mainstream media
New York Times calls Sarah Palin: “The Woman Who Might Be President”
May 30, 2011
She shows up in black leather with a Harley helmet on her head, and, yes, her talking points written on the palm of her hand, and mainstream media—-as exemplified by this story in The New York Times, (featured at the top of their home page, which is equivalent to above the fold on page one, back when anybody actually read the print edition)—-rolls over giddily and begs her to scratch their collective belly.
For sheer mastery of celebrity theater, Sarah Palin cannot be beat.
Ms. Palin, the former governor of Alaska, let the anticipation build for hours on Sunday in the Pentagon’s North Parking Lot, where thousands of bikers (and their rumbling Harleys) had gathered for the annual Rolling Thunder rally ahead of Memorial Day.
And then, suddenly, there she was: Ms. Palin, with her husband, Todd, and the rest of the family. Wearing matching black Harley-Davidson helmets, they rode motorcycles toward the front of the procession through a crush of cameramen, photographers, reporters and leather-clad bikers, all jostling for just a peek at the woman who might be president.
It’s long past time for those of us who believe that Sarah continues to represent a real threat to the (largely) rational discourse that has been a hallmark of our democracy for 235 years to keep blaming her and recognize that it’s the enabling by mainstream media, desperate for page views as print circulation plummets, that keeps her not only afloat, but aloft.
MSM argue that they have to cover her because everything she says and does is “news.”
But it’s only news because they make it news.
Granted, as a candidate for vice president in 2008, Sarah was news. But since November, 2008–and even more so after she quit as Alaska governor in 2009–it’s been MSM’s presenting her as a serious person, even while deriding her in the snobbish fashion that allows her to call them “lamestream”–that has kept the helium in Sarah’s balloon.
What’s clear from the weekend is that nobody has learned a thing.
She starts a “bus tour”—one for which her organizers refuse to say where she’ll be tomorrow— on the back of a motorcycle, and she’s hailed for her “mastery of celebrity theater,” and praised for outFoxing (pun intended) the MSM journalists who chase after her, tongues hanging out.
Okay, but cover her in the entertainment section. Even as the solemn debate about whether she’ll actually be a candidate next year continues, The New York Times calls her, without apparent irony, “the woman who might be president.”
And Chris Matthews, who stated the obvious last week by saying, “she’s profoundly stupid,” said more recently:
“She is really good . . . she’s fantastic on a stage. When she walks out on that stage there’s something kinetic happening. She looks great, look at her, she’s alive, she’s smiling, she’s doing stuff, she’s moving around. You can’t take your eyes off of what she’s doing.”
God help us, his leg is tingling again.
And both John McCain and Andrew Sullivan said yesterday that given the right set of circumstances she could beat President Obama next year.
Hey, if exchanging nasty comments about Sarah on this or any other blog makes you feel good, by all means keep on doing it.
But don’t kid yourself that it’s having any effect in the real world, where media memes are created, where elections are decided, and where the moral, ethical and political contours of our country are being shaped.
Seeing the gleeful embrace that MSM is giving Sarah as she returns from self-imposed, post-Tucson exile, I don’t quite despair, but I worry.
And in my head, I replay Bob Dylan’s lyrics from “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” which he wrote and first performed in 1965, in the wake of the John F. Kennedy assassination:
You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Look out the saints are comin’ through
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue…The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue
Sarah hops on a Harley at the Pentagon and MSM falls back in love with her again.
Happy Memorial Day.
Posted in 2012, Andrew Sullivan, Joe McGinniss, mainstream media, Obama, Palin children, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, The Rogue | 
Tags: Andrew Sullivan, bob dylan, chris matthews, d.c., harley davidson, it's all over now baby blue, mainstream media, memorial day, new york times, pentagon, rolling thunder, sarah paliln, washington | 
80 Comments »
NY Times Front Page: “Signs Grow That Palin May Run”
May 25, 2011
Nothing I haven’t been saying all along, but it’s suddenly the new mainstream meme.
Read it here.
Are there still doubters?
Posted in 2012, Joe McGinniss, mainstream media, Obama, right wing, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, The Rogue | Tags: 2012 primaries, glassner, GOP, sarah palin 2012 campaign, Scottsdale | 32 Comments »
“The Undefeated”: 2-Hour, $1Million Palin Commercial to Premier in June–in Iowa!
