All Palin, All the Time
I’ve heard mothers talk about a phenomenon that occurs in hospitals around childbirth time during which they lose all shame. The discomfort and/or pain of childbirth takes precedence over any personal humiliation they might otherwise have felt. It’s as if nothing that needs to be done to them can cause any embarrassment as long as what’s done will result in the delivery of the child.
It may seem an odd connection, but the media’s excitement over Sarah Palin’s emails appears to me to be another form of that phenomenon. In fact, their ongoing preoccupation with a former governor of a lightly-populated state who ran unsuccessfully for vice-president demonstrates that nothing they do or say can cause any embarrassment as long as it results in helping to keep them from going out of business.
It was the McCain campaign that selected Palin, but it was the media that created and promulgated the storm that surrounded her; it’s the media that has helped sustain the storm with its non-stop, breathless, misogynistic coverage; and it’s the media that has discovered that it needs Sarah Palin even more than she needs them. While early coverage was almost surely driven by a political agenda, the continuing coverage is driven more by the hunger for survival. There are a lot of other national and world issues that need to be covered with the same thoroughness, but when subscriptions are drying up and viewership is plummeting, shame disappears.
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Comments:
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Pat, the media responds to a market. They're delivering this because people want it. I'm inclined to think we should put less focus on the media for satisfying consumer demand and more focus on persuading consumers that there's a very interesting world of things to think about beyond these stories.
Look, it's a fact we on Ricochet know full well: Mention Palin, people respond with interest. It tempts me to discuss her more than I think the phenomenon is really worth, in some objective sense, and obviously it tempts you, too. If we want people to think about what we think is more important, though, we have to sell that story--we have to persuade people that it's interesting and relevant to them. We are the media. We can't keep blaming the media. If our customers are bored when we try to tell them what we think is important, we have to learn to tell the story in a more interesting way. We too have to be disciplined by market forces.
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Claire, it really is a chicken and egg argument. Besides which, if the media are merely responding to a market, why are they not generally right of center, as the country is?
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Let's focus on a question that might lead to constructive ideas: Why has the left-of-center media been so successful in selling itself? Is there something we need to learn from that?
Jun '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Rush Limbaugh spent time last week discussing with callers why Palin angers so many women, and not just liberal women. I think one caller that I heard had it right. Palin actually "has it all." She's raised a family, she has a loving husband, she has a high-profile career, she has fame that she didn't have to earn with a sex video, she has money, she has adventure, and she's hot. She actually has it all. And, she handles it all with beatific grace. What's not to hate about that?
Oct '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
Let's focus on a question that might lead to constructive ideas: Why has the left-of-center media been so successful in selling itself?
Have they been, though? I thought the reality over the past X number of years is that the lefty media - CNN, NYT, PMSNBC, Olbermann, Air America, ad nauseam - have been bleeding dollars and viewers/readers/listeners steadily.
Also (and I don't know if this is true, it's just what I heard or read somewhere; maybe Pat will know), Hollywood continues to churn out a disproportionate number of R-rated movies despite the fact that they're much less profitable than the PG- and lesser rated movies. If the Left merely responds to the market, why so many R's, then?
Edited on June 11, 2011 at 6:21pmJan '11
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Excellent question!
But frankly, I'd love to first hear what working members of the media think - like Claire and Pat.
I consider the media extremely important because they control our national self-awareness. They control what we know about events, and about each other. If they are distorting that information, what do the pros think we should do about it?
Or are you all as flummoxed by it as the rest of us?
Oct '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
KC Mulville
Excellent question!
I challenge the premise that the Leftist media have been successful in selling themselves. They're bleeding eyes and ears and dollars, and we're still a right-of-center country.
The stars aligned so very perfectly in 2008 for their kind of candidate, and yet he got just 53% of the popular vote, against a pathetic opponent running an incompetent campaign.
How, exactly, is that considered "successfully selling itself?"
Edited on June 11, 2011 at 6:28pmJan '11
Re: All Palin, All the Time
dittoheadadt:
How, exactly, is that considered "successful?"
