz-Eakin – McCain economic adviser.
  • Randy Scheunemann – McCain senior foreign-policy adviser.
  • Joe Donoghue – McCain Senate aide.

Talk about “just more of the same…” This contingent of familiar handlers is busily preparing Palin for her get together with Gibson. They traveled to Fairbanks with her this evening and are expected to be drilling her non-stop (get your minds out of the gutter) for her debut encounter with the national media. It seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a not particularly ominous interrogator like Gibson. Either she aces this test or the speculation that she is a lightweight, insufficiently vetted, politically convenient, ideologically eccentric character from Bizarro World, will be forever burned into the public mind – if it’s not too late already.

Fox News Uses McCain Front Group To Blast Obama

Posted by on September 10, 2008 at 1:33 pm. 1 Comments :

A report was broadcast on Fox News today (and published on FoxNews.com) that purported to be an examination of the congressional earmarks of the presidential candidates. As one might expect, the report fell something short of what a reasonable person would call “fair and balanced.”

Correspondent William La Jeunesse’s report only went into detail on earmarks requested by Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The story came complete with on-screen graphics to illustrate his points. But no numbers or graphics were provided for John McCain or Sarah Palin. This deliberately one-sided hit piece would be bad enough all by itself. Unfortunately, the worst part is revealed with a little further investigation. And it gets much, much worse.

The source Fox News used for the research in the story was Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), an organization that Fox described as a “nonpartisan, nonprofit group.” In fact, the group is far from nonpartisan. It has publicly endorsed McCain for president and donated $11,000.00 to him or to PACs he controls. CGAW has also worked as a shill to attack McCain opponents in a manner that may have violated election law. It has also been connected to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

On the board of CAGW is long-time McCain associate, Orson Swindle. They met as cell mates in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp where Swindle says that he and McCain “slept side-by-side for almost two years.” Swindle is now the McCain campaign’s veterans liaison and was appointed to his campaign Truth Squad a couple of months ago. He spoke last week at the Republican National Convention. He is also a senior policy advisor at the big DC lobbying firm of Hunton & Williams whose clients include American Express, Eli Lilly, GE, Microsoft, and Wal-Mart.. These duties violate McCain’s own policy of not allowing people working for “independent entities” to serve on his campaign staff.

Taking these facts into account, it should come as no surprise that CAGW awarded McCain a 100% rating, while giving Obama 10% and Biden 0%. The group claimed that Sarah Palin was not included because the ratings evaluate only members of Congress. But they did rate Alaska’s performance in their 2008 Congressional Pig Book (Uh oh, they’re calling Palin a pig) where they said that “Alaska led the nation with $556 per capita ($380 million).” In the 2007 edition they reported that Alaska and Hawaii “have been the top two states in pork per capita every year but one since 2000.” None of that was included in Fox’s report on television or online.

I’m not sure why it still shocks me to hear that Fox News broadcasts fiercely biased reports that abandon every tenet of journalistic ethics. But citing an organization that is known to be supporting McCain, identifying it as nonpartisan, and using it to pummel Obama, is such a blatantly dishonest and disreputable act that in a just world their press credentials would be immediately revoked. It is just infuriating to know that Fox will get away with this time after time without paying a price for their unscrupulous and unprofessional conduct.

The only demonstrated way to effectively punish Fox is to deny them access to Democratic lawmakers, candidates, and officials. When we are united in embargoing the network they have been noticeably distraught. They may puff up their chest and threaten us, as Bill O’Reilly did when he said that “If you dodge us, it is at your peril.” Or they may invoke juvenile tactics like Chris Wallace’s Obama Watch to bully us into compliance. But that behavior just affirms the effectiveness of staying away. They were obviously troubled and desperate, and they can’t maintain a pretense of balance if Democrats refuse to certify their bias by appearing on their tainted air.

Starve The Beast!

The Sarah Palin Watch Widget

Posted by on September 6, 2008 at 2:38 am. 17 Comments :

Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin burst on the scene from nowhere – Nowhere, Alaska, that is. You know, the place where they wanted to build that bridge to. And despite the fact that nobody in at least 49 states knew the slightest bit about her, she rocketed to stardom as the leading light of American conservatism.

Consequently, some Americans wanted to know more about the person who may become a 72 year old heartbeat from the presidency of the United States. They will be disappointed. The McCain campaign has sequestered Palin and will not permit reporters to interview her. They will allow no questions on the vetting process, or the abuse of power investigation that is currently underway. They refuse to clarify her positions on foreign policy or Congressional earmarking. There will be no direct examination of her record as governor or her fitness for national office. In short, the American people should shut up and be happy with whatever happy talk the campaign wishes to engage in via staged rallies and campaign ads. That is almost exactly what McCain spokesperson Nicolle Wallace told Jay Carney of Time Magazine.