May 25, 2011
Scott Conroy, co-author of the 2009 quasi-bio Sarah from Alaska: The Sudden Rise and Brutal Education of a New Conservative Superstar, announces on RealClearPolitics that a film described as “Sarah’s Secret Weapon” will premiere in Iowa in June.
The film has been financed and produced by Stephen K. Bannon, an ex-Goldman Sachs investment banker previously known for In The Face of Evil: Reagan’s War in Word and Deed, and such other right-wing red meat feasts as Fire from The Heartland and Generation Zero.
Bannon clearly has money and anger to burn, and he’s now all-in with Sarah.
Laugh him off at your own (or our) peril.
Conroy, who obviously has gained membership in Sarah’s current coterie, tells all about the upcoming epic. I won’t even attempt to summarize. Read about it here and don’t blame me if you gag.
My friends and readers, I’ve said all along–and you can go back and look at earlier posts here–that Sarah will run for president next year. Some of you have accused me of taking that position only in an effort to hype THE ROGUE. Those sentiments were not even worth responding to.
I urge one and all to read Conroy’s story, which obviously was written with Sarah’s approval, and perhaps even at her behest.
Can anyone who reads it, and who is aware of Sarah’s move to Scottsdale, seriously doubt that she plans to take down President Obama?
If so, please explain your thinking, because, to me, the writing on the wall could not be clearer: JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO FORGET HER, SHE’S BACK IN YOUR LIVES AGAIN.
For “your,” read “our.”
The drums of ugliness may seem faint and in the distance now, but they’re going to grow louder and closer.
And don’t laugh them off, as Bill Maher, David Letterman and Rosie O’Donnell are shown laughing off Sarah in this film.
Her people are out there, they are numerous, they are angry: and there is not another credible Republican candidate in the race.
Up to this point, Sarah has laughed all the way to the bank.
Now she hopes to laugh all the way to the White House–swept there by a tidal wave of “real” Americans who don’t like elitist liberals (i.e. for a start, anyone with a college education) portraying them as racist, pitchfork-carrying buffoons.
Neither Romney nor Pawlenty can active them, but Sarah can.
And she plans to. Because God is telling her to do so.
Oh, man, this makes what I’ve written in THE ROGUE about how steeped she is in Christian Dominionism all the more relevant. She truly believes her “prayer shield” will keep her invulnerable to attacks between now and election day 2012.
After that, she’ll lay down the shield and pick up the sword of fire with which she’s waiting to smite all of us who do not see her as Queen Esther.
We laugh at her and call her a joke, but she’s serious. And she has big bucks behind her, and nothing to lose.
We’d better stop laughing now, or she’ll have us all crying out for mercy on Inauguration Day, 2013.
Posted in 2012, Breitbart, evangelical, Fox, Joe McGinniss, mainstream media, Obama, right wing, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, The Rogue | Tags: fire from the heartland, generation zero, in the face of evil, iowa primary, paln documentary, real clear politics, ronal reagan, scott conroy, stephen bannon | 141 Comments »
“Prayer Shield” Protects Palin from Critics//UPDATE: How can she stay out when “lamestream” wants her in so bad?
May 20, 2011
Much attention is being paid to Sarah’s comment to Van Susteren last night that she has “fire in her belly.” Video and transcript of her appearance here.
But to me the most revealing moment was when she said, “The darts and the arrows keep flying…it’s going to keep on coming and, you know, I feel like I have a prayer shield in front of me that deflects a lot of that..” [emphasis added]
No doubt the shield was manufactured by her Prayer Warriors, working overtime in the attic of the Palin home on Lake Lucille.
It’s hard for rational people to appreciate the extent to which Sarah is in the grip of religious delusion. I honestly believe that Sarah thinks God has armed her with both sword and shield and has sent her forth to do battle with the infidels. The Anchorage Daily News was on to more than its reporters and editors realized when they called Sarah “The Joan of Arc of Alaskan politics” in 2006.
Look again at her remarkable words to “Focus on the Family” founder James Dobson toward the end of the 2008 campaign:
As I write in THE ROGUE :
Dobson told her that not only was he praying for her but that he’d just hosted a gathering of more then four hundred “prayer warriors” and that, “We were sure asking for God’s intervention,” in the campaign.
“Well, it is that intercession that is so needed,” Sarh said. “And I can feel it, too, Dr. Dobson. I can feel the power of prayer and that strength that is provided through our prayer warriors across this nation…We hear along the rope lines that people are interceding for us and praying for us. It’s our reminder to do the same, to seek His perfect will for this nation, and to of course seek His wisdom and guidance in putting this nation back on the right track…I have to have faith that our message will get out there minus the filter of the mainstream media…I have to have that faith that God’s going to help us get that message out there.”
