I must confess that I still cannot make out how it could have happened that, during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, so many intellectuals, academics and mainstream media so often showed their bias and a certain distrustfulness towards Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Ok, I thought at the time, they may want to be non-bipartisan, they have the right to be non-neutral in the presidential race, but they could be more decent and less black and white …“If she were Obama’s Veep, would she have been savaged?” asks today Melissa Clouthier in her awesome blog—by the way, she is one of ten finalists for the Best Individual Blogger in the 2008 Weblog Awards, and also my favourite one in that category. Well, my answer is, I don’t think so. Not at all.
That is also why the video below is, in my humblest opinion, very, very interesting. It offers excerpts from Sarah Palin’s interview with filmmaker John Ziegler, for his forthcoming documentary “Media Malpractice,” in which the Alaska Governor, for the first time at length, takes on the media coverage of her and the 2008 campaign. It’s a rather shocking record of a media assassination—of Sarah Palin, her character and family—which remains “one of the greatest public injustices of our time,” as Ziegler puts it on his website.
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Right now, for the first time since this blog started, I have been forced to cancel three comments to this post and to enable comment moderation. They were both gratuitously insulting towards Gov. Sarah Palin.
ReplyDeleteOn my FaceBook page, in turn, I received two very harsh but inoffensive comments. This is how I replied (I thhought this could help me better explain what I meant to say in the above post):
I think that whatever you might think about Sarah Palin’s qualifications or personality—which is obviously your own personal opinion—there should have been more respect ... I don't need to agree with someone, or even enjoy their company, to respect them and, I suppose, to acknowledge that there must be some validity in their opinion if so many people agree with them. I don’t need to agree with someone, but I do need to respect their inherent dignity as persons.
If it was not a media assassination, it was media hatred. That's what I think.
Yeah Rob, there is a lack of intellectual civility.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a fan of Palin (she did attract the sort of folk I wouldn't associate with. Then again, Obama seems to do the same) but really, the people on the other side acted with such fanatical fervor it reminded me of, well, religious fanatics.
My sister would constantly send me links to Huffingtonpost. Very little of it resonated with my mind. It felt one step removed from one-sided gutter journalism.
Everyone is free, as you state, to pick their "guy or gal" but they have no right to bully.
Hopefully one day common respect will be restored.
Rob, I watched the video.
ReplyDeleteInteresting.
The part that intrigued me was when she asked if Couric (people in media) reads. The answer is, from I gather, is they (probably) don't -or at least act like they don't.
It's very clear Couric had an agenda and when they go on late night telly-vision you're skeptical senses should increase.
Gosh, do you really think they think about St. Augustine or St. Thomas like you do? Or would be able to answer the questions I ask about Dante and modernity? I'm being presumptuous to make a point.
Fey, Winfrey, Couric - all successful and talented (I suppose) in their own right - are not "better" women than Palin. Personally, I don't care for such things.
However (and sadly) many do.
Like I said, observing the way media and bloggers treated Palin was like being in the bizarro world. Even I got caught in the mess trying to find out more about her. Instead I was fed junk. It slowly gathered speed and went out of control and beyond any sense of decency.
Last point, I know people in television and movie editing (I myself flirt with insiders through my writing) one thing is for sure: DON'T BELIEVE A DAMN THING YOU SEE.
They're all scammers pimping out any ounce of integrity to ensure ratings - and above all their private billion dollar empires.
QUI BONO?
Sorry last point about the SNL spoofing. I wouldn't scrutinize that too much. SNL has a tradition of parody cutting across the political divide. They made fun of Hilary and Bill Clinton too.
ReplyDeleteAfter having watched the vid I must confess Sarah is a little naive. She expects the press to be treating her fairly: that what goes for Obama, goes for everyone on the campaign trail. Nothing is so underestimated as the postmodern dialectic. Here's the criterion: whatever hurts capitalism is the done thing (we'll sort the arguments to prop that up, later on). Forget fair and civility. I case someone hasn't noticed, this is all out war.
ReplyDelete