Palin’s Popularity vs. Media Mania
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Monday afternoon, Rush Limbaugh pointed out the most evil,
mean-spirited act Sarah Palin has ever committed: She didn’t
include an index in her new book, Going
Rogue.
Elite journalists don’t read political books, but instead
skim the index to see if their names are mentioned, Limbaugh
explained to his national radio audience. Therefore, Palin
omitted the index to exact revenge on her tormenters by forcing
them to read her book. To her liberal enemies, this was a deed as
inhumane as her moose-hunting.
Rush played an audio clip of MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell
complaining about “Sarah’s index-and-footnote free, score
settling campaign memoir.” The same network’s Andrea Mitchell –
apparently having assigned some flunky to read the whole book –
recited on her show the only page of Going Rogue
(p. 397) where Palin mentioned Mitchell.
What is it about Palin that sticks in the craw of liberal
journalists? Perhaps the same thing that has always annoyed them
about Rush Limbaugh: Sarah Palin doesn’t need their
help, and all their efforts to harm her appear
impotent.
Her media enemies cite polls to demonstrate that the former
Alaska governor is unpopular. Yet her book is a bestselling
blockbuster, while anti-Palin outfits like CBS, MSNBC and CNN are
the least-popular TV news organizations in America. And as far as
Republicans are concerned,
Palin is infinitely more popular.
At this point, Palin controls her own destiny. She is
independent, and has no need to court the approval of the media
“gatekeepers.” She’s the hottest topic in political news, and if
the New York Times or the TV networks want
a piece of the action, they have to play by her rules. They’re so
used to dictating the rules — every book must have an
index! – that Palin’s rogue refusal to follow
their rules is even more offensive to them than her good looks,
her handsome husband, and her five children.
The Associated Press reportedly tasked 11 staffers to
fact-check Going Rogue. How many AP
reporters fact-checked Barack Obama’s books? Maybe the number
wasn’t zero, but it sure as heck wasn’t 11.
If the AP ever decides to start fact-checking what is
written about Sarah Palin as rigorously as
it fact-checks what is written by Sarah
Palin, maybe they’ll be doing a service to journalism. As it is,
they’re just another tiny cog in the massive anti-Palin machine
that also includes Media Matters and every liberal’s favorite
“conservative,” David Brooks. (ABC’s “Good
Morning America” ran a clip of Brooks calling Palin a “joke”
as evidence that “even conservatives” are against her.)
Newsweek devoted its latest cover
story to attacking Palin — a refreshing change of pace from
Newsweek’s weekly cover stories praising
Barack Obama. According to Newsweek, she’s
a “problem” in need of a solution, perhaps because she
looks good in shorts.
There seems to be a media competition at work, a sort of
championship tournament. Every reporter, anchor, and pundit in
America is engaged in a frantic effort to be the hero who fires
the silver bullet that slays the Republican werewolf from
Wasilla.
Whether or not Sarah Palin is the last, best hope of the
GOP, she is inarguably the worst nightmare of crusading liberal
journalists. Not since Oliver North showed up for a key
congressional hearing in his Marine Corps uniform has the
Washington press corps been so spectacularly vexed at its
inability to destroy an intended victim. Her mere survival makes
her Evil with a capital “E.” The only way Republicans can save
Palin from this incessant maelstrom of media hatred is to
nominate a Limbaugh-Coulter ticket in 2012.
The result of this constant Palin-bashing is exactly the
opposite of what the bashers intend. Possessing an amazing
ability to enrage liberals, she causes them to expose their own
nuttiness, as when Andrew Sullivan — Patient Zero of the Palin
Derangement Syndrome media pandemic —
accused her of being “obsessed” with
him.
In one of those million-to-one coincidences that have
attended Palin’s skyrocket ascent, her collaborator on Going
Rogue is Lynn Vincent, with whom I co-authored
on Donkey Cons. Lynn is a veteran
journalist whom I first met when she recruited me to the staff of
the Jacksonville (Ala.) State University student
newspaper.
This connection caused the werewolf-hunters to cry “A-ha!”
and to engage in what one blogger dubbed “second-degree
guilt-by-association.” In the process of trying to prove that
Lynn is a hatefully homophobic racist, however, they exposed the
awful truth: She has
gay friends and relatives, and attends a megachurch with a
black pastor.
Given the mindless ferocity of liberal hatred focused on
Palin, she can never expect the media to treat her with the
reverential deference that Obama customarily receives from
reporters. All she asks is that they stop “making stuff up,” but
even this seems too much to ask, causing her critics to accuse
her of “whining.”
Fortunately, she won’t need any favors from CBS or CNN to
reach thousands of Americans face-to-face in the coming weeks, as
she embarks on a national
book tour that is sure to attract massive crowds at every
stop along the way. Palin announced the schedule, as she
announces everything else, on her Facebook page, which has a
readership larger than Andrea Mitchell’s MSNBC audience.
Why do they hate her? Because Sarah Palin is guilty of a
sin for which liberals can never forgive a Republican: She’s more
popular than they are. And everybody knows it.
