This isn’t helping, I’m sorry.

This isn’t helping, I’m sorry.

I have but one more question for Simon:

Are you somehow personally involved with Sarah Palin? Are you a relation of hers? Friend? Past lover?

It’s almost as if your comments in this thread are being written by a different person. You seem angry and illogical. It might be explained by a personal involvement with Ms. Palin.

God, all this maturity . . .

Nor do I agree that if “she was destroyed by the media … she’s fragile.” By “destroyed,” I am speaking in the sense of having been defeated at an election by a negative image created by the media (she herself seems to have come through intact). The comparison to Clinton doesn’t work because Clinton didn’t have to fight an election under that kind of scrutiny.

Lastly, I couldn’t agree more that she ought to write a book, and have said so. :)

And for civility’s sake, I leave it at that. :)

I suppose one has to admire your loyalty. But in this case your devotion to Ms. Palin undermines your claim to objectivity. The media did not force her to be incapable of answering simple questions. The media didn’t force her to whine about being unable to find anyone to pray with in the McCain campaign. The media didn’t destroy her, she destroyed herself. All it took was a single Katie Couric and she imploded.

She’s a nothing. A non-entity. An empty dress as The Word says.

But even if we were to grant your premise that she was destroyed by the media, what does that tell us? That she’s fragile. That she can’t stand up to the kind of pressure Bill Clinton endured, for example. Palin had Couric asking pop quiz questions about what newspapers she read. (Answer: Uuuuummmmm.) Clinton had the entire national media demanding to know what distinguishing marks were on his penis.

Either way it doesn’t advance her case. Either she’s kind of an idiot (my opinion) or she was rolled by the media (your opinion.)

But it’s not just the negative, it’s the lack of a positive, so to speak: where are her accomplishments? Where’s her profound thought? Her moving book? Her deep insight? Her anything?

Explain to me the willing complicity in the smear of Al Gore on statements he NEVER said. Lies repeated ad nauseam by a party with no honor aided and abetted by willing parroting by the press. Or how about Howard Dean? They destroyed him in a few days on no substance whatsoever. The press is lazy and Palin let them just ask a simple question and wait for the disaster to follow.

You have also still never addressed the believing in witchcraft. STILL.

I’m against her because she is an insult to the voters and America. Please get her to run though.

June 3rd, 2009 at 11:22 am

Simon: Nah, I have a pretty healthy imagination. I’m going to have to go with partisan blinders on this one, which – much like the Word – casts a shadow on your other conclusions.

That would at least be a consistent view. At any rate, the fact remains that the liberal caricature of Palin is absurd and counterfactual.

We were all there. The only thing that speaks for itself is the fact that she buckled under the pressure of a Katie Couric interview.

Let’s see the raw footage.

So, Simon, you’re blaming the wolves themselves… rather than the person that actually threw her into the wolf pen (McCain)…?

I’m blaming them for their conduct. Those things that McCain’s staff and that Palin herself did to make it easier for the media to caricature and lynch her are things they will have to carry the blame for. I blame Palin for the unfortunate things she said on-camera; I blame the media for the unfortunate things she was portrayed to say after the footage spent a night in the editing room, and for things like Gibson’s preposterous nonsense.

The media did exactly what any sane person expected them to do.

That’s true: any sane person should have expected the media to behave the way they did. The media were in love with Obama, and were desperate to see him elected; the selection of Palin as a running mate reanimated McCain’s campaign and for the first time endangered the media’s anointed candidate. Their desperate campaign to tear down and smear her and her family was entirely predictable, although I admit that I was shocked by how overt, how bald their willingness to become a wing of the Obama campaign was.

Had Obama chosen a rather inexperienced first-term governor as his running mate, the same tough questions would’ve been asked, the same scrutiny would’ve been employed

Bullshit. And if there was any doubt that that’s bullshit, one has only to consider the way they handled Biden and his accident-prone mouth.

I read and watched a lot of the coverage, as well… watched all four of the debates, and liveblogged most of ‘em right here on the Donk, along with Justin and others. You simply can’t blame the media for your favorite candidate’s inadequacies.

No, but I can blame them for the ludicrously inaccurate public portrait the media painted of her. It’s incredible to me that even after the election, even after it matters, you still can’t bring yourself to admit the truth in front of your face.

If only Jimmy the Dhimmi could post a comment that didn’t include a completely moronic strawman.

Jeremy from NJ just made that argument above when he equated abortion clinic workers to victims of Islamic terrorism. Have a debate with him.

I guess then, you agree with me that Islamic fanaticism is infinitely more dangerous today than Christian fanaticism. Correct?

I was there, I read the coverage; res ipsa loquitur.

We were all there. The only thing that speaks for itself is the fact that she buckled under the pressure of a Katie Couric interview.

The media did exactly what any sane person expected them to do. Had Obama chosen a rather inexperienced first-term governor as his running mate, the same tough questions would’ve been asked, the same scrutiny would’ve been employed… only the roles would be reversed, as far as which media outlets would be asking the tough questions, and which outlets might be working the smoke-&-mirrors.

I read and watched a lot of the coverage, as well… watched all four of the debates, and liveblogged most of ‘em right here on the Donk, along with Justin and others. You simply can’t blame the media for your favorite candidate’s inadequacies.

The good news is that this might be Stage #1 of one of the biggest political makeovers in history. If Palin keeps her nose to the grindstone, keeps employing folks like the new speech writer that’s apparently coaching her… and most importantly, actually travels to far-off places rather than looking at them through the window of her home… she could be a helluva contender in 2016, or 2020.

Agnostick
agnostick@excite.com

Simon: Because I’ve always regarded you as a thoughtful person. I don’t always agree with you, but I never expected tin foil hat references to the liberal media.

You might want to consider that if I’m generally a thoughtful person and reach a conclusion you disagree with, while it might be an aberration, it might also mean that thoughtful people can so conclude. And if it’s a conclusion you can’t imagine a thoughtful person supporting, perhaps that reflects the limits of your imagination rather than the possible range of thoughtful conclusions. Just a thought.

In any event, it requires no subtle analysis or tinfoil hattery to note that the media engaged in an immediate and vicious campaign to tear Palin apart. I was there, I read the coverage; res ipsa loquitur.

That said I am still pushing Palin/Bachman :-)