Posted on 09/03/2008 6:46:21 AM PDT by Gamecock
A conservative analyst says the media are currently in a feeding frenzy, trying to assert that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is unfit to be vice president because her teenage daughter is pregnant. One pro-family leader says the way liberal media is reporting the story exposes a "rank hypocrisy."
Female news anchors and reporters from various media outlets, including CBS, NBC, and CNN, have suggested 17-year-old Bristol Palin's pregnancy should have disqualified her mother from becoming John McCain's running mate and raises questions about McCain's judgment. Katie Couric of CBS News even chided the McCain campaign for not notifying the press about the pregnancy sooner.
Bob Knight, director of the Culture and Media Institute, says it is quite humorous to watch the media "finally discover family values." Knight predicts that in light of the Alaska governor "saying that she's pro-life and her daughter's pro-life, and she decided to keep her Down syndrome baby herself and her daughter is keeping her baby and plans to get married...I think the attempts by the media to paint this as a moral crisis will fail."
Knight says in the end, the media "will have egg on its face" because Palin's family has rallied around her daughter and reaffirmed its belief that life is precious.
The head of the media watchdog group also predicts that the public can expect a full-scale attack on abstinence-only sex education in the coming days now that the media is fixated on the pregnancy of Palin's daughter. The New York Times featured three Page 1 stories on Bristol Palin in its Tuesday editions.
Knight says he is not surprised the media have devoted so much time to a matter that Democrat Barack Obama said should be off limits during the political campaign. "We don't even know what kind of sex education that Sarah Palin's daughter had," he exclaims. "I've not seen that in any reports." At least one TV journalist has suggested that Bristol Palin's pregnancy is a result of her mother's stated promotion of abstinence-only education.
Nevertheless, says Knight, "the attacks have already started. Abstinence has been questioned on CBS and other networks, and I think the Left always takes an opportunity to take a personal crisis and turn it into a policy issue. So this will be no exception."
Knight says the media are extremely annoyed that McCain made such a bold choice for VP that has been met with approval by so many people they dislike.
Media's double standard Wendy WrightWendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, says the mainstream media's treatment of Governor Palin and her pregnant teenage daughter "exposes rank hypocrisy." She says the Palins are dealing with their predicament in a responsible manner -- but that the media's coverage of Palin brings to light a clear double standard. (Listen to audio report)
"The media that claims to be in favor of women pursuing all their choices seems to have a problem when it's a conservative woman who is doing it," observes the pro-family leader. "Sarah Palin has provided a beautiful example -- the family that's rallying around a member in that family who's made a mistake, who's made a bad choice, but is now making a good choice."
According to Wright, while conservatives discourage sex outside of marriage, they "rally around those who have made that mistake and are facing an unexpected pregnancy." Wright says on the flip side, liberals encourage people to be sexually active outside of marriage, but if the woman ends up pregnant, they think that responsibility should be ended through an abortion.
Ping
Anyone see the Planned Parenthood witch on CNN this morning yacking about how Palin was opposed to public funding for sex education and now ends up with a pregnant teen? Gag!!
‘cause we all know that teens who have been trained to fornicate by Planned Parenthood almost never get pregnant. Those who do get pregnant don’t stay that way for long. < sarc>
No, just more hypocrisy from the liberal media.
This is where genuinely dumb people think that just because they're on TV they can manipulate and out-smart people who live in the real world.
Which is....bizarre....if you really think about it.
Why wasn’t there a document dump on Sarah after the announcement? That would have quelled the criticism.
I have a feeling the ‘Schmidt Storm’ anticipated this. Those Wile E Coyote Democrats can’t help themselves.
New video to be out by noon today.
Presser with woman backers of McCain/Palin.
Memos to Obama camp requesting the smears be stopped.
Attacks on the Blogs who are fueling the rumors and attacks.
She is running scared because the McCain/Palin team may actually succeed in removing government money from Abortions ‘R Us.
Per Fox News, the McCain campaign will be coming out with a blizt to counter attack the MSM vicious attacks — today. I hope they’ve had time to delve in to the sex lives of all the infobabes and metrosexual guys doing this “reporting”.
I’d like to see some inspiring journalists spying on the main stream drive bys....to see which TV reporters are seen drinking, breaking the law, neglecting their children, any traffic tickets...and all of the above....with video, of course.
“Memos to Obama camp requesting the smears be stopped.”
As if that’s going to do any good! B. Hussein made a statement early on that this subject is “off limits”. But you know he had his fingers crossed. He’s thrilled that the evil continues.
Actually, my sister insists that Hillary is behind a lot of this. Isn’t that the Clinton camp’s fallback strategy — to haul out the old “nuts and sluts” attacks? Face it; if Palin is VP, Hillary is so over!
Why can’t someone find details about the senior leadership at CBS, NBC, and CNN regarding those individuals and their children that had children out of wedlock?
That’s true. But I’m thinking they need to expose abortions, STDs, children’s STDs, police records, their homosexual liaisons, etc. (Maybe that wouldn’t work though; abortions and homosexual liaisons are plusses among the dems.)
Never mind...
“Why can’t someone find details about the senior leadership at CBS, NBC, and CNN regarding those individuals and their children that had children out of wedlock?”
I watched Letterman because they said he would talk about Palin. It was disgusting...he said the entire family had been on Jerry Springer.....that any mother who didn’t talk to her kid about birth control was worse than terrible....
But Letterman didn’t bring up the fact he fathered a child at nearly 60 years of age out of wedlock...by accident!
I can tell you this, Letterman’s kid would be better of with Kristol Palin as a parent. By the time his kid is her age, Letterman will be dead or in a nursing home.... a lot of good he’ll be. The height of greed and stupidity is having a child at that age.
That's stupidest thing I've heard in a really long time. I would say she is pregnant because she didn't practice abstinence not because she was taught it.
Why wasn’t there a document dump on Sarah after the announcement? That would have quelled the criticism.
No, it wouldn't have "quelled the criticism. instead, it would have made the criticism (and rebuttal) the entirety of the Palin story from the get-go, overwhelming the boffo speech she gave on Friday.McCain and Palin discussed this in detail before her debut as VP nominee. Including, obviously, the strategy for handling it. Which was to make her big splash on Friday, let it set in, and then do the "data dump." They knew this kind of tempest in a teapot would result, but spoiling her initial introduction with it would have been d u m b.
IMHO the next move is to explain all of the above explicitly (I have inferred it from the known facts) - and say that anyone who jumped on the "pregnant daughter" case had not revealed anything that the American people didn't instinctively know - other than the fact that people talking about Bristol are self righteous jerks.
Palin will have every mother in the country on her side in 15 seconds, and after that it will be all "go ahead, talk about Bristol. You lose votes wholesale with every word."
The pro career women party is now telling Palin she should stay home.
The party that chose an inexperienced minority as their candidate is concerned the Republicans have chosen an inexperienced woman.
The party that decried media scrutiny of Chelsea is devoting media scrutiny 24/7 to Bristol.
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