The Anchoress
Love Sarah Palin or not, one has to admit the press is so undone by her that they are both aggressive and passive-aggressive in their hate, and they betray themselves continually in all sorts of ways. They betray their snobbism; they betray their spitefulness, and most emphatically, they betray the fact that our “fourth estate” is populated mostly by perpetual adolescents.
Our press, with a few exceptions, is largely made up of people who, at age 14, decided they were sophisticates who knew everything about everything, and therefore had no need to ever think deeply, change an opinion or grow.
They betray their hate, their spitefulness and their perpetual adolescence very succinctly, here, in this piece about Palin’s spectacularly well-attended book signing in Michigan:
Country music played as Palin’s tour bus, painted to resemble the cover of her book, pulled up to the Woodland Mall in Grand Rapids.
“I just can’t tell you how good it is to be back in Michigan,” the former Alaska governor . . . Alaska and Michigan have so much in common, with the huntin’ and the fishin’ and the hockey moms, and just the hardworking, patriotic Americans who are here,” Palin said.
Ah, those rubes lining up were treated to “country” music; other politicians work the midwest to the strains of the prentender-everyman Bruce Springsteen, who is at least authentically “cool.” And then here comes former Governor Palin Buckshot Annie and her too-large family, droppin’ ‘er g’s and layin’ on the “hardworking, patriotic Americans” schtick with a graceless trowel.
Because Barack Obama never talks about “hardworking Americans.” Hillary Clinton never talked about “patriotic Americans.” And no other politician, except Bill Clinton (all the time), Hillary Clinton (when she was pandering) and Barack Obama (when he was pandering or playing) has ever dropped their g’s while talkin’ to the crowd.
Or, more correctly, none of those politicians have ever had their dropped g’s wholly spelled out in quotes or transcripts, as is routinely done to Sarah Palin. It was occasionally done to President Bush, too, most notably when the Democrats won the 2006 elections and Bush (unlike either Obama or Mrs. Pelosi in the recent election) manfully admitted the loss, calling it a “thumpin.'”
To our rather well-paid press-folk, dropped g’s are indicators of low intellects, lower incomes and the lowest social strata. Dropped g’s are so uncool. Except when they’re savvy and slick. In the screwed up world of the press, fake dropped g’s are clever, and authentic dropped g’s are campy.
The press is so busy embracing urban irony, they do not realize the disoriented, out-of-touch clowns they have become; just like those out-of-touch Beltway players they so love to promote. The clown-politicians are going to be voted out of office in the next two elections, barring fraud. And the clown-press is going to then stump around in their floppy clown feet, sadly beeping their horns and shaking their heads, wondering how it all fell apart.
The American public was not paying much attention to the press, back when they were systematically talking down President Bush day after day, with their incessant negativity and outright distortions, and so people could be swayed. They were swayable in 2008, when the press spent every last dime of its credibility convincing America that Barack Obama was the smartest man ever to run for president, that he was “sort of God”, that he was “stepping down” to accept the presidency.
The American public trusted the press, who told them that Cowboy president was a moron who had “made the world (except for England, France, Germany, Australia, Israel, India, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Eastern Europe, Japan, China, Taiwan, Philippines, Georgia, Ukraine, Lebanon, Turkey, Kurdistan and the entire continent of Africa…) totally hate us,” and whose administration was “cloaked in secrecy.”
So, persuaded by the positivism of the press, Americans voted for a charismatic fellow whose college transcripts, friendships and background -and seemingly all of his instincts– were cloaked in a secrecy untroubling to incurious media; a guy who promised “the most transparent government ever,” and sensible government economic policies. The guy who, since becoming president, has revealed himself to be -not the open, bi-partisan, coalition-building, transparent tower of transcendent brilliance the American people thought they were getting- but a flip-flopping, thin-skinned, secretive, teleprompter-dependent, far-left radical spend-a-holic who talks incessantly and does not listen, who can’t tell us where the money has gone; a guy who says pretty much anything that comes into his head, whether it is true or not, and figures that’s the new history; a “uniter” who has locked the opposition party out of every policy debate (there actually is no debate, anymore) and has weakend our influence abroad (by becoming “the worst sort of ally”) and our security at home, has disrespected, snubbed or betrayed every one of our allies, cozied up to tyrants and done little in a bare year besides bankrupting the country, dissing his predecessor at every opportunity, making us wonder what sort of government he is fomenting, and whether he is in fact, actively working to tear the country apart.
In less than a year, the media’s choice for President, the guy they carried on their shoulders into the White House along with his “most glamorous, most brilliant, most stylish First Lady, ever” has a surprising number of people missing George W. Bush. Obama even has some conservatives, myself among them, missing Bill and Hillary Clinton.
The American people have realized that they were played -by the very press charged with the public trust of information-gathering and presentment- into a bait-and-switch. They are not going to listen to the press, anymore. They will no longer be swayed by stuck-up 14 year olds telling them who is stupid and who is smart, because they’ve seen just how incredibly stupid the common-sense-deficient “smartest people in the world” tend to be.
The press has not had President Bush -who was insufficiently impressed by their intellectual conceits- to use as an outlet for their boundless disdain, They need an outlet, because they are frustrated. They cannot allow themselves to admit that they –they! who are so smart, so clever- have been utterly hoodwinked by the supposed-genius of Barack Obama (who said yesterday that “accounting is an inexact science”) – and they need a reassuring “stupid” focalpoint on which they can direct their scorn and reassure themselves that they are smart, and cool and not at all parochial and closed off.
Palin is that outlet, now Bush is gone, and the putzes in the press can’t mock, spite, roll-their-eyes or seethe enough about her. But their mugging and huffing and mocking is not working, this time.
At Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds notes that a few Certified Palin Haters in the pundit class have become so appalled by the behavior of the press that they are themselves backlashing against it:
DAVID HARSANYI ON SARAH PALIN: “All you haters out there force me to root for her.” and “The widely read blogger and purveyor of all truth, Andrew Sullivan, was impelled to blog 17 times on the subject of Palin on the same day Americans learned that the Obama administration awarded $6.7 billion in stimulus money to non-existent congressional districts — which did not merit a single mention. To see what is in front of one’s nose demands a constant struggle, I guess.”
Megan McArdle: “Y’all well know that I really don’t like Sarah Palin. In fact, more than one of you has yelled at me about this. And I find the whole schtick about how the media is just a bunch of elitist hooligans who are out to get her really grating. That’s why I really wish the media wouldn’t act like, well, a bunch of elitist hooligans who are out to get her.” Or, in some cases, crazed conspiracy theorists.
The 14 year olds in the press had better pay attention: when even those sympathetic to their disdain are alludin’ to their hatin’ and their pettiness an’ their excessive fussin’, they risk playin’ right into Palin’s graspin’, social-climbin’ and impermissible ambitions.
Whatever Palin’s weaknesses, and she does have them, the outsized disdain of the press for this woman Camille Paglia has called “a natural” on the political stage, is backfiring on them, and to her advantage.
Related: Why they hate Palin
Related:
Fred Thompson: Obama has no heart for victory in Afghanistan
Ed Morrissey: So much for Resetting relations with Russia
Malkin: Sullivan’s psychosis and Imagine if Bush (or Palin) talked like this
Melissa Clouthier: Mental illness…
Jules Crittenden: Nuts
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