It is true some of it is her fault, but there is prejudice against her for many other reasons, and I don't think it has a lot to do with "qualifications." After all, President Obama didn't have much in the way of experience either when he ran for president.
One is the most obvious, and that she is female, and female politicians have their own unique problems in getting support and money for their campaigns. Hillary Clinton knows this very well. Another problem, and it isn't trivial, is the fact Sarah Palin is attractive. She has to prove herself to not be a bimbo, and unfortunately, there are things she has said which give many people pause about her intellect. Which leads to another factor, and it may be the most critical of all, and that's the fact Sarah Palin is not an Ivy League graduate; indeed, she bounced around in a few state colleges before getting her degree. There is a mentality in the eastern media centers and which is common among many people in that region but not in other parts of the country which says it is very important what college you attended and graduated. The only schools that really count among the eastern establishment are the Ivy League universities. And even among the Ivies, there is a hierarchy of prestige. Universities such as Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, and the University of Pennsylvania aren't highly thought of by the elite media; they are little "better" than the despised state universities which the vast majority of college students attend. Princeton is a little more prestigious. The truly important colleges in the eyes of the media are Harvard and Yale, the former being the most important of all. Never mind the fact once a student can get into one of these colleges, the colleges aren't any more rigorous than the garden variety state university. People don't apply and attend those colleges for the "rigor"; they are buying connections which these colleges have in abundance. Anyway, Sarah Palin didn't bother with attending an Ivy League school, and this on top of being from the West disqualifies her from being taken seriously.
I also believe the fact she had a Down syndrome child is a major factor in the hostility towards her although less by the traditional media than by the blogs. Palin didn't do the politically correct thing and have an abortion while at the same time having a high-profile political career. She has called herself a feminist and has lived that idea for years, but many so-called liberals hate her guts and laugh at her insistence she is a feminist. Where is "choice" in all of this, by the way? "Choice" is as much the right to have a child as it is the right to have an abortion.
A snip from Taibbi's article:
The tone for all this behavior is always set somewhere way up the corporate totem pole, and it always reflects some dreary combination of simple business considerations (i.e. what’s the best story and sells the most ads) and internalized political calculus (i.e. who is a “legitimate” candidate and who is an “insurgent” or a “second-tier” hopeful). It’s not that the reporters are making this judgment themselves, it’s that they have to listen to what the apparatus Up There is saying all day long — not just their bosses but the think-tank talking heads they interview for comments, the party insiders who buy them beers at night, the pollsters and so on.
And when all these people start getting in their ears about this or that guy doesn’t have “winnability,” or doesn’t have enough money to run, or has negatives that are insurmountable, all that thinking inevitably bleeds into the coverage. It’s not that the reporters are “biased.” They just don’t have the stones, for the most part, to ignore all the verbal and non-verbal cues they get from authority figures about who is “legitimate” and who isn’t.
Once the signal comes down that this or that politician doesn’t have the backing of anyone who matters, that’s when the knives really come out. When a politician has powerful allies and powerful friends, you won’t see reporters brazenly kicking him in the crotch the way they did to Dean and they’re doing now to Sarah Palin. The only time they do this is when they know there won’t be consequences, meaning when the politician’s only supporters are non-entities (read: voters), as in the case of Ron Paul or Kucinich. Like America in general, the press corps never attacks any enemy that can fight back...
(H/T to commenter Mary Louise for this good piece.)
3 comments:
Susan,
It is appalling the way liberals have been cheering on the media lynching of Palin. They never learn. By now they should know that once you give the media that kind of power it will someday be used against you.
I disagree with you about the reasons for the Palin lynching. It is not because of her baby or the non Ivy education. Sexism and misogyny has a lot to do with it.
The media keeps telling us Palin is stupid and uninformed. Lets say this is true.
But so was Reagan. He did not have a fancy education and he was ignorant of the most basic facts. And yet the reporters were pussies covering him. They still talk about him in the most reverential tones.
George W Bush was stupid and ignorant. And yet during the 2000 election his stupidity was portrayed as part of his charm. Maureen Dowd wrote column after column about how great it was that Bush was not a know it all like Gore. The entire press was charmed by Bush's stupidity. They played a decisive role along with SCOTUS making Bush president. And then once he was in office showered him with praise about how he was a plain talkin' Texan, not like that snooty Al Gore. They helped him sell the Iraq war.
No, the press is not lynching Palin because she is stupid and ignorant. They are lynching her because she is not protected by the powers that be in the GOP establishment. They are also lynching her because of sexism. Dowd thought Bush's ignorance was cute. She is appalled by Palin.
It wasn't because Palin was inexperienced. So was Obama.
Is it a coincidence that the two candidates who got the worst press treatment in 2008 were Palin and Hillary. They were both accused od being "ambitious". As if Obama, McCain, Biden and the rest were not ambitious. Somehow for a woman being ambitious was a character flaw.
Feminists don't want to admit that women themselves can be sexist and misogynist and often cheer on the failure of other women. They also don't realize that they have set back women's movement by looking the other way as these two women were lynched. The Newsweek cover was sexist. Where was NOW? Not a word of protest. If they had a similar cover about a black candidate NAACP would be screaming. NOW is happy as long as they got their precious Roe v Wade. As if no other issue exists for women.
Maureen Dowd and Margaret Carlson were charmed by Bush. They hate Palin. And they hated Hillary. They are relentless misognynists. And yet we should consider them feminists because they support Roe? Give me a break.
Give it time. Soon Dowd and the rest will be lynching Obama. Liberals will be screaming bloody murder. They are too stupid to learn.
Mary Louise
Sexism does have a lot to do with the shabby treatment of Palin. You'd think after all of these years of so-called progress for women, sexism would be relegated to the fringes, but it isn't.
Liberals and so-called progressives can be the biggest sexists on earth; after all, one of the reasons the women's movement came into being was the fact many women on the "New Left" were being badly treated by the men. It appears men AND women haven't changed a whole lot in forty years.
I am seeing a lot of disappointment in Obama on sites such as Democratic Underground, which led in the cheerleading of him when he ran for president. Most of the posters seemed oblivious to his very real neoliberalism leanings. And now many of them are disgusted with him.
I am really afraid he is not going to be re-elected in 2012, and then we are going to be stuck with somebody like Mitt Romney or Eric Cantor. Then we will REALLY be screwed.
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