Sure they're bleeding money, but they still control the reporting. They may not have the resources to continue that dominance, but they will have the dominance for the immediate future - this election, and likely the next.
Oct '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
KC Mulville
dittoheadadt:
How, exactly, is that considered "successful?"
Sure they're bleeding money, but they still control the reporting. They may not have the resources to continue that dominance, but they will have the dominance for the immediate future - this election, and likely the next. · Jun 11 at 9:31am
Not just money. Viewers, listeners, readers. They may control the reporting (which in itself is debatable in this era of myriad media outlets), but not the thinking or the opinion-making, if they're reaching fewer and fewer skulls full of mush.
For if the NY Slimes publishes their rag in a forest and no one's there to read it...
Edited on June 11, 2011 at 6:40pmJun '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
dittoheadadt
I challenge the premise that the Leftist media have been successful in selling themselves. They're bleeding eyes and ears and dollars, and we're still a right-of-center country.
The stars aligned so very perfectly in 2008 for their kind of candidate, and yet he got just 53% of the popular vote, against a pathetic opponent running an incompetent campaign.
How, exactly, is that considered "successfully selling itself?" · Jun 11 at 9:26am
ditto: You raise a very good point, but I think maybe we're equating financial success (or the lack thereof) with whether the MSM still controls and filters the conversation. You are right that most of the overtly leftist news organizations are having serious financial problems, but that doesn't mean they don't still wield a great amount of power. The Gray Lady may owe a lot of money to a Mexican gazilionaire, but she still has the power to help frame the debate.
That's coming to an end because of the factors you describe and alternative media (Breitbart, Ricochet, et al). The problem is that for the near term the old tottering MSM still wields some serious power.
May '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
The Leftist media grew during the decades before Fox News and conservative media. And my understanding is that most of them were not so very far Left during their earlier years, but shifted further Left only in recent decades.
If so, the answer to their "success" is simple: monopoly. The monopoly has now been broken, but they're managing to hang on because they have already established customer loyalty (whether or not a service is good, consumers like familiarity) and a significant portion of American consumers are Lefties (many more than conservative pundits are willing to acknowledge).
Bad businesses are often able to hang on because the alternatives are not great and most people are willing or disciplined enough to avoid the products they complain about. Dittoheadadt's Hollywood reference is a clear example.
Oct '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
tabula rasa
dittoheadadt
I challenge the premise that the Leftist media have been successful in selling themselves. They're bleeding eyes and ears and dollars, and we're still a right-of-center country.
How, exactly, is that considered "successfully selling itself?" · Jun 11 at 9:26am
ditto: You raise a very good point, but I think maybe we're equating financial success (or the lack thereof) with whether the MSM still controls and filters the conversation. You are right that most of the overtly leftist news organizations are having serious financial problems, but that doesn't mean they don't still wield a great amount of power. That's coming to an end because of the factors you describe and alternative media (Breitbart, Ricochet, et al). The problem is that for the near term the old tottering MSM still wields some serious power.
TR, I agree with your point. I don't dispute the fact that the MSM still wields serious power. What I challenge is the premise that they're successful at selling themselves. Their power is a byproduct of their past successes; that it's dwindling is a byproduct of their present failures.
Mar '11
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Most of the mainstream media leans left and to the left Palin is a novelty act. She flew in on the national scene below their radar and gave a phenomenal speech at the Republican convention. She singlehandedly energized McCain’s campaign and she was rightly seen by the left as a threat. She not only believed in Republican orthodoxy, she apparently lived it. Palin could field dress a moose and she had to be brought down.
She learned in her early encounters with the national press that she would always lose playing their game. Anybody who gives hours-long interviews could be edited to seem any way the shows’ producers wanted – and they were not kind. So Palin decided to be unconventional and hope the media would rise to her bait. She’s taken her act on the road and the media is following her every move – all the more so because she hasn’t given them her itinerary.
You have to admit that novelty acts are amusing.
