Oh please. Sarah could be sitting at home with her family watching TV at night, curtains drawn...and the media would portray it as wrong.
The issue is not that the media portrays anything that Sarah Palin or conservatives do as wrong but whether or not people believe them. The more absurd the claim, the more people doubt them. The more supported the claim, the more people believe them. When you can show real live racists at a Sarah Palin rally, that’s supporting evidence for the claim that Sarah Palin’s supporters are racist. Similarly, when you can show real live racist things being said on Free Republic, or even things that look like they might be racist to the average person, it’s supporting evidence that this site is racist.
The right has had this disinterest in image and perception for a while and it’s killing us because it’s let the left control the message. Too many people believe all of those stereotypes about conservatives because we can’t be bothered with how we look and play right into those steroetypes. And so long as we live in a country with elections, what people think matters, whether conservatives like it or not.