Posted on 09/16/2011 9:35:27 AM PDT by onyx
They kicked her around, victimized her, tried to destroy her. But all of a sudden, the lamestream media is coming to Sarah Palin’s defense.
Faced with a barrage of negative portrayals — a much-hyped investigative book, a Levi Johnston memoir and a new movie — Palin is finding support in the unlikeliest of places.
Film reviewers have slammed the British documentary “Sarah Palin: You Betcha!” Newspapers have refused to run comic-strip excerpts of Joe McGinniss’s rumor-mongering tome “The Rogue.” Johnston’s accusations have been consigned to the gossip pages. And none other than The New York Times has angrily taken Palin’s side in a brutal takedown of the McGinniss book.
Reviewer Janet Maslin called “The Rogue” a work of “caustic, unsubstantiated gossip,” accusing its author, who rented a house next door to the Palins for a time, of sloppiness, attention seeking and a lack of neighborliness.
“‘The Rogue’ is too busy being nasty to be lucid,” Maslin concludes, describing its many accusations as “indefensibly reckless.”
In a statement issued through a PR representative, Todd Palin trumpeted the Times review, pointing to it as proof that the book was so reprehensible that “even The New York Times” disdained it.
But it wasn’t the first time in recent weeks the Palins have found the Times — the print voice of East Coast intellectualism — in their corner. The Gray Lady also recently published an op-ed praising Palin as a person of ideas and calling for her to be taken seriously.
The column by Anand Giridharadas — impeccably credentialed as an Aspen Institute fellow and Cambridge, Mass., resident — accused the media of “ignoring the ideas [Palin] unfurled” in her recent speech at an Iowa tea party rally. “Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism,” he wrote.
It’s a lot of love for Palin from the news outlet she decried back in March in a Facebook post titled “NYT, There You Go Again,” wherein she speculated that the paper’s “false reporting” was the source of its “economic and reputation woes.”
And it’s not the sort of treatment Palin generally perceives from what she loves to call the “lamestream media” — because, as she explained in another Facebook post, “The ‘mainstream’ media isn’t mainstream anymore. That’s why I call it ‘lamestream,’ and the LSM is becoming quite irrelevant, as it is no longer the sole gatekeeper of information.”
“The Rogue” hasn’t yet been widely reviewed — the Times defied the publisher’s embargo to publish its take, and the Los Angeles Times followed suit with a less acerbic take that nonetheless called the book “tame” and said it lacked credibility. But many of its accusations have been aired over the past several days in “Doonesbury,” which received McGinniss’s permission to weave excerpts from the text into the strip’s narrative.
Once again, though, media outlets haven’t played along with the anti-Palin gambit. The Chicago Tribune and other newspapers have declined to publish the “Doonesbury” strips, with the Trib explaining, “The subject matter does not meet our standards of fairness.”
And then there’s “You Betcha!” a cheerfully ruthless documentary about Palin from Nick Broomfield, whose past subjects have included Kurt Cobain, Margaret Thatcher, Heidi Fleiss and Tupac Shakur.
The film premiered last week at the Toronto International Film Festival, and it wasn’t exactly a critical darling.
Variety called it “a sarcastically toned, strategically timed character assassination” that “lacks sufficient humor and insight to make it a must-see for anyone outside the Brit muckraker’s fan base.” Other critics called it “obnoxious” and “unnecessary.”
When reviewers turned their noses up at “The Undefeated,” the pro-Palin film that came out in July, Palin’s fans cried foul and blamed critics’ presumed liberal tendencies. But the critics faulted the anti-Palin movie for the same flaw they noted in “The Undefeated” – clumsy one-sidedness.
Now that the enemy has crossed to their side, Palin’s fans don’t quite seem to know what to do.
That is the way Governor Palin rolls.
Trust me on this
Some of ‘tha brutha’s’ are thinking Sarah Palin Presidency might not be so bad now that there is a rumor she had sex with a black man and “she likes her some chocolate’
How do I know this? I know people... in ‘the hood
No. Doonesbury has always been hippie, doper crap.
I think Doonesbury has always been a hater cartoon. I remember the days of Nixon... I didn’t mind it then, because I was a young foolish democrat and in my 20s.
My guess if some one digs into it, you will find the 0 2012 campaign is behind this transparent political smear job.
Look at the accusations. The smears are all calculate to drive a wedge between Palin and the "tea party". About the only smear they DID not put into it was "Sarah Palin had a lesbian affair". This smear job will not work with the real tea party, but it is carefully designed to discredit Palin with the caricature of the tea party the crazy Left thinks exists.
Supposedly, in wacko Leftist land, the tea party is a bunch of racist intoleratnet old white purtains waving bibles and buring crroses. so they send out this slime bag to write a book that will punch all the supposed "hot button" issues of their imaginary tea party folks.
“all of a sudden, the lamestream media is coming to Sarah Palin’s defense.”
They obviously think she can be defeated. Why else would these leftist a-holes now start defending her. Perhaps they have some ‘dirt’ on her that they’re saving up.
The LSM hasn’t all of a sudden gotten concerned about fairness, they’re up to something. They’re still a rotten bunch of leftists who can’t stand conservative women , or any conservative for that matter. Nothing has changed.
Sarah’s smart...she can see through all the ploys the DIMs use against her! :)
Dear Lord.
The LSM is scared silly about Perry. They think he could beat Obama handily, and are wishing to keep Palin viable and encouraged, hoping that she will run, and that she and Perry will cripple each other in the primaries and caucuses.
I wonder if the LSM is trying to seem to be relevant. They won’t be able to keep the charade for long. There is too much infestation of leftist hatred in their ranks. They’re up to something.
Bingo.
I think kevkrom’s explanation is correct. Occam’s Razor: the simplest answer is most likely the correct one.
“The simplest answer in this case is that the left-wing media is annoyed by the amateurishness of the recent attacks, and their too-early timing. They have to condemn them to protect their own reputations.”
Plus, the MSM is starting to fear they have gone over the top, and are worried about a backlash.
Get his name right, It's Barack "Barry" Hussein Soerto Soebarkah "If you love me you'll pass my bill" Obama II
I think the media have realized that too many Americans are turned off by Liberalism’s hate and nastiness. The media wants to project a softer image leading up to election time. If Obama is re-elected, then its back to brutishness as usual.
I have an even simpler explanation as to why the MSM is easing up on Palin - they figure she’s not going to run and want to turn their spite and bile on the actual GOP nominee.
FWIW, I think they think she can’t win against obama, so they want he as the nominee. Of course they better be careful what they wish for.
This feels like a left-wing version of “Operation Chaos”.
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