Edited on June 11, 2011 at 6:55pmDec '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
Let's focus on a question that might lead to constructive ideas: Why has the left-of-center media been so successful in selling itself? Is there something we need to learn from that? · Jun 11 at 9:03am
The left-of-center media has not been successful in selling itself. It's in a death spiral -- a number of its organs will be consigned to the ash-heap of history, and the ones that survive will occupy a much smaller market than they once commanded.
Look at the circulation numbers of the Washington Post and the New York Times, and compare them to the Wall Street Journal. Look at the viewership numbers of CNN and MSNBC and compare them to those of Fox. People may not want right-of-center media per se, but they seem to prefer it to the left-of-center variety in the absence of a dead-center alternative.
Dec '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
tabula rasa
The Gray Lady may owe a lot of money to a Mexican gazilionaire, but she still has the power to help frame the debate.
In years past, there was no debate. What the Times said was the beginning and ending word on the matter.
That is what is different today. The Times is a dinosaur that's found that its ecosystem has changed: smaller, nimbler creatures have sprung up and they are too fast and clever to be devoured or stomped by the dinosaur.
Dec '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Pat Sajak:
While early coverage was almost surely driven by a political agenda, the continuing coverage is driven more by the hunger for survival. There are a lot of other national and world issues that need to be covered with the same thoroughness, but when subscriptions are drying up and viewership is plummeting, shame disappears. ·
I'd like to solve the puzzle, Pat.
The old-line media outlets always prioritize the political over the commercial -- they just call their political agenda "journalistic integrity," an Orwellian inversion if ever there was one.
Palin sprang onto the national stage at the RNC convention with a dazzling speech, like Athena springing forth in full battle armor from Zeus's brow. She represented a direct threat to the Leftist worldview -- women are oppressed (John and Yoko had a more colorful phrase for it) and in the current patriarchal society must choose between being self-actualized in a career or household appliances as wives and mothers. Only Feminism offers the synthesis to let a woman have it all.
Palin smashed that paradigm and thus was a far greater threat than McCain, Bush or any other figure on the Right. She must be destroyed.
May '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Never can seem to find much news on our involvement in Libya on the San Francisco Chronicle's website but, there's always a good chance of seeing a "look what a bumpkin Palin is" story in there somewhere.
Edited on June 11, 2011 at 7:13pmSep '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Mostly these are just news divisions of larger corporate interests. The billions they make off network shows, movies and music is what it's really about. I see them as a loss-leader. The news is an advertising platform, a buzz creating platform, and a brand awareness platform.
I had my first epiphany when the movie "Twister" came out. I happened to see it - Level 5 bad. Then the TIME magazine cover story that week was...Twisters .Of course Time/Warner owned the movie studio. It didn't matter that buried in a sidebar to all the talk about twisters was a tepid review of the actual movie, the huge buzz created by the story and the advertising power of a magazine on newsstands everywhere with virtually the same picture as the movie poster is worth millions in advertising dollars. (I wrote about that here long ago can't get to it)
This is exactly what media companies do and exactly why they have news divisions.
Re: All Palin, All the Time
There is a hard-to-believe truism that many media outlets will often follow a self-destructive course if that course is looked on with approval by peers. In other words, they will expend far more effort to be liked by their brethren than by their viewers or readers. A frivolous, but instructive, example is the incredible amount of coverage given to soccer's World Cup by major newspapers, even though the bulk of their readers have little or no interest in it. That decision is almost aggressively anti-commercial. Their peers will applaud their efforts to promote an international sport, and their xenophobic readers will get their medicine. It's nuts, but it's true.
Jul '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
Let's focus on a question that might lead to constructive ideas: Why has the left-of-center media been so successful in selling itself? Is there something we need to learn from that? · Jun 11 at 9:03am
Do NOT confuse Momentum with sales.
They are standing on the laurels of the past rather than making sales of who they are now. Case in point - CBS Evening News with Catie Couric. They went from last place to worse than that. They weren't selling themselves to anyone. In fact, they were loosing momentum faster than the rest when she was on, that's why they got rid of her. Now ABC is going to pay her a king's ransom to help dissipate their inertia.
Oh, By the way, Pat, I was making the same point to some extent here.