"Blood in the Water" and ebay CEO, one of McCain's heroes, counters his campaign's spin

[ProSense]

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Blood in the Water

(updated below)

Perhaps the most surprisingly thing about McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate is his campaign's complete and utter failure to anticipate how the press would react to it. Aren't the Republicans usually the ones who understand how the press works?

The reality is pretty simple. If you make a surprise VP pick and the person you select is someone who is completely unknown to the media and the public, you're going to trigger a mad scramble by every news outlet to be the first to report various heretofore unknown facts about that person. You have to expect that. By choosing someone to be VP, you are instantly elevating that person to enormous notoriety and potentially putting him/her a heartbeat away from being the most powerful person in the world. If the person you select is an unknown commodity, there's a huge information vacuum that needs to be filled. Nature abhors a vacuum and so does the media.

<...>

What's going now is not ideological at all. The media simply smells blood in the water. They know that Palin is from the most remote state in the union. They know she's never undergone any serious vetting. They know that some damaging facts have already been uncovered, and they suspect there may be more. It's the journalistic equivalent of a gold rush.

<...>

UPDATE: Wow. Conservatives are really going crazy right now. They're livid about the media's "shameful" conduct this week. And it's not just faux outrage. Many of them are genuinely irate. They're very non-specific in their criticism, though. What exactly did "the media" do that was so shameful?

The reality is that no one in the mainstream media ever so much as mentioned Bristol Palin until the Palins themselves announced that she was pregnant (apparently in response to a National Inquirer story that was about to be published). And then the coverage was almost entirely of the "how will this news affect the campaign" variety. And the other stories that have come out have been one of two general types: 1) process stories discussing the McCain vetting/selection process, and 2) stories exploring Palin's public record in Alaska and comparing it to her most recent statements. That kind of coverage is not only completely fair, but it's exactly how you'd expect the press to react to the announcement of surprise VP candidate who no one really knew much about.

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Josh Marshall: Finely Aged Whine

MEDIA VETTING IS 'COMPLETELY FAIR'.... A variety of McCain campaign surrogates stepped up today to lambaste the press for trying to "demean and belittle and demonize" Sarah Palin.

Unfortunately for the surrogates, the talking points didn't reach Meg Whitman, McCain's national campaign co-chair and the former CEO of e-Bay.

Fox News' Chris Wallace, responding to McCain campaign charges, asked Whitman, "Is it fair to call it 'sexism'? I mean, sometimes there are legitimate questions." Whitman responded, "I actually think it's completely fair for the media to vet Sarah Palin, just as they did Barack Obama and John McCain and everyone else who's running for office. I mean, you are running for the second highest office in the land, so I think it's the right thing to do."

Wallace followed up, asking about possible sexism in the reaction to Palin's candidacy. "I wouldn't say there really has" been sexism, Whitman replied.

Here's hoping the rest of the McCain campaign takes what Whitman has to say seriously.

[ErinBerin84]

1. was Meg Whitman one of the women at the "SHAME ON YOU, SEXIST MEDIA"

press conference on C Span earlier?

[Happyhippychick]

2. The fact that they assumed that Hillary supporters would vote with their vaginas is reason enough to

assume that they didn't use a focus group or have a serious discussion about all of the possibilities.

[Cha]

3. Killer Roundup, ProSense! Have I mentioned how

much I like Josh Marshall?!

<snip from Josh's article>

"There's quite a tear-jerking piece in the Post by Howard Kurtz today about the McCain campaign's wailing about the media treatment of their botched veep roll-out" ...

<End Snip>Josh Marshall

"The McCain camp is using the rumors about Palin's family as a cudgel to beat back entirely legitimate questions -- which may amount to a feeding frenzy -- about Palin's political record, alleged pattern of abuse of the power of her office and political associations. When you see Steve Schmidt getting weepy, believe me, you're getting played."

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

4. Whitman is a pro-choice Republican...

If McCain wins in November, people like her might as well switch parties, and they know it.

[ProSense]

5. More "Blood in the Water"

Blood in the water

by clammyc
Wed Sep 03, 2008 at 04:01:26 PM PDT

I have long said that this should be a 6%-10% popular vote, 320+ electoral vote blowout, but for a number of reasons (many including the complicity and disgraceful behavior of the corporate media), a race that is, in reality, probably not (in reality if the vote were to happen on any given day) nearly as close as it is portrayed to be is still, well, "close".

And it always seemed like there were so many moments where the McCain campaign and republican party would crash and burn like the 5 planes that McCain himself lost. But every time it was supposed to happen, it didn’t. And nearly every time, it was because of the corporate media burying a story, a gaffe, a verbal assault or a McCain moment for some other conjured up lie about "what some people are worried about with respect to Obama" or a well timed barbecue.

We knew that once the truth about McCain came out, when the sheen of the false persona behind the poor judgment was wiped away, the risky gambles were exposed, the hotheaded outbursts were recounted, the lack of awareness about basic things like the economy, the internet, the Sunnis/Shiites/Iran/al Qaeda was too much to hide, the "prickly" nature was exhibited one too many times and the grudges and the self serving pandering couldn’t be covered up any longer – this race would start to represent what it should have represented.

It’s no secret that many in the corporate media (as well as a good number of Americans) pushed and followed a narrative that ran counter to what the country actually was interested in and what the needs and important issues facing families were. Distractions were pushed to the top of the agenda because corporate media heads decided that "this is what people want to talk about", while real important issues facing this country were being ignored and sugar coated.

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