efrem1
09-15-2008, 09:52 PM
Sign of the Times
Posted by Jon_Keller
That's all you've got? Count me as one of the growing circle who believe every day Democrats spend trying to demonize Sarah Palin - however sincere their belief that she isn't up to being president - is a day of damage done to Obama's chances in November. If Dan Quayle didn't hurt George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign, Palin certainly won't hurt McCain. And if they're intent on trashing her, editorials masquerading as "news articles" like yesterday's front-page splash in the New York Times are most certainly not going to get the job done.
In the Times' lede, we learn that Governor Palin hired "at least five schoolmates" to help her run Alaska, "often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages." When she "had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects." And some months back, the Times reports, a Palin aide called a local blogger critical of the governor and told her to "stop."
Armed with this initial volley of scandal (?), we get to the nut graf:
"Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything. But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image. Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials."
Oh my! That sounds bad. But right away, you get a feel for what this "news" article really is - a hastily produced attack piece with little meat on the bones.
Before laying our their "case," the Times reporters insert some "balance" in the form of praise for Palin's political instincts and populist appeal from a University of Alaska professor, who also says “her governing style raises a lot of hard questions.” (No specifics provided to support either the praise or the doubts.) And they quote the Alaska lieutenant governor claiming that: “Everything she does is for the ordinary working people of Alaska."
But then we're off to Palin's alleged dark side.
Egregious flaw #1: "Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records." And this is illegal, unethical or unusual....how?
Flaw #2: "Interviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political." Evidence? "State legislators are investigating accusations that Ms. Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister, charges that she denies." No further information is provided by the Times' "investigation." We learn that a Republican legislator (a political ally or enemy of Gov. Palin? The Times provides no context) complains about First Dude Todd Palin calling him to complain about the hiring of someone with whom the Palins had an (unclear) personal beef. “The Palin family gets upset at personal issues,” the legislator is quoted as saying. “And at our level, they want to strike back.” This is illegal, unethical or unusual...how? No further explanation is forthcoming, and Todd Palin denies the substance of the uncorroborated charge.
Horrific flaw #3: "After winning the (Wasilla) mayoral election in 1996, Ms. Palin...cleaned out the municipal closet, firing veteran officials to make way for her own team. 'She had an agenda for change and for doing things differently,' said Judy Patrick, a City Council member at the time." Among the casualties, the director of the town's museum, who claims his firing was part of some kind of culture war: “It represented that the town was becoming more progressive, and they didn’t want that." An interesting charge left dangling without more context or corroboration. Were the Times reporters unable to find it, or just lazy?
#4: "In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.". Yet again, no serious evidence of wrongdoing is offered, just the insinuation that the firing was unjustified. The flimsy anecdote is a setup for a quote from Deuser about the Palin management style: “Professionals were either forced out or fired.” Really? Imagine that? A politician, elected on a pledge of change, dumps the old guard and brings in her own people. That's a problem if the new people turn out to be incompetents or crooks, but if there's any evidence of that in this case, the Times fails to document it.
#5: Substantial space is devoted to reviewing already-published information about Palin's distaste for library books dealing with honosexuality, including he suggestion that a book she hadn't even read ("Daddy's Roommate") be removed. Why any adult would waste their time on such a matter is beyond me, and Palin's detractors have every right to recoil in horror if they wish. But no evidence is offered of any legal or sustained political effort to censor the library. Instead, the punch line of this passage if a quote from a former Palin campaign aide, who says: “I’m still proud of Sarah, but she scares the bejeebers out of me.” What exactly does this mean? If she is truly frightened of Palin's Puritanical instincts, how can she be so proud of her? Does she offer other reasons why she's scared?
I could go on at great length, but my carpal symptoms are starting to flare up. Suffice to say, there is no payoff at all in this long waste of newsprint. To ominously note that Palin followed the longstanding political tradition of hiring longtime friends (especially common among political neophytes like, say, Gov. Deval Patrick, desperate to surround themselves with people they know they can trust), but then fail to provide a shred of evidence that any of these hires are incompetent or unqualified, is a weak reed to hang a page one "news" story on, to say the least.
But then, much of the knee-jerk assault on Palin (not to be confused with the necessary reporting on her background that all candidates at this level are and should be subjected to) is built on a weak reed - the obsessive need among too many news outlets and commentators to nurture their personal biases and grievances at the expense of anything approaching the truth. We've seen it from the right in the often-ludicrous attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism and experience; knee-jerk conservatives, racial bigots, and insiders fearing change have found comfort in building a "case" that Obama is somehow anti-American, a Trojan Horse for cultural and political rot, or too green to be taken seriously. Wrong on all counts. But thanks to the relentless narcissism of the baby-boom political culture, there is no filter - like, say, fairness, or common decency - between their personal quirks and their injection into the discourse. Likewise, knee-jerk liberals (and even some usually thoughtful ones) have lost it over Palin for personal and partisan reasons that have, as the Times piece illustrates, little connection with fact or truth.
In it's one moment of insight, the Times article leads with this line: "Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal." She's not the only one.
