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.
- Comment (47)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (3)
Comments :
Re: All Palin, All the Time
What makes the Palin case such a goldmine for the MSM is that accomplishes two goals: peer approval and increased reader or viewer interest. The former is due to the general tone of their coverage and the latter due to her wild popularity and unpopularity. She will remain big news for a long time.
Dec '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Not as nuts as you might think -- at least, not if you look at it from their perspective.
People only step off courses of self-destruction when they recognize the dire consequences of staying on those courses. An alcoholic won't quit boozing if he thinks it's not doing him any real harm. So until recently, the people working in those media outlets looked at the massive buildings they occupy and thought, "there will always be a [newspaper/network news division/cable outlet] -- my future is secure so long as I don't make myself obnoxious to my bosses and peers."
Thus they act to fit in with their bosses and peers, and to maximize the plaudits and party invitations they get from like-minded people.
Only now are they realizing that they, too, are subject to market forces.
Dec '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Bingo!
They can do well (attracting lots of eyeballs and taking in commensurately higher ad revenue) by doing good (taking down a dangerous Right-wing radical threat).
May '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
A couple other points to consider:
Even conservative pundits still take their lead from The New York Times. The rest of the time, they're responding to the hate and lies spouted on MSNBC, ABC, Time Magazine, etc. The weakest among those only remain alive because the Right keeps them alive by acting like Republicans and letting the enemy define the direction of public discourse.
Second, Fox News is not a great news source; nor does Drudge always link to respectable articles. There's a lot of yellow journalism and sloppy reporting all around. More people would abandon Leftist media if it wasn't so easy to cite embarrassments among the Right's media and claim those failures are typical.
Jan '11
Re: All Palin, All the Time
I agree with Pat Sajak's assessment that the media often dwells on the stories that attract their peers, instead of the public. But then, couple that with the Pauline Kael Syndrome, and the media tells us only what their ever-shrinking circle of friends cares about.
The classic example recently is when Brian Williams didn't have time to tell the story of a sitting congressman's lying, but he could report Palin's (out of government for a while) bus tour. That wasn't a decision based on objective journalistic principles ... it was a new instance of Pauline Kael.
I also agree that FoxNews presents the anti-MSM perspective, but it finds its stories by following the mainstream first.
That's why I say there's a huge mother lode of news out there, ready to be mined for gold. We need a second (and third) news outlet, besides FoxNews, that reports news that isn't based on what the liberal media want to tell us.
Oct '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Pat Sajak
"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."
Years ago, a journalist/writer named Vance Packard wrote 'The Inner-Directed Man.'
The thesis of the book, as I recall, was that people lacking strong core beliefs such as religious convictions would tend to be 'Other-Directed,' i.e., they would tend to conform to the beliefs of their peer group. A more modern term would be 'trendies.'
Most people in media or journalism have university degrees. Since, as Dennis Prager has noted, many people's ten-year-old understanding of religion (if they were brought up with any faith to begin with) is easily devastated by aggresively secularist professors, they would tend to end up as 'Other-Directed.' I think this explains much of the media's conformity to liberal dogma.
Edited on Jun 11, 2011 at 11:37amMar '11
Re: All Palin, All the Time
The lamestream media's obsession with Sarah Palin has almost nothing to do with a hunger for survival - they seem, rather, to be on a suicide mission. It's almost all about ideology.
Ms Palin represents all that is (or was) good about America - you see it everywhere you go, outside of the big cities. In Alaska, you see it in the mountains, rivers and lakes.
The lamestream media, on the other hand, represent all that is bad - the urban "progressive" indoctrination in the schools and colleges, the longing for the illusory socialist European-style utopia (never mind that it is bankrupt - who cares?).
The obsession/derision by those few in the media on the right is harder to understand - we have discussed it here on Ricochet - maybe it's simply elitism, but probably something more. Rush has indeed been discussing it this week, and getting to some parts of it, but the full story has yet to be told, I think.
Oct '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Pat Sajak: 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...
A frivolous, but instructive, example is the incredible amount of coverage given to soccer's World Cup by major newspapers,. · Jun 11 at 10:21am
Pat, the same can be said about 'Politically Correct' coverage such as women's basketball. They believe that they must, out of fairness, give the women equal time but few people read the articles.
Palin is doing something that nobody else has ever done. She is redefining how American politics operate. Smart pols are watching what she is doing and making notes. She has gotten an unbelievable amount of publicity for herself without paying for it.
She has also reached behind her and helped women succeed - on their own merits.
May '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
When I read that WashPo and NYT were soliciting readers to try to find dirt on Palin in the released emails, I couldn't think of a more current relevant example to reinforce Ann Coulter's thesis in her new book Demonic. This form of "mob journalism" is just another manifestation of Leftist groupthink.
When Breitbart was vindicated for his coverage of Con. Weiner's indiscretions, the media realized that his brand of journalism was eclipsing their own biased kind. So, they took what they thought was a page from his playbook - using citizen journalists to do the work "professionals" won't. But this could only be done on their terms and with their viewpoint intact. Yet, when established news outlets petition their readership to rake the muck, it's a reflection on the leftist media's growing irrelevance and shrinking profits.
I'd count this recent Palin episode as a victory for many reasons. For one, for all the hype the media can't find anything incriminating. Secondly, they've rendered themselves obsolete. They've been voted off the island, as it were. Palin may be partly responsible for bringing down the media establishment who tried to destroy her.
Jul '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
What's all this fuss?