Unfortunately, the Big Guy in the Sky fell asleep at the switch on election day. But Sarah’s had his ear plenty since then and she’s not going to let him make the same mistake twice.
UPDATE:
See Chris Cillizza in “The Fix” in Washington Post:
In a field without much star power, a Palin candidacy would immediately suck the media oxygen out of the room for the other contenders. Put simply: Palin is the only potential candidate in the field who could go to Iowa tomorrow and have 5,000 people show up.
Posted in 2012, Anchorage Daily News, evangelical, Fox, Greta Van Susteren, Joe McGinniss, mainstream media, Sarah Palin, The Rogue | Tags: delusion, focus on the family, Fox News, god, greta van susteren, james dobson, prayer shield, prayer warriors, prayer warriors for sarah palin, the rogue | 65 Comments »
Sarah Palin: Media scrutiny next year? “I just have to be prepared for it and overcome it.” UPDATE//: Ivan Moore in Anchorage Press says “absolutely yes, Sarah will run”
May 19, 2011
Oh, man, I was just on my way to bed when I saw Sarah-sites overdosing on her Hannity interview.
So I watched it. I figure that since I’m still writing my last chapter, I get paid to stay up late and do such things.
Some of it was (unintentionally) funny, such as:
I think one of my problems in this whole process is I don’t live for that game of the pundincy [sic] of the opining and speculating on who’s doing what …What I live for is fighting for family and faith and freedom in this country.
But I won’t go to sleep smiling over her later words:
I’m still not ready to make an announcement….I’m still seriously considering it and praying about it…I want to make sure that we have a candidate out there with Tea Party principles.
Perhaps scariest of all was Sarah’s Freudian slip at the start.
I realize that the Wasilla Assembly of God taught Sarah that Sigmund Freud was Sigmund Fraud, and that she’s believed it ever since, but that doesn’t immunize her from what the rest of us might call a Freudian slip. Speaking of Gingrich’s recent stumble out of the gate, Hannity asked her, in regard to 2012, “Is there going to be a different standard?” Meaning: will candidates be held accountable for their words? Sarah said:
There’s gotta be the preparation on all the candidates’ parts for those gotchas. That’s what the lamestream media is known for nowadays is the gotcha, trip-up questions, and I just have to be prepared for it and overcome it. (emphasis added.)
Why would someone who did not intend to seek the Republican nomination say “I”?
If she weren’t planning to run–notwithstanding how she makes everything about herself–wouldn’t she have said “they?”
Dr. Fraud, where are you now that we need you?
I, for one, am going to need someone to interpret the dreams/nightmares I’m about to have as I go to bed with Sarah’s mantra in my head:
“I just have to be prepared for it and overcome it.”
At least she’s got God helping her. I’m all alone down here, trying to muddle through with nothing more than rationality, a modicum of decency, and whatever I learn from my reporting.
Anybody know a good Jungian shrink? Because here’s what I’m afraid I’ll be seeing tonight:
UPDATE:
Alaskan pollster Ivan Moore says in Anchorage Press that it’s “Palin’s Perfect Storm.”
Here’s his lede:
Us pollsters don’t like making predictions. No really… we don’t. We can measure things at any given point in time, but we can’t, no matter how much others may want us to, see into the future. Today, however, I’m going to make an exception, because I’m absolutely certain of what I’m going to predict.
No ands, ifs or buts about it, Sarah Palin is going to run for president.
And so to bed.
Posted in evangelical, Fox, Joe McGinniss, mainstream media, right wing, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, The Rogue | Tags: causes of nausea, dreams, Fox News, freud, jung, lunacy, narcissistic personality disorder, nightmares, Sarah Palin, sean hannity | 86 Comments »
New Gallup Poll Shows Romney-Palin Tossup for GOP Nomination//UPDATE//UPDATE 1.1
May 18, 2011
I place little credence in long-term polls, but this one has to be considered a warning shot across the bow of all those purveyors of conventional wisdom who have decided that Sarah Palin can be safely stored in our collective memory/nightmare bank.
Think about how she must view developments of the past few days: two people who were outpolling her have chosen not to enter the race. Absent Huckabee and Trump (always a farce, but even Slate bought into it late last month ), Sarah finds herself rising to the top by default.