Posted by Jon_Keller
That's all you've got? Count me as one of the growing circle who believe every day Democrats spend trying to demonize Sarah Palin - however sincere their belief that she isn't up to being president - is a day of damage done to Obama's chances in November. If Dan Quayle didn't hurt George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign, Palin certainly won't hurt McCain. And if they're intent on trashing her, editorials masquerading as "news articles" like yesterday's front-page splash in the New York Times are most certainly not going to get the job done.
In the Times' lede, we learn that Governor Palin hired "at least five schoolmates" to help her run Alaska, "often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages." When she "had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects." And some months back, the Times reports, a Palin aide called a local blogger critical of the governor and told her to "stop."
Armed with this initial volley of scandal (?), we get to the nut graf:
"Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything. But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image. Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials."
Oh my! That sounds bad. But right away, you get a feel for what this "news" article really is - a hastily produced attack piece with little meat on the bones.
Before laying our their "case," the Times reporters insert some "balance" in the form of praise for Palin's political instincts and populist appeal from a University of Alaska professor, who also says “her governing style raises a lot of hard questions.” (No specifics provided to support either the praise or the doubts.) And they quote the Alaska lieutenant governor claiming that: “Everything she does is for the ordinary working people of Alaska."
But then we're off to Palin's alleged dark side.
Egregious flaw #1: "Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records." And this is illegal, unethical or unusual....how?
Flaw #2: "Interviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political." Evidence? "State legislators are investigating accusations that Ms. Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister, charges that she denies." No further information is provided by the Times' "investigation." We learn that a Republican legislator (a political ally or enemy of Gov. Palin? The Times provides no context) complains about First Dude Todd Palin calling him to complain about the hiring of someone with whom the Palins had an (unclear) personal beef. “The Palin family gets upset at personal issues,” the legislator is quoted as saying. “And at our level, they want to strike back.” This is illegal, unethical or unusual...how? No further explanation is forthcoming, and Todd Palin denies the substance of the uncorroborated charge.
Horrific flaw #3: "After winning the (Wasilla) mayoral election in 1996, Ms. Palin...cleaned out the municipal closet, firing veteran officials to make way for her own team. 'She had an agenda for change and for doing things differently,' said Judy Patrick, a City Council member at the time." Among the casualties, the director of the town's museum, who claims his firing was part of some kind of culture war: “It represented that the town was becoming more progressive, and they didn’t want that." An interesting charge left dangling without more context or corroboration. Were the Times reporters unable to find it, or just lazy?
#4: "In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.". Yet again, no serious evidence of wrongdoing is offered, just the insinuation that the firing was unjustified. The flimsy anecdote is a setup for a quote from Deuser about the Palin management style: “Professionals were either forced out or fired.” Really? Imagine that? A politician, elected on a pledge of change, dumps the old guard and brings in her own people. That's a problem if the new people turn out to be incompetents or crooks, but if there's any evidence of that in this case, the Times fails to document it.
#5: Substantial space is devoted to reviewing already-published information about Palin's distaste for library books dealing with honosexuality, including he suggestion that a book she hadn't even read ("Daddy's Roommate") be removed. Why any adult would waste their time on such a matter is beyond me, and Palin's detractors have every right to recoil in horror if they wish. But no evidence is offered of any legal or sustained political effort to censor the library. Instead, the punch line of this passage if a quote from a former Palin campaign aide, who says: “I’m still proud of Sarah, but she scares the bejeebers out of me.” What exactly does this mean? If she is truly frightened of Palin's Puritanical instincts, how can she be so proud of her? Does she offer other reasons why she's scared?
I could go on at great length, but my carpal symptoms are starting to flare up. Suffice to say, there is no payoff at all in this long waste of newsprint. To ominously note that Palin followed the longstanding political tradition of hiring longtime friends (especially common among political neophytes like, say, Gov. Deval Patrick, desperate to surround themselves with people they know they can trust), but then fail to provide a shred of evidence that any of these hires are incompetent or unqualified, is a weak reed to hang a page one "news" story on, to say the least.
But then, much of the knee-jerk assault on Palin (not to be confused with the necessary reporting on her background that all candidates at this level are and should be subjected to) is built on a weak reed - the obsessive need among too many news outlets and commentators to nurture their personal biases and grievances at the expense of anything approaching the truth. We've seen it from the right in the often-ludicrous attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism and experience; knee-jerk conservatives, racial bigots, and insiders fearing change have found comfort in building a "case" that Obama is somehow anti-American, a Trojan Horse for cultural and political rot, or too green to be taken seriously. Wrong on all counts. But thanks to the relentless narcissism of the baby-boom political culture, there is no filter - like, say, fairness, or common decency - between their personal quirks and their injection into the discourse. Likewise, knee-jerk liberals (and even some usually thoughtful ones) have lost it over Palin for personal and partisan reasons that have, as the Times piece illustrates, little connection with fact or truth.
In it's one moment of insight, the Times article leads with this line: "Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal." She's not the only one.