I just read the an Editor from the New York Times has stated Categorically that the Palin E-Mails story IS NOT A WITCH HUNT!
I guess that settles it!
Sep '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Where does the demise of the MSM leave us? I will be the first to cheer their demise, but there may be unforeseen consequences.
I suppose it is possible that there will be a "winner" and we will eventually have a new "main stream media." In the mean time, there will be a scramble for readership/viewership. As America is already quite divided between red states and blue states, I believe this scramble will accelerate this polarization.
As an example, look at the state of the press in the time leading up to the Civil War. Newspapers of the day were clearly either Whig (later Republican) or Democrat. There was little, if any, objectivity. It was all subjective and partisan. And of course, this partisanship helped lead to our nation's greatest crisis.
Is this where we are headed in our day? Are the issues of the day as polarizing as was slavery?.
Dec '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Standfast:
As an example, look at the state of the press in the time leading up to the Civil War. Newspapers of the day were clearly either Whig (later Republican) or Democrat. There was little, if any, objectivity. It was all subjective and partisan. And of course, this partisanship helped lead to our nation's greatest crisis.
Is this where we are headed in our day? Are the issues of the day as polarizing as was slavery?. · Jun 11 at 3:26pm
We've been there all along, throughout US history. The dividing line has shifted, but I'm pretty sure the fault line since the 1960s has been between statist liberalism on one side and free-market conservatism on the other.
And I am sure some here can and will make a pretty good argument that the issues of the day directly revolve around a form of slavery.
Edited on Jun 11, 2011 at 3:42pmJan '11
Re: All Palin, All the Time
It's the vision thing, Pat. Thomas Sowell nailed it (A Conflict of Visions). I was about to write that the liberal media think reflexively, but that would be an oxymoron.
May '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
I'm not sure that the people wanted an analysis of Palin's three-year-old emails! I think this is just the media obsessing over something that the media obsesses over.
Dec '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Matthew Bartle
I'm not sure that the people wanted an analysis of Palin's three-year-old emails! I think this is just the media obsessing over something that the media obsesses over. · Jun 11 at 4:38pm
"The people" don't want an analysis of Palin's three-year-old emails. They want a smoking gun that proves something horrid or salacious about Palin -- more accurately, the people may not want that now, but the media knows full well that the people will want it desperately and unrelentingly if the media can somehow find it.
Fools that they are, the media outlets decided to "live blog" the results of their inquiries, so that even the most benign details had to be pushed out to fill the available publishing space. They might have decided to say little or nothing unless and until they found that nugget of kryptonite, but instead they invested themselves fully.
Dec '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
The folks at Politico are about to break under the strain of the cognitive dissonance:
The emails from her governorship, released Friday, brought back the memory of a long-lost Palin: the popular, charismatic, competent woman of the people.
This was the vice presidential candidate John McCain’s team thought they were getting, before her darker tendencies — defensiveness, thin skin, grudge-keeping — hardened into tics. Together with the newly released, pro-Palin documentary “The Undefeated,” which focuses on her rise to the spotlight, the emails are reminders of a sympathetic figure who was not yet the brittle, divisive caricature Palin has become.
May '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
That was a very bizarre article from Politico! Palin's "brittle"?? Come on, Politico, she must be one of the most resilient people ever in public life! I can't imagine being attacked in public the way she has been, and she's survived it all with good humor. So far there's no damaging info in the emails, which they had to admit, but they wrap the story in all these negative assertions about her. Pathetic.
Dec '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Matthew Bartle
That was a very bizarre article from Politico! Palin's "brittle"?? Come on, Politico, she must be one of the most resilient people ever in public life! I can't imagine being attacked in public the way she has been, and she's survived it all with good humor. So far there's no damaging info in the emails, which they had to admit, but they wrap the story in all these negative assertions about her. Pathetic. · Jun 11 at 5:49pm
They also assert outright that she went from being competent and personable when she was just the Governor of Alaska (and no threat to national Democrats) to being a monster the moment she got the VP nod from McCain. They're too dishonest to admit even to themselves that the only reason they call her a caricature is because they drew the caricature of her and have resolutely fixed their gaze on it ever since, refusing even once to look at the real woman.
Jul '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Jaydee_007: What's all this fuss?
I just read the an Editor from the New York Times has stated Categorically that the Palin E-Mails story IS NOT A WITCH HUNT!
I guess that settles it! · Jun 11 at 1:58pm
Of course not. Perfectly normally. And to prove it, The New York Times can make available the contents of its mail server.
I'm waiting.
Jul '10
Re: All Palin, All the Time
Stuart Creque: The folks at Politico are about to break under the strain of the cognitive dissonance:
The emails from her governorship, released Friday, brought back the memory of a long-lost Palin: the popular, charismatic, competent woman of the people.
This was the vice presidential candidate John McCain’s team thought they were getting, before her darker tendencies — defensiveness, thin skin, grudge-keeping — hardened into tics. Together with the newly released, pro-Palin documentary “The Undefeated,” which focuses on her rise to the spotlight, the emails are reminders of a sympathetic figure who was not yet the brittle, divisive caricature Palin has become. · Jun 11 at 5:21pm
This is, of course, a textbook case of transference, wherein the subject unwittingly transfers their own, not consciously recognized traits, to another party. To watch an entire professional clique do it in perfect synchronization is a tribute to the depths of the blissfully subconscious sheeple movement.
I think Caligula's horse may win the GOP nomination this time around. It's just a feeling.