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Sarah Palin is defended by 'lamestream media'
politico ^ | September 16, 2011 | Molly Ball

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.


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: defendssarah; lamestream; palin; sarahpalin; youbetcha
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To: onyx

Oh no, the media finally figured out that the more they attack Palin, the more sympathetic she appears. D’oh!


41 posted on 09/16/2011 10:51:00 AM PDT by Boogieman
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To: oldbrowser

“The media is trying to rehabilitate their reputation so that that later they can attack her and pretend to be “fair and balanced”.”

Makes a lot of sense to me. But, I trust Miss Sarah to see through the transparency.


42 posted on 09/16/2011 10:59:41 AM PDT by jivin gene (Breakin' up is hard to do)
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To: onyx

This piece now appears in Yahoo News:
http://news.yahoo.com/lamestream-media-defends-palin-093100032.html


43 posted on 09/16/2011 11:08:32 AM PDT by 1066AD
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To: Mr. K

Oh, Puuuuuullllllleeeeze.....


44 posted on 09/16/2011 11:08:32 AM PDT by jivin gene (Breakin' up is hard to do)
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To: MNJohnnie; onyx

From 2008:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/what-bertelsmann-wants-from-obama/

“As suggested in my earlier article on Bertelsmann’s “Man in the White House,” the issue of Obama’s financial relationship to Bertelsmann is particularly troubling, since following the November 4 presidential election the Bertelsmann Foundation wasted no time in announcing that it had prepared a series of policy recommendations for the incoming president. Bertelsmann is no ordinary German corporation. Via the foundation and the foundation’s yearly budget of some €70 million, it is a major player in German politics and European politics more generally. “


45 posted on 09/16/2011 11:11:54 AM PDT by 1066AD
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To: 1066AD

LOL. They’re really trying to sell it.


46 posted on 09/16/2011 11:13:47 AM PDT by onyx (You're here on FR so, support it! If you support Sarah Palin, & want on her ping list, let me know!)
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To: al baby

47 posted on 09/16/2011 11:15:00 AM PDT by Clock King (Ellisworth Toohey was right: My head's gonna explode.)
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To: Dawgreg

“I smell a bunch of rats here......Sarah better watch out”

They probably want her to get into the race so they can crucify her again. Never trust anything written or said by the liberal media vermon.


48 posted on 09/16/2011 11:38:17 AM PDT by No Socialist
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To: TexasRepublic

“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.”

You nailed it. Except as it becomes apparent their man is going to lose, we will all be stuned by the level of viciousness they will unleash in their desperation.

I used to wonder why they are such sore losers,and I think it is because they are just control-freaks at heart, and control is all they have that is worth having (to them), and when they are about to lose, they feel they have lost everything. Conservatives are not wired that way; they have other things in life to turn to besides political control.


49 posted on 09/16/2011 11:48:47 AM PDT by ngat
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To: onyx

The imprint, I think it’s Crown, must be desperate. Best response here is to ignore it.


50 posted on 09/16/2011 12:18:11 PM PDT by newzjunkey (Will racist demagogue Andre Carson be censured by the House?)
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To: Venturer
I have noticed the story has died a sudden death.

Not yet. It made it to yahoo headlines 9 minutes ago.

51 posted on 09/16/2011 12:22:05 PM PDT by bgill (There, happy now?)
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To: Baladas

I think that is probably be best answer to this puzzle. Also, they may not want to get too far into bed with creepy Levi and the sheet-sniffer Joe.

What non-regular readers of the NY Times might not know is that a weekday review (often bad) is followed up by a superlative review in the Sunday Book Magazine section. I’ve seen this happen more than once.


52 posted on 09/16/2011 12:31:00 PM PDT by miss marmelstein (Run, Sarah, Run! Please!)
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To: ngat

What I love about libs is that they are often sore WINNERS. Nothing can appease their chronic anger - not even winning an election.


53 posted on 09/16/2011 12:33:07 PM PDT by miss marmelstein (Run, Sarah, Run! Please!)
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To: onyx

They are hoping she will run 3rd Party since that is about the only chance Obama’s got. I’ve got news for the LSM, she will be the GOP nominee or not run at all.


54 posted on 09/16/2011 12:34:55 PM PDT by KansasGirl
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To: KansasGirl
They are hoping she will run 3rd Party since that is about the only chance Obama’s got. I’ve got news for the LSM, she will be the GOP nominee or not run at all.

She's going to run and she'll run GOP.

:)


55 posted on 09/16/2011 12:40:26 PM PDT by onyx (You're here on FR so, support it! If you support Sarah Palin, & want on her ping list, let me know!)
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To: WVNan

[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.]

I’ve been thinking this also. Interesting to consider, this is exactly what we thought about Obama.


56 posted on 09/16/2011 12:43:22 PM PDT by KansasGirl
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To: miss marmelstein

“What I love about libs is that they are often sore WINNERS. Nothing can appease their chronic anger - not even winning an election.”

So true. Libs have the true nature of man wrong, and in their zeal to improve man in this life, when the unattainability of their utopian goals becomes apparent to them, he will blame others for the failure to attain his goals, and lead his nation to historic disasters.


57 posted on 09/16/2011 12:49:45 PM PDT by ngat
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To: onyx

The problems with Alinsky smears is that they have to be determined and calculated. Go after someone too hard, smear them with too much sleaze and you will look like a bully and a gutter trial lawyer. The object is to keep all the mud of you.

They went too far by attacking her family last time and that turned alot of people off. Mostly it’s been political attacks since. That’s why they’re running mostly from McGinniss this time. They want people to be receptive to criticism of her and not ‘blah blah why don’t you quit peddling sleaze’.


58 posted on 09/16/2011 12:59:32 PM PDT by Free Vulcan (Vote Republican! You can vote Democrat when you're dead.)
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To: ASA Vet; Chuzzlewit
Doonesbury's always been leftist - but there was thought behind it. In this case Garry Trudeau wanted to use quotes from a book - sight unseen - JUST because he knew they would be hateful.

Trudeau's jumped the shark with this one - then again so have more knee jerk liberals... they just don't know it yet.

59 posted on 09/16/2011 1:08:12 PM PDT by GOPJ (126 people were indicted for being terrorists in the last two years. Every one of them was Muslim.)
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To: onyx

Because seizing on the alleged tryst between a Black male and a White woman hits too close to home — it’s something that shouldn’t be exploited regardless.


60 posted on 09/16/2011 1:37:29 PM PDT by Gene Eric (Your Hope has been Redistributed. Here's your damn Change!)
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