Sarah Palin--The Package Looks Better But The Poison Will Make You Just As Sick

Remember Monk?

I usually try to avoid right wing propaganda. But for some reason I forced myself to listen to the St. Paul HateFest last night. If you thought Giuliani was supposed to be the creature from the black lagoon dug up to infect everyone with his poisonous venom... well that was just an appetizer for what close McCain family friend Tucker Eskew had cooked up for his little Heatherish protege from Wasilla.


I had noticed that all day there was this buildup that the monster was about to turn on Dr. Frankenstein. I mean if ever in my lifetime a worthless hack was built up into something created out of pure hype it was what the media did for McCain. And yesterday he repaid their kindness by loosening the hounds of right wing hell on them. Time Magazine's Joe Klein reacted like a lover cruelly spurned. He's not happy that Rove's man in the campaign, Steve Schmidt, has decided to use his profession as a punching bag and a symbol of what's wrong with America (other than 8 years of disastrous Republican misrule, more often than not abetted by the media).

The story of the day out here in Minneapolis is the McCain campaign's war against the press. This has been building for some time. Those of us who have criticized the candidate--and especially those of us who enjoyed good relations with McCain in the past--have been subject to off-the-record browbeating and attempted bullying all year. But things have gotten much worse in recent days: there was McCain's rude, bizarre interview with Time Magazine last week. Yesterday, McCain refused to an interview with Larry King, for God's sake, because Campbell Brown had been caught in the commission of journalism on CNN the night before, asking McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds what decisions Sarah Palin had made as commander-in-chief of the Alaska national guard. (There was an answer that the unprepared Bounds didn't have: she had deployed them to fight fires.)

So what's going on here? Two things. McCain is just plain angry at us. By the evidence presented in the utterly revealing Time interview, he's ballistic. This is a politician who needs to see himself as the man on the white horse, boldly traversing a muddy field...any intimations that he's gotten muddied in the process, or has decided to throw mud, are intolerable.

The second thing is more insidious: Steve Schmidt has decided, for tactical reasons, to slime the press. He wants the public to believe that there is an unfair--sexist (you gotta love it)--personal assault going on against Palin and her family. This is a smokescreen, intended to divert attention from the very real and responsible vetting that is taking place in the media--about the substance of Palin's record as mayor and governor. Sure, there are a few outliers--and the tabloid press--who have fixed on baby stories. That was inevitable....the flip side of the personal stories that the McCain team thought would work to their advantage--Palin's moose-hunting and wolf-shooting, and her admirable decision to have a Down Syndrome baby. And yes, when we all fix on the same story, whether it's a hurricane or a little-known politician, a zoo ensues. But the media coverage of the Palin story has been well within the bounds of responsibility. Schmidt is trying to make it seem otherwise, a desperate tactic.

There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God." The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.

The Republican convention, which was overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly white (93%), was a horrible scene of self-righteous anger, greed and self-entitlement. It was a dark place filled with ignorance, fear, empty bravado and hatred, That came alive only when red meat dripping with blood was tossed their way. They snoozed through speeches about helping people and went apeshit when something was mentioned about cutting their taxes. When Huckabee said something about the disgrace of racism, you could have heard a pin drop-- or maybe people waiting for a punchline. But he saved himself by turning on the internal hate machine and going after Obama, having made sure in advance everyone knew he wasn't attacking him for his race. But why not? This was a crowd that accepted at face value Mitt Romney-- a man who has pocketed at least $400 million as a predatory vulture capitalist and serial outsourcer-- denouncing "eastern elites." This was the worst of what America has to offer-- and they're damn proud of it. And they were just waitin' for their gal Sarah, or at least for whatever the speechwriters had put in her mouth. No one in the hall was disappointed.

And America? We'll soon see if the country embraces a message of nastiness, hatred, extremism... and abject failure... or one of hope and unity. Last night Sarah Palin and her writers made Mean Jean Schmidt seem almost moderate. Her speech was devoid of anything put political attack, almost entirely baseless attack. But whoever wrote it for knew exactly who the audience was. They ate it up-- especially the meanest and most hate-filled parts.

My friend Adam made this video. There isn't anything Sarah Palin said tonight to make anyone feel more comfortable about its message: