Palin Proves The Problem With Journalism Is Maureen Dowd

        

Sara Palin, Official Photo                           Maureen Dowd, Mall Glamour Shot?

The one-two punch thrown by Democrats and their counterparts in mainstream media have probably cost Alaska the governorship of Sarah Palin. 

 

Sarah has provided two reason for stepping down as Alaska’s governor:  1) The money she and the state have had to spend defending against 15 ethics complaints, all dismissed, and 2) The endless attacks against her spouse and children by Democrats, the media and those in pop culture.

 

Politics is officially a rich person’s sport – so long as you are rich enough to defend yourself against a string of baseless complaints you can stay.

 

Also, the children of Republican politicians are now a target-rich environment for Democrats and media demagogues.  It makes you wonder how many good people otherwise willing to serve, perhaps even better than those serving us now, are deciding to stay away from politics because of ruthlessness from Democrats and the media.

 

Let’s look at both issues.

 

Right down to the level of local politics, Democrat strategy is to bring ethics complaints against Republicans in the months leading up to an election.  The goal is pure smear.  After the election the complaints are dismissed or abandoned, as they are no longer useful against the Republican candidate. 

 

Even baseless complaints have to be defended.  In Sarah Palin’s case, she racked up a few hundred thousand dollars in legal bills and Alaskans spent even more for administrative costs. It gets in the way of governing.

 

The solution here is for Alaska to pass a bonding law.  Anyone filing an ethics complaint against a candidate within a year of an election should be required to post a bond to cover the costs should the ethics complaint be found to be baseless or abandoned.

 

On to Democrats beating up kids. That didn’t start with the Palin teenagers.  It started in 2004 with Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary.

 

During John Kerry’s debate with George W. Bush, Kerry brought up that Mary Cheney is a lesbian.  During John Edwards’ debate with Dick Cheney, Edwards brought up that Mary Cheney is a lesbian.

 

If a Republican were to bring up lesbianism, the left would scream that they were trying to rally their homophobic base.  What Kerry and Edwards were trying to do was, exactly that – rally the Democrat homophobic base.

 

Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill was interviewed about why Kerry and Edwards kept bringing up Mary Cheney being a lesbian.  Her response:  She called Mary Cheney “fair game.”

 

“Fair game” is a hunting term, used to identify which animals one can shoot.  Can you imagine the outrage were a Republican to call a woman “fair game” because she is a lesbian?  No Republican would, but the Democrats did.

 

It was the first time in American history that either party officially announced that they were intentionally attacking the family members of opposing candidates.  Democrat politics have been uglier ever since.

 

Sarah Palin walked right into the new world of Democrat child abuse.  As soon as Sarah was announced as the Veep choice, the Obama Campaign, Democrats and their media Igor sidekicks floated every rumor and joke they could think of about the Palin family, from Sarah’s baby being her daughter’s right up to Letterman’s rape joke about 14 year old Willow Palin.

 

Don’t think of Sarah when you hear these jokes.  Think of the two teenage girls who have to take it from Democrat adults, who are forced to suffer public abuse they may not be mentally ready to take, for no other reason than their mother wished to serve her country.

 

In the next Presidential election Malia Obama will be 14 like Willow Palin.  Should conservatives go at her with both barrels, tease her, ridicule her and hurt her every time she turns on the television?  Hell no.  Conservatives wince at the thought, even while knowing Democrats have positioned our children as “fair game.”  It is the burden of those who set the high moral bar to live by it, even has Democrats pass underneath the bar in an effort to hurt our families.

 

Sarah Palin is a woman who came up through the ranks from local politics to the governorship, which used to be honored as paying your dues through gradual experience.  To hammer Sarah, the Democrats and the media turned starting from the bottom into something bad.  Democrats believe it’s more respectable to spend $80 million of your own money buying your first elected office as US Senator, as did NJ Democrat Jon Corzine.

 

In the 20^th century 8 men rose from governorships to the Presidency. Most had not a lick of foreign policy experience (like Reagan or Clinton). A governorship became the standard for pre-Presidential experience, and if you hadn’t been a governor and were standing for President, you had some explaining to do.  Yet for Palin, the Democrats and the media threw out the governorship standard, when the only difference between Sarah, Reagan and Clinton was that she is a woman.  Misogyny was used to tear apart Sarah.  So-called feminist groups have only been heard to applaud it.

 

So what does all this have to do with Maureen Dowd, political columnist for the erstwhile “paper of record” the New York Times?