I created the Palin Watch widget to record the elapsed time from her entry into the race, until she agrees to answer questions in a fair, independent, national media forum. There is simply no other way to assess her ability to perform the job she seeks. A candid give and take with probing journalists reveals more of a candidates knowledge and insight than a speech that was probably prepared by aides. The job she wants is far too important to give to an unknown quantity who arrogantly declines to open herself up to the people she would serve.

The Palin Watch was inspired in part by the Obama Watch, a device that Chris Wallace used to goad Barack Obama into appearing on his Fox News Sunday program. The difference is that I am not pimping my own show, or any show, so long as Palin makes herself available to press scrutiny.

Americans must rise up and demand that McCain free Sarah Palin. The time is now to come clean so that voters have sufficient information to make an informed judgment. Democracy is in a sorry state if political strategists can hawk candidates like soda pop without ever disclosing the ingredients.

McCain And Palin: Stars In Their Eyes

Posted by on September 4, 2008 at 4:03 pm. 5 Comments :

For months now, John McCain has been belittling Barack Obama as inexperienced and unprepared to be president. Much of the criticism has targeted his speech making prowess and charisma, which McCain characterizes as the hollow trappings of celebrity. There was even an ad that attacked Obama as the “biggest celebrity in the world,” and juxtaposed his image with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. McCain himself said that:

“The bottom line is that Sen. Obama’s words, for all their eloquence and passion, don’t mean all that much.”

But now, the day after Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the “pit bull in lipstick,” debuted at the Republican National Convention, the campaign, the Party, and the media have all adopted a new view of celebrity. While it was a pejorative when directed Obama, for Palin it elicits the sort of applause and acclaim that is ordinarily reserved for … well, celebrities. Consider this sampling of the press:

Chris Wallace – Fox News: “I don’t think it’s overstating it to say being right here on the floor that a star was born tonight. A new star in the political galaxy.”
Michael Barone – U.S. News & World Report: “Sarah Palin’s speech to the Republican National Convention last night was a home run. A star was born.”
Margaret Carlson – Bloomberg: “On Wednesday night, a political star was born.”
William Kristol – New York Times: “A star is born.”
Karen Breslau – Newsweek: “A populist star is born.”
Art Moore – WorldNetDaily: “A star is born. The country ‘fell in love with Sarah Palin tonight.'”
Rich Lowry – National Review: “After that, you feel like asking not: How did she rise so fast? but Where has she been so long?”

And that’s not all. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper, MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan and Joe Scarborough, and Fox News’ Brit Hume and Dick Morris, all used some variation of the “Star is Born” theme to describe Palin’s debut. And all it took was one speech for the GOP establishment, and the media at large, to succumb to the charms of a heretofore unknown political neophyte who, two years ago, was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population 6,000. One speech to transform the perception of this newcomer into someone qualified to be a 72 year old heartbeat from the presidency. Just one extensively rehearsed, meticulously stage-crafted speech.

So now Republicans, who demeaned Obama for attracting positive attention and adoring fans, is boasting that they have their own idol at whom to stare glassy-eyed. Now the media is abuzz with glowing notices for Palin’s opening night. And yet the McCain/Palin camp is still bashing the press as biased, despite the unfiltered adulation that is being blasted at them from all sides. The press is being castigated for doing what any professional journalist would acknowledge is their job. Politico’s Roger Simon is one of the very few who see the irony in this. He penned a must-read column that sarcastically explains “Why the media should apologize.”

“We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? […] Bad questions. Bad media. Bad.”

In her address last night, Palin spoke of “dramatic speeches before devoted followers” and wondered what happens “when the cloud of rhetoric has passed… when the roar of the crowd fades away.” But no one in the press observed that she might as well have been talking about herself, even more than Obama. After all, Obama has been on the campaign trail for 19 months developing the devotion of his supporters, but Palin has achieved the task after a grand total of four days and one speech. Four days during which she has been sequestered from the public by the campaign which has not offered her up for a single press conference. Despite the many controversies swirling around her appointment, she has so far only sat for an interview with the hard-hitting People Magazine. There is talk that she will appear on a Sunday morning news program this weekend. Guess which one. Fox News Sunday!

The result of all of this is that the two arguments McCain has used most aggressively against Obama – his experience and his celebrity – have both been rendered inert. Palin has less experience and, contrary to Obama’s multitude of stirring public addresses, Palin still has – and, I repeat – just one speech. The fanatical fawning of faithful Republicans is bad enough, but not unexpected. From the media, however, it is just plain creepy. Is anyone paying attention?