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Media Coverage Flaunts Distressing Bias

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By JOHN HERBERT

From Where I Sit

Published: November 2, 2008

In just a few days, Gov. Sarah Palin will learn if she'll be headed to Washington, whether she'll ultimately start a new career as an ESPN sportscaster or, as some "gentlemen's" media would prefer, pose as a senior centerfold.

In the campaign wind-down, the media has obviously been hard-pressed to dig up a new "Caribou Barbie" angle. The "mother-of-five sacrificing her family for a career" didn't stick; I suspect another mother-of-five politician, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, cautioned her liberal media allies to lay off that partisan canard.

It hasn't been sufficient that the wheels have been falling off the American economy, that Robin Hood (aka Sen. Barack Hussein Obama) plans to "redistribute" the nation's wealth, or that "Joe the Plumber" is America's latest sex symbol.

Another legitimate issue Palin spotlighted recently, the education of "special needs" families, wasn't a juicy enough topic for them, either.

Congress's all-time low confidence rating was more startling; the media passed over that news item, however." Joe Six-Pack" or any other ordinary American could do a better job in Washington than any of our sitting 535 congressmen and senators. But, that's not "news."

The media zoomed in, instead, on Palin's $150,000 campaign wardrobe. How low can you go, scandalizing the designer wardrobe on loan to a vice-presidential candidate? Anything to tarnish the image of an all-American hockey mom.

To be sure, there was an occasional chuckle (but little more) after candidate Joe Biden's multiple faux pas. Palin's vice-presidential competitor asserted we had TV in our homes and FDR in the White House in 1929, (the media would have" field dressed" Palin alive if she'd made that much of a boo-boo on American history), that foreign terrorists are anxious to "test" the next president and that it's "patriotic" to pay higher taxes.

What did the media expect? The Republicans have shoved the governor onto the national stage for two months; the party's choice, not hers. Should she rather have shown up as the stereotypical Alaskan girl in fur parka, plaid shirt, sealskin britches and mukluks, with a loaded shotgun? Or maybe like a dowdy Nina Krushchev or Eleanor Roosevelt?

Where's the consistency? Why hasn't the media made as big a deal out of Obama's $1,500 threads or McCain's $500 hand-sewn loafers? Maybe it's a rhetorical question: Is the media biased or instinctively sexist?

Maybe the media is just hurt because the Republicans didn't nominate an elitist Washington insider they had heard of, let alone, approved of.

The expensive garb worn by campaigners Jackie Kennedy, Nancy Reagan, Elizabeth Dole and Geraldine Ferraro certainly didn't excite media as much in their day. Nobody even bothered to question what Hillary Clinton's Maoist pantsuits cost, either.

Palin is a real person, with regular common sense; just your average Middle American. She is Joe Six-Pack. Palin connects with many ordinary voters, just not all the disaffected Hillary supporters McCain had hoped.

Another female Joe Six-Pack, a 45-year-old mother of five, drove for two hours just to hear Palin speak at an enthusiastic campaign rally in Dover, N.H, last month. "We are living the same life," the woman said. "I like guns. I like religion. And I love Sarah."

Does Palin have a future role in the Republican Party? She has star power, to be sure. Raved one Swedish newspaper, "She's the new Marilyn Monroe."

I'd put more faith in Palin's ability to revive Alaskan real estate markets. All the wild cheers for America's favorite hockey mom has at least raised the profile of our 49th state down in Wal-Mart's Arkansas headquarters.

A regular columnist for Hernando Today, John Herbert lives in Spring Hill.

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