 

When Sarah Palin announced her resignation she did so with the complaint that the media was relentless in ridiculing her and her family.  Dowd stood at the crossroads of choice: She could pen a column acknowledging some of Palin’s good works - like taking on her own party, fighting corruption and gaining unmatched popularity in her home state.  Or, Dowd could continue down the road of journalism as pro-wrestling and throw a mindless, Hulk Hogan smack-down on Palin (thus proving Palin’s point).

 

We know what a journalist would do.

 

Here is what Maureen Dowd did (I won’t reprint her whole column, just the names and adjectives she used on Sarah):

 

Caribou Barbie, nutty puppy, exquisite battiness, erratic, egoistic, narcissistic personality disorder, grandiosity, need for admiration, lack of empathy, loopy, solipsistic meltdown, strange, incoherent, breathless, prickly, thin skinned, country-music melodrama, reckless, ga-ga, crazy like a fox, crazy, casuistry, girlish burbling.

 

You don’t need any other words from Dowd’s column to understand it, because the entirety of it was this ad hominem attack. Such is the state of journalism post-liberal takeover. Reason is dead and yellow journalism soars. Dowd no longer even tries her hand at political analysis with intellect.  She has gone form Pulitzer Prize, to plagiarism to name-calling. 

 

Stay classy, New York Times. As for Dowd, maybe Vince McMahon’s WWE wrestling needs a commentator.

Comments

[Floridian]

you are so full of ca-ca - Newt Gingrich insulted Chelsea Clinton when she was a kid and in the White House, as did John McCain.......years before 2004 and your bogus article. As for the photo of Barack looking at booty - if you watch the entire video - he's not looking at booty (but Sarkozy is) and helping ladies walk down those stairs that YOU PHOTOSHOPPED AND CHANGED.

Seems the rethuglicans never do tell the truth even from a phot.

Go stick your head up Hannity's and Foxnews arses.

[Miles]

First, it diminishes your argument to utilize the same type of ad hominem attack against Maureen Dowd that you're railing against.
Then, it's misleading to accuse Kerry and the Democrats of bringing up Cheney's daughter's sexuality during the campaign and the debates when Cheney had already done so. It was Cheney who started the discussion, but it was "wrong" when Democrats tried to continue the discussion? Why is that? Why was the mention of Ms. Cheney's sexuality a "low blow" by Democrats? Was there some insulting commentary that went along with that mention, or is it the notion that mentioning the alternative lifestyle of Ms. Cheney insults her father and his party?
Finally, when someone acts strangely, it's the job of the media to point that out. When a public official rails against quitters while quitting, and pushes her pregnant unwed child to be a spokesperson for abstinence, she's opening herself and her child to public scrutiny, commentatory, and, unfortunately, ridicule.
I'm surprised you didn't bring up how the liberal media when after the Bush twins when given ample opportunity when one or the other would drink to excess and receive their just consequences. Oh, wait; the media didn't.

[tess]

You and your Republicronies make me sick. Even worse, you make this country sick.

Everyone is tired of your BS. That's why you lost the November elections and haven't stood up since. We, the people, took it back.

So on behalf of this great nation, I ask you to please shut up or pack up and leave. You're no longer wanted. The world's a changing. And it's about time you fags did too.

[L.A.]

Want some cheese with your flat whine?

[MBT]

Caribou Barbie, nutty puppy, exquisite battiness, erratic, egoistic, narcissistic personality disorder, grandiosity, need for admiration, lack of empathy, loopy, solipsistic meltdown, strange, incoherent, breathless, prickly, thin skinned, country-music melodrama, reckless, ga-ga, crazy like a fox, crazy, casuistry, girlish burbling.

Yeah- that sounds like Palin. Mo Dowd hits it right on the head...as usual. (Did you catch her column today? Great stuff!)

But I do love the way you say "Democrat" Party all the time. Is that suppposed to be insulting or something? Or can you just not spell?

[Bob]

I was going to leave a comment about you being a right wing prop but several others beat me to it. Good luck with that.

[bigdon1]

You and your article bashing Maurine Dowd are about as relevant as is the party you support. Whine, bitch, and cry when things are not going your way is your way of reacting to the unpleasant decline in your fortunes. Sarah Palin is an unprepared, undereducated, egotistic symbol of Republicanism. She makes about as much sense as your Senator Sessions did today when he flat-out accused Sonia Sotomayer of being racist. This from a guy who, years ago, could not be nominated for a circuit court by his own party because of racist views and statements. You all suck.

