Super Sarah
Is anyone else sick of the constant media attacks on Sarah Palin? Personally, I'm offended by both the attacks on Sarah Palin for being a woman, and by those on John McCain for being old. Clearly someone has forgotten that both women and old folks vote! On the bright side, I've been very pleased by the lack of racial animus in this election. As others have noted, about the only time the race card has been played this year has been when the Obama campaign itself has chosen to do so.
But getting back to the attacks we have been seeing, against Sarah Palin, I'm afraid we've entered a "Pravda" era - one in which the broadcast and printed media publish only propaganda. In such an era, truth can be found in such publications and broadcasts only indirectly.
For instance, I'm now sure Sarah Palin is proving to be an effective candidate. If she weren't, she'd simply be ignored by the mainstream media. But she's not being ignored. Rather, she's been attacked constantly and in every possible way ever since her nomination, in a way that is rarely tolerated against Democrats. (Unfortunately, the same folks did the same hatchet job on Hillary last Spring.) That tells me Sarah (like Hillary) is doing a wonderful job of getting out her message.
One other manifestation of the "Pravda" era in our media now is that I really can't tell who's ahead in this election. The media proclaimed Barack Obama the winner back in January, and haven't slacked off in that opinion since. Likewise, polls the media chooses to discuss agree on Obama being ahead. But those polls were amazingly wrong during some of the primaries this year, particularly when they proclaimed Obama ahead of Hillary Clinton in various states Hillary ended up winning.
The great unknown in this election cycle is how many Democratics who supported Hillary will vote for Sarah.
It ain't over til it's over. And either way, hopefully for Sarah it's just the beginning.
Update: Helen McCaffrey (director of Women's Watch, Inc.) is also offended by the attacks on both Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton.
"I cannot predict who will win the presidential campaign, but I already know who will lose big: all women.
I realized this when I saw a 20-something male student who attends a class in the community college where I teach, wearing a T-shirt that read, "Sarah Palin is a C-." He wore it in public, in broad daylight, and without shame or even consciousness of what he was doing.
...
It was the encounter with the young man that woke me up, but there were signs all along the campaign trail. First, with the candidacy of Sen. Hillary Clinton, who won 18 million popular votes from the people of the United States and was ridiculed, marginalized, and put in her place when she wasn't even offered the vice presidency slot.
But the really big attack on women occurred when John McCain selected only the second woman in history to be on a major-party ticket. He chose a governor of a state critical to our energy crisis. She is a very popular governor with an 80-percent approval rate. She was elected on her own merit without previous political ties. She is her own political creation, not the wife, daughter, sister or mistress of a politician.
I thought Americans would be proud of her nomination, whether we agreed or disagreed with her on the issues. Was I in for a shock.
The sexism that I believed had been eradicated was lurking, like some creature from the black lagoon, just below the surface. Suddenly it erupted and in some unexpected places.
Instead of engaging Palin on the issues, critics attacked attributes that are specifically female. It is Hillary's pantsuit drama to the power of 10. Palin's hair, her voice, her motherhood, and her personal hygiene were substituted for substance. That's when it was nice.
The hatred escalated to performers advocating Palin be "gang raped," to suggestions that her husband had had sex with their young daughters, and reports that her Down syndrome child really was that of her teenage daughter. One columnist even called for her to submit to DNA testing to prove her virtue. Smells a little like Salem to me. I was present at an Obama rally at which the mention of Palin's name drew shouts of "stone her."
"Stone her"? How biblical.
All this is at a time when women are regularly being raped as they try to cross the border into the United States; bloody, broken women haunt the emergency rooms of hospitals; and abuse and disrespect for women and girls is rising faster than bank bailouts. That is the atmosphere in which people, including women, choose to attempt to destroy a woman who is a legitimate political leader.
Agreement on issues is not required, but Palin merits respect."
Update2: The election is over, and Palin lost, but the attacks still haven't ended. Allegedly-Republican sources are even now attacking Sarah via the all-too-happy-to-repeat-such-venom-from-anonymous-sources mainstream media. My guess is that this is intended as a pre-emptive strike, to prevent her having a chance to run again, by folks from both parties who consider themselves better than "hillbillies from Wasilla." Given that Obama too is from "flyover country", our self-ordained "betters" in DC, NYC & LA may want to curb their retoric while there's still anyone left who cares what they have to say about anything.
There are already many theories as to why Republicans failed this time, but to me it's been obvious for a couple of years that big government, pork barrel spending and intolerance are not winning issues for Republicans, and not good for our country either long-term. Sarah Palin is part of the answer to that.
Tom Coburn, one of the few remaining Republicans in Congress for whom I retain respect offers a similar explanation here, along with a reminder to reach across the aisle.:
"conservatives should be the first to accept the olive branch President-elect Obama has extended to the opposition and help him achieve results in the areas where we agree, such as the need to review the budget line by line and eliminate programs that don't work.
As president, Obama will have to contend with not just an economic crisis but the impending collapse of Social Security and Medicare, not to mention other unforeseen challenges. Conservatives should be available not to celebrate liberalism's practical failures but to offer concrete solutions.
Conservatives need not despair because our ideas never go out of fashion. America was founded on a healthy distrust of activist government. Today, conservatives stand ready to remind the public why it's better to err on the side of too little government rather than too much."
Update3: The New York Times now admits the infamous attack on Sarah Palin's not knowing Africa is a continent was a hoax, a hoax in which they and other liberal media were all too eager to believe, just as when an obviously-faked memo was used in the previous election to try and claim President Bush avoided military service. Here's the interesting story from the NYT blog on how the Palin hoax was created. Interesting how the mainstream media seems to be belatedly discovering their conscience, now that their anointed candidate is safely headed for the White House.
Update4: A lingering mystery from the recent election is why John McCain is still defending Barack Obama against provably-true charges regarding Obama's choice of friends and pastor, yet not defending his own running mate Sarah Palin against even proven-false charges.
Update5: This seems exactly right to me.
"From the beginning of '08, the accepted wisdom was that no matter whom the Democrats nominated, they would deliver to the Republicans an ignominious defeat. But this year's defeat was anything but the complete rout it was supposed to be.
And the person who nearly even saved the day -- and the election -- for Republicans was Sarah Palin.
This is not a minority opinion. When Rasmussen conducted detailed exit polling among Republicans, they found that a full 69% of respondents thought Sarah Palin helped -- not hurt -- McCain. Governor Palin has not garnered the status as America's most highly regarded, most popular governor for nothing.
And how much do Republicans admire Sarah Palin? Far more than anyone else on our side of the aisle, according to more Rasmussen tidbits:
Ninety-one percent (91%) of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin, including 65% who say their view is very favorable. Only eight percent (8%) have an unfavorable view of her, including three percent (3%) very unfavorable.
When asked to choose among some of the GOP's top names for their choice for the party's 2012 presidential nominee, 64% say Palin."
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