It’s like watching the Little Engine That Could, the way Charles Blow slowly comes to the realization that all the negativity that progressives have been heaping upon Sarah Palin is actually – GASP – helping her.
Why?
Because they came on too strong and too wrong. They attacked her pregnancy, her baby, her children, thereby repulsing mothers who went off to join the tea party, such was their disgust at the sexist double-standard. They printed thousands of words on her every word, followed her on her book tour, stalked her speaking appearances, her teenage daughter’s Facebook page, all the while bearing the audacity to say that she runs the risk of “overexposure.”
Blow is blinded by hubris in that he believes he and other progressive media are what is keeping Palin alive in politics and pop-culture. If ever you needed another reminder as to how far the finger of mainstream media is from the pulse of the people, this is it.
She was a vice presidential nominee. But she lost. She was the governor of Alaska. But she quit. Now she’s just a political personality — part cheerleader, part bomb-thrower — being kept afloat in part by the hackles of her enemies and the people who admire her resilience in the face of them.(Don’t forget: Obama also quit the senate to campaign. Bad for Palin, fine for Obama.)
Palin may be a polarizing figure, but she’s more than just a “political personality.” Every other media outlet in existence has to choke out the acknowledgement that Palin is a kingmaker: she has a winning record in endorsements, besting the likes of Karl Rove&Co., and came out on top November 2nd. She’s able to raise funds for candidates like few can, and her battle with “the bluebloods” keeps the tug-of-war between the civil liberties movement (which is what the tea party is) and the beltway establishment front and center in the media – no one on the left can match her starpower and few on the right are able.
Blow comes to his classy realization:
The more the left tries to paint her as one of the “Mean Girls,” the more the right sees her as “Erin Brockovich.” The never-ending attempts to tear her down only build her up. She’s like the ominous blob in the horror films: the more you shoot at it, the bigger and stronger it becomes.When he mentions “shooting at her” he’s using a figure of speech, I’m sure. I won’t temporarily forget my senses, get the vapors, and have a southern dramatic attack by insisting it’s more for attention and sympathy like the left did over Palin’s description of “targeting” seats in the 2010 primaries.
Yes, she’s about as sharp as a wet balloon, but we already know that. How much more time and energy must be devoted to dissecting that?Apparently, another two sentences, Mr. Blow. If her reasoning is so stupid, then why not use your column space to dissect her approach to energy – or economic theory, i.e. quantitative easing, gold vs. fiat, et al.
I realize that it’s easier for a columnist to phone it in with lazy, cliched euphemisms in lieu of credible criticism worth printing, but we’re talking about the NYT, not the WSJ. It is what it is.
People on the left seem to need her, to bash her, because she is, in three words, the way the left likes to see the right: hollow, dim and mean. But since she’s feeding on the negativity, I suggest three other words: get over it.The funny thing is, it doesn’t matter whether or not people like Charles Blow or the Huffington Post write about Palin. Again, hubris. Do conservatives actually read either of these entities? No. Blow and others write the things they do about Palin for their own quasi-edification, to solidify their bias. Their words are for progressives alone.
That’s what the media doesn’t understand: they’re irrelevant. No one cares. I’m so tired of reading Harriet-the-Spy level cattiness from people who think they can live off the extinct respect that a masthead once carried. If they put as much effort into Wikileaks, Pigford, unspent stimulus, et al. then perhaps it would prove worth reading once again.
Big Journalism
