TIME: Sneering at Sarah Palin, Fox News To a Shrinking Audience
TIME continues its grand uber-partisan mad hackery demonstrated by its own Mark Halperin in Game Change. Only this time, instead of suppressing real news ala John Edwards Scandal, the weekly newsrag continues its crusade to Dan Quayle-ize Sarah Palin.
Which is sad because the piece by Michael Scherer makes some good points. They’re just buried in the snark around a false premise that’s obligatory when someone writes a political piece for TIME.
The meme, as currently constructed is “Sarah Palin is inconsequential of and by herself. She’s merely a brainless, addled child speaking to other rubes who listen to her because their betters ignore them.”
The piece is all about how Fox News hired Palin, not possibly because of what she has to say or she connects with folks who aren’t of the puffed-up-exponentially crowd, but because she’s a Mascot.
A mascot? That mascot wouldn’t be a pig with lipstick, would it now boys?
That’s a good one! You fellows are funny!
From As Mascot and Martyr, Sarah Palin Debuts On Fox News:
To quibble with any of these utterances, in form or substance, would be to simply help fulfill her Fox News destiny. She exists to enrage and rile those paid to pay attention to this stuff, a group who a great bulk of the American people long ago began to dislike for its phony self-importance and its monopoly on their attentions.
There was the following redeemer, however:
[Before I continue, I must make a disclosure: I am not, as a member of the professional media, qualified to describe Sarah Palin's debut appearance as a Fox News analyst. As Fox pundit Monica Crowley explained on the network after the former Alaska governor left Tuesday night, Palin “was actually talking over the heads of the media to the American people.” This, explained Crowley, is Palin's great talent—a rare ability to connect directly with Americans through television. “Nixon did it,” Crowley added, driving home her point. Lacking access to Palin's most important frequencies, therefore, I must ask that you take this analysis for what it is—an incomplete rendering.]
Truer words have not been spoken at TIME since the 1950s–which is one reason the magazine’s dropped a cool million in circulation over the last 10+ years.
Give TIME credit for one thing: consistency. The mag attacks conservatives with gusto, while shielding its readers from unpleasant news about favored Democrat liberals. TIME readers were completely in the dark about John Edwards during his time as one of the 2008 Democrat front-runners for the Dem presidential nomination.
Now, it engages in the long pre-2012 attack on someone who is not one of TIME’s own. The drone will continue from TIME and its cohort in the MMM. But to many, many less people than previously.
Liberal partisan hackery just doesn’t pay as well as it used to, eh, comrades?
Look up streisand effect and you won’t be so smug !
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Palin better get it while the gettin’ is good, because this much exposure of her shallowness and ignorance will make even FNC a temporary setting.
Like everything else she does half of before quitting.
Who has three weeks in the betting pool?
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Einstein said “Life mag is for people who cannot read and Time is for people who cannot think”
Sums it up nicely.
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Mondo Reply:
January 14th, 2010 at 20:54
That Einstein quote is priceless and I had forgotten it. Thanks a million for posting it.
I will mark it and make sure I use it. This is evidence of what I always say: The comments are many times as good as the story.
Thanks!
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