To Sarah, this likely seems evidence that God is, in fact, opening the doors for her and sending her a message that she is His chosen candidate, the Christian leader best prepared to wage war on the secretly-Muslim darkie who occupies the White House.
Given her egomania and ambition, and her belief that she has been anointed by God to prepare the USA for the second coming of Jesus, why would she not run?
And let’s not ignore what Rachel Weiner reported in the Washington Post: she just sent out 400,000 solicitations seeking donations to SarahPAC. She entitled her pitch letter “2012 Can’t Come Soon Enough.”
Does this sound like someone who’s not planning to enter the race?
UPDATE:
Politico features new poll results: “Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin jump to top in new Gallup poll.”
She’ll be on FOX twice tonight: with Sean Hannity and with Eric Bolling. No doubt Hannity will ask about these poll results and whether she’s going to run. No doubt she’ll duck the question. What’s the hurry to announce when she can become a front-runner by doing nothing?
UPDATE 1.1:
Outside-the-beltway right-wingers climbing back on board the S.S. Sarah.
Posted in 2012, Donald Trump, Joe McGinniss, mainstream media, Obama, Sarah Palin, The Rogue | Tags: 2012 gop candidates, christian, god, GOP primaries, huckabee, muslims, rachel weiner, war, Washington Post | 86 Comments »
Enter THE ROGUE Last Chapter Contest Here…$250 Prize for Winner!
May 17, 2011
Here’s the best chance for you commenters–and anybody else who has an idea about what the last chapter of my book about Sarah Palin should say–to make a difference.
I’m about to start writing the last chapter of THE ROGUE. It’s due for delivery to my publisher Random House/Crown on June 3.
Tell me, please, what you think I should say, why I should say it, and how I can prove it to an extent that would pass legal vetting.
Trig is not off limits–nothing is off limits–but I’m not going to devote the chapter to showing how Figure A or Figure B proves that Sarah was or was not pregnant with that child. I’ll make my own views on that question clear in THE ROGUE.
So the matter before us today is: if you had five thousand words, more or less, in which you could summarize The Rise and Fall (and Possible Rebirth) of Sarah Palin, how would you use them? What would you say?
Please remember, in THE ROGUE, I am not preaching to the converted: I can’t–nor do I want to–write a final chapter that contains only snark and invective. The first twenty chapters don’t do that, so–despite the fact that I won’t pull punches–I don’t want to leave those who read the finished book with the taste of bile in their mouths.
Let’s put it this way: imagine yourself in a dialogue with a friend who respected your opinions.
You have three or four minutes, without interruption, to explain why Sarah Palin is every bit as bad as you believe her to be, and why she continues to be a danger to the USA.
What would you say? How would you say it?
As I’m working on my last chapter, I’d love to know.
I’d love to know so much, in fact, that I’m offering a $250 prize to whoever gives me the best suggestion about what I should write in the next two weeks–whether it’s a phrase, a sentence, or whether you take five thousand words to express it.
thanks,
Joe
Posted in 2012, evangelical, Joe McGinniss, mainstream media, Obama, right wing, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, The Rogue | Tags: contest, joe mcginniss, joe mcginniss writing contest, Sarah Palin, the rogue, valley refuse, writing contest | 193 Comments »
Sarah Palin Hits Daily Double: Obama Okays New Alaskan Oil Drilling & Huckabee Says He Won’t Run
May 15, 2011
The president’s announcement, which included plans for expanded drilling in Alaska demonstrate[s] his commitment to reducing oil imports by increasing domestic production…Mr. Obama said the administration would begin to hold annual auctions for oil and gas leases in the Alaska National Petroleum Reserve, a 23-million-acre tract on the North Slope of Alaska. The move comes after years of demands for the auctions by industry executives and Alaska’s two senators, Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, and Mark Begich, a Democrat.
In crediting Murkowski and Begich for the policy change, The New York Times omitted the name of Sarah Palin, who’s been screaming about this for at least as long and even more loudly than have Alaska’s two U.S. senators.
Hours later, Mike Huckabee, who won the 2008 Iowa Caucus, announced he would not be a candidate next year.
Today’s news makes it clearer than ever that Sarah will have a second chance–and her last chance–at the brass ring of national political power.
And don’cha think she’s gonna take it?
Because Sarah is not an elected official, but only a celebrity screecher from the sidelines, she can’t claim credit (except on her Twitter and Facebook pages and on Fox News) for having persuaded President Obama to change his mind about the vital economic and environmental issues posed by the prospect of reopening Alaska’s North Slope to further exploration (some would say “exploitation”) by Big Oil.