[Jimmy Gold]

I have to agree with the other commentators. Though I do wonder how you acquired such a hostile audience. I would think on that.

[Link Wray]

Please stop blaming the "Democrat Party" for your own party's implosion due to incompetence. Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Rush Limpballs, Ann Coulter, etc. established this climate, and now you can't handle it when your party icons are on the receiving end. Quit crying about it and blaming the straw man you label as "the media" ...and this has only been a few months in...good luck weathering the backlash that you idiots on the right created by electing incompetent fools such as Bush, etc.

[CKP]

As a woman in the age range of Dowd and Palin,and the mother of three, I'd have to agree with Justified Right. Dowd has not brought anything of substance to this issue, if interested, see Peggy Noonan's articles which actually deal with the matter at hand. As for the children of politicians, we now see that the Democrats (this automatically includes the main stream media)have no sense of shame, this vulgar attack on the Palin family is without precedence and totally insures that the average, normal citizen will avoid public service. We will be stuck with the terminally incumbent, the corrupt, the weirdly obsessed. Do you really respect those people on Capitol Hill? The Dems, the party that never met a baby it couldn't shred, has become the party of virtual child abuse.

And to the above comments, why don't you losers get back to your Down's Syndrome joke books?

[Angelo De Seno]

Please see Tommy's hypocrit sick fuck "article" The President ogling women's asses.

[Governor of Africa]

Palin pimped her own daughter out on that TV tour because she had a PR problem with the girl being pregnant, coming as she does from such a "family values" mommy and daddy. We'll never know how they got Bristol to turn 180 on abstinence, what they promised or threatened.

Then she and the right complain the girl was targeted.

Gays are the only ones who sin these days, according to to these Bible-thumping turds.

The rage, desperation, desolation, confusioin on the part of social conservatives is one of the funniest trailer trash shows since Roseanne. And it keeps getting funnier. You can't BUY this stuff!

Oh, and by the way, the 8 males who became President with no foreign policy experience did know that Africa was not a country.

[Mayor of Iceland]

Palin said today, we are, and I quote, "sitting on a mountain of gas". I tell you people, this show is a 9.9 on the Laff meter!

[David Claiborne]

That was one of the greatest pieces of political hack writing I've ever read, even by Fox "News" standards... Thanks for an amusing read!

[W. Rivera]

Well done, Mr. De Seno. I am not surprised you are getting pot shots those who don't think the way you do. This is confirmation of your getting it right.

[Palin/Achmajinedad in 2012]

We both are full of grievance and resentment, we fingerpoint at internal enemies -- those who are unAmerican or unIranaian, we keeo the fear of external enemies well stoked, we hate the "elites", we are both religious fundamentalists, we both play the victim to butt-kiss to the losers in our societies, we appeal to bogus populism, though my dad, was actually a blacksmith whereas Sarah's working class street creds are fake -- her parents were professionals. However, as someone with blacksmith training, I promise, if we're elected, to always keep Sarah well shod! I don't know if I can fix Naughty Monkey pumps but I'll give it a whirl!

Send cash now!

Mahmoud

[Lzfenimore]

so, i guess it was fine that Palin called Obama a terrorist and encouraged (by her inability or unwillingness to control her supporters) shouts of "kill him" -
i guess that's okay.
this is typical of republicans.
never taking responsibility for their own actions, be it frollicking in the bathroom, torred emials to pages, trips to south america to see a lover...i can go on.
the terrorist and 'kill him' comments were over the top, but not one of you republicans came out against that.
hypocrites!
this is the reason the republican party is going down.
people are losing respect for you all.

[Scrooge McDuck]

I'm a Republican and I have to say the party is an embarrassing sewer. Do we not fuck enough or something? Why are we so horny and perverted? Poor William F. Buckley. When he looks upon the likes of unprincipled apologists for the most repugant behavior --like T. De Seno -- he's probably glad he died. No closet queen Senator was was tapping their toes in the mens crapper when he was around.

[Bill Monroe]

From the word "alternative" I had hoped this wasn't rehashed Foxnews talking points. I was wrong.

[Goffredo]

http://thefederalistpapers2007.blogspot.com

If anyone wants to read original thought, not cut and paste from Fox News.

Jersey Girl, like I said a while back: go back on the hunt for Obama's birth certificate...you were taken more seriously then.