Posted on 01/08/2009 5:47:46 PM PST by Nachum
On Thursday night's "Hardball," Chris Matthews played several clips from documentarian John Zeigler's interview with Sarah Palin, in which the former GOP VP candidate criticized Katie Couric and the press as a whole for bias against her but his guest, Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, dismissed Palin's charges as "So lame," and called her "a Nixonian Nanook of the North."
The following exchanges were aired on the January 8, edition of "Hardball":
First up, after Matthews aired a clip of Palin criticizing the McCain campaign for forcing her to conduct continuing interviews with Couric, Alter called the Alaskan governor: "So lame."
CHRIS MATTHEWS: There ought to be a law against politicians blaming their handlers. What do you think Jonathan?
JONATHAN ALTER, NEWSWEEK: Yeah this was just so lame, Chris. I mean why didn't it go well the first day? It wasn't because Katie Couric was asking awful questions. Her questions were very straight, no spin on the ball. The problem was Sarah Palin couldn't answer the questions in a way that showed the knowledge that is required to be Vice President and quite possibly President. So if she had decided not to go back for the rest of the interview she would have been conceding that she simply wasn't qualified to be Vice President if she couldn't answer Katie's questions.
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Then after a clip of Palin wondering if Caroline Kennedy would get better coverage in her quest for the New York Senate seat because of a "class issue," Alter insulted Palin as acting like a "Nixonian Nanook of the North."
ALTER: Chris you wrote the book on Kennedy and Nixon. You know this is Sarah Palin acting kind of like a Nixonian Nanook of the North. She's trying to play that class argument against the Kennedys. That goes back a long way. It's had some success in American politics. But you know this, at this point it's kind of comparing apples and oranges. She was on the threshold of becoming Vice President and possibly President. Caroline Kennedy hasn't even been, you know, chosen yet for the U.S. Senate, as one of 100. So you know the standards in covering them aren't quite comparable. Not to mention the fact that Caroline's had a pretty tough press so far. She has hardly been handled by kid gloves in the last couple weeks.
MATTHEWS: You're right.
Finally right before the close of the show, Alter denied Palin's claim of liberal bias that she would've positive coverage if she was on the Democratic ticket:
MATTHEWS: Jon, Jon would she have gotten better treatment had she been on the "D" ticket instead of the "R" ticket?
ALTER: Well first of all, first of all Chris she never would've been on the Democratic ticket. I mean John McCain said that the first requirement for his pick was that, that person be qualified to step in at a moment's notice and deal with terrorism and all the big international issues. So he violated his own standards. That was also Barack Obama's standard for who he would put on the ticket and he chose somebody with, with the requisite experience. But if she had been – the, the subtext of this is that somehow the Democratic candidates are treated better by the press. Ask Bill Clinton the way he was treated, you know, by the press. I mean it's just not true.
MATTHEWS: Okay, ask Jimmy Carter.
ALTER: Jimmy Carter! Yeah.
MATTHEWS: Anyway. Ask Jimmy Carter, he got a terrible press.
—Geoffrey Dickens is the senior news analyst at the Media Research Center.
Jonathan Alter is such a lame journalist.
You have confirmed my suspicions that Alter is a silly queen.
Alter uses “you know” almost as much as Caroline Kennedy, who, you know, is eminently qualified to be in high office.
Shut the hell up, Alter, I’m sick of this stupid liberal Palin bashing. Put it where the moon don’t shine.
I have a question for everyone here(Since I was kinda young during the Reagan Administration and don’t remember) when he was running for President, did he have to go through this same crap from the press? Does anyone remember ever in their lifetime a woman or man so hated by the left that they bash him/her on a daily basis. I have never seen such hatred for a human being who hasn’t done a bad thing in her entire life expect running for Vice President. I mean Good God her son is fighting for our freedom right now. How can they bash a woman whose son is fighting for our freedom
They are IDIOTS
Say, wasn't Jimmeh another one of those Democrat candidates who was dubbed "The Smartest Man In America", then "The Smartest President In History"?
If he was so friggin' smart.......
Alter fell for one of the greatest Imus punks of all times.
Imus rightly called him a moron.
Gov Palin would have hung up or caught on way before Altered.
Scroll to Number 6.
http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2001/cyb20010713.asp
My recollection was that Reagan was continually bashed as an idiotic actor lacking any intellectual curiosity. Even if he “appeared” informed and intelligent, he was merely “acting.”
I must have missed that. What did he say?
Sounds like a couple of bozos there.
Wives of liberal men must feel like lesbians.
The liberal women I know castrate their men. I’ve seen it happen so many times, particularly in the South.
Dennis Miller said that the reason why libs hate Sarah is because Sarah has a great sex life and libs don’t get any. He said that Sarah has a handsome husband, 5 kids, and is happy, and libs hate people who are happy
The Libs took out after Reagan as a brainless B-Movie actor totally unqualified to be President, just as they question Sarah’s qualifications.
They blamed the Recession on him, rather than on Carter who was really the cause. Even today, Liberals refuse to give Reagan full credit for winning the Cold War, trying to dilute what he did by saying that Democrats like Truman and Kennedy contributed to the downfall of the USSR, typical Dim lies.
That's why I'm glad McCain-Palin lost. Even when 2012 rolls around, there's no guarantee that McCain would serve only one term. He would have tied Palin down big-time. Now in 2012, Palin will have six years of executive experience under her belt and she'll have her own team calling the shots.
My recollection was that Reagan was continually bashed as an idiotic actor lacking any intellectual curiosity. Even if he “appeared” informed and intelligent, he was merely “acting.”
Here’s a perfect illustration.
Not Necessarily the News
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74f5zfsLX3U
The same could probably be said for these republican elites who trash Palin.
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