New York Times media reporter David Carr wrote the other day (4/5/10) about Sarah Palin’s wide-ranging appeal:
Ms. Palin still gets a session in the media spanking machine every time she does anything, but the disapproval seems to further cement the support of her loyalists. Ms. Palin may or may not be qualified to represent America around the world, but she certainly represents vast swaths of the American public and has a lucrative new career to show for it.
If we donâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢t see why, then maybe we deserve the “lamestream media” label she likes to give us.
Mark Halperin of Time (3/29/10) expressed a similar hurts-so-good enthusiasm for Palin’s attacks on the press:
Quippy and tart, she mocked the “lamestream media,” and offered her usual punch of charm and charisma, something the public and the press have hungered for since she mostly limited her exposure to Facebook updates, Twitter tweets and calculated appearances on Fox News, her new employer.
Indeed, by carefully controlling her own visibility–and refusing to be challenged or held accountable by adversaries or the press–she has become even more irresistible as programming and copy.
There are few, if any, political figures who are treated this way by corporate media. She launches regular attacks on them, almost entirely without merit, and their response is, “Huh, she must be on to something there.” There is no way one could imagine a figure on the left being treated this way. When Dennis Kucinich chided Koppel in a presidential debate for asking silly questions, ABC‘s response was to stop covering his campaign (Action Alert, 12/11/03). When Stephen Colbert nailed the press for its pro-Bush reporting, they sneered at him (Extra! Update, 6/06).
As for Sarah Palin’s “appeal,” her rating in the latest Washington Post poll (3/23-26/10) is 37 percent favorable, vs. 55 percent unfavorable.
Hillary Clinton’s latest poll figures (AP-GfK, 3/3-8/10), by contrast, are 66 percent favorable, 31 percent unfavorable.
When’s the last time you heard corporate media claiming that Clinton “certainly represents vast swaths of the American public”?
I’m not sure what’s more disturbing, taking into account the less-than-precise nature of polling: that Palin can have that level of public support, or that Clinton can have that level.
Looking at what each has been responsible for, they’re both pretty damn dangerous, aren’t they?
The so-called “Public” love Sara Palin because she’s an oddity to most, of the ‘mainstream’ public, they’re not used to seeing a MILF, redneck hillbilly in the ‘laimstream’, they generally see her type in bowling alleys and on Jerry Springer and Bounty Hunter. She does get some things right, who would argue that the Mainstream Media isn’t lame? They’re at least lame enough to pay her salary AND give her more airtime than any story about her merits.