And won’t it gall her to see Sen. Lisa Murkowski, in particular, cited as one who made “demands” to which President Obama eventually caved?
Especially with Huckabee handing her, gift wrapped, the USA’s evangelical base, it seems obvious that Sarah will announce her candidacy for president later this year: if she doesn’t, a year from now people won’t even remember how she spells her name. (Is it p-a-l-i-n, or p-a-l-l-i-n, as in “pallin’ around with terrorists”?)
Even if, as many argue, the personal bottom line of http:www.Palingrifters.com is what Sarah cares about most (or only), she must recognize that as soon as she definitively takes herself out of the GOP 2012 candidate pool (aka “The Sargasso Sea”), nobody will care any more about what she says, what she wears, how she looks, Track’s latest brush with the law, Bristol’s latest plastic surgery, Willow’s latest brush with the law, or even whether she really gave birth to Trig.
Sarah’s greatest fear is irrelevance. What if she fell in a forest and nobody heard?
Bruce Springsteen might as well have been writing Fade Away for Sarah in 1980, when she was a sophomore at Wasilla High:
I don’t wanna fade away
Oh I don’t wanna fade away
Tell me what can I do what can I say
Cause darlin’ I don’t wanna fade away
Do you really think she’ll just fade away now?
Having come out of nowhere to get this far, will she go gently into that good night without even a last hurrah?
Especially after Huckabee’s Saturday night announcement that he won’t run,
His decision to forgo a run presumably leaves that space wide open for Ms. Palin, a self described “Bible-believing Christian”
Doesn’t it seem that God is working overtime this weekend to open doors for her so she can plow through?
Hope he gets at least time-and-a-half.
Posted in 2012, evangelical, Fox, Joe McGinniss, mainstream media, Obama, Palin children, right wing, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, The Rogue | Tags: bruce springsteeen, doorman, evangelical, fade away, god, huckabee, lisa murkowski, mark begich, new york times, sargasso sea, the river, willow palin | 30 Comments »
Finally! Someone from MSM Admits it: They Need Sarah
May 11, 2011
Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC tells Playboy: “She’s been good for us, and we’ve been good for her. We are doing everything we can to feed her moneymaking capacity by keeping her alive.”
Full interview here.
Posted in 2012, Joe McGinniss, mainstream media, Sarah Palin, The Rogue | Tags: dan quayle, lawrence o'donnell, MSNBC, palin, playboy, prostitution | 17 Comments »
Right Wing Rallies Round “The Tragedy of Sarah Palin”
Pen a fantasy about how Sarah Palin could have been Barack Obama if only she weren’t so:
a) selfish
b) filled with anger, resentment and hate
c) greedy
d) stupid and uneducated
e) all of the above
and you tap into a deep vein of right-wing nostalgia for the Sarah-Who-Never-Was, which will prove of immense benefit to your personal brand and career.
I’m not impugning Joshua Green’s motives for writing his “Sarah-We-Hardly-Knew-Ye” paean of praise in the June issue of The Atlantic.
I’m sure he felt he had a legitimate, counter-intuitive, against the flow argument to make. He’s proven himself to be an excellent and fair-minded reporter in the past. And nobody should knock him just because his first job in “journalism” was at The Onion.
It may be that with “The Tragedy of Sarah Palin,” Green is returning to his satirical roots. Although if you read some of the comments in response to my earlier post, “If Only Sarah Weren’t Sarah, She Coulda Been a Contender,” you’ll find some strong fact-based arguments against Green’s hypothesis.
In any case, I’m sure Green was perspicacious enough to sense the likely windfall that would result from a “St. Sarah, The Fallen Star” story.
And he’s knee-deep in peaches and apples already, as the huzzahs arrive from all the obvious right-wing shills:
—John Podhoretz in Commentary
—Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post
—Ross Douthat in The New York Times
This chorus sings in only one key: the key of sorrow, for the loss of a Sarah Palin who never existed outside the realm of their collective yearning, and who ever existed only as a figment of their collective imagination.
Andrew Sullivan wrote a bracing response yesterday and today added:
Josh’s piece will serve as balm to the right. And it will allow them to believe that their choice of veep in 2008 was not an indictment of them or the media – but just an unfortunate decision by Palin to change her colors. The only problem with this argument is that it is manifestly untrue. But we know that Palin lovers, like Palin herself, must perforce be wedded to mountains of untruth.
Amen.