Media proves it doesn't understand Sarah Palin

An article by Jon Friedman on the Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch is a parody of itself. Titled "Why Sarah Palin still befuddles the media," it demonstrates that Friedman and the "expert" he relies upon for commentary about Palin don't "get" the governor.

That "expert" is Melinda Henneberger, and Friedman's piece consists mostly of her comments. The editor-in-chief of Time Warner's PoliticsDaily.com, Henneberger logged 10 years at the New York Times, Newsweek and other leftist drive-by media outlets. That alone speaks volumes about how Henneberger doesn't have a surplus of clues about Sarah Palin or her supporters.

One particularly revealing Henneberger quote in Friedman's article:

"She started beating up on the press before they started beating up on her."

Anyone who has enough active memory cells to recall the events surrounding the 2008 Republican Convention will recognize this assertion by Henneberger as an outright lie.

Even before Gov. Palin delivered her acceptance speech, a group of Republican women had to hold a special briefing just to answer a flurry of attacks on the governor by the the drive-by media, Democrats and nutroots bloggers. The attacks began the moment news broke that John McCain would announce that Gov. Palin would be his running mate. The media assault took aim at Palin's family, especially her daughter Bistol, and the governor's ability to do her job while raising five children.

It was during her acceptance speech that Palin took her poke at the media, and by then she and her family had already been savaged by the drive-bys. Some major media outlets, CNN in particular, simply repeated, without question or investigation, unfounded allegations which had been posted on leftist websites.

Indeed, Rich Lowry on National Review Online wrote on September 2:

"A popular liberal talk-radio host calls her a 'bimbo,' a Washington Post columnist compares her to Caligula’s horse, and the left-wing blogosphere goes on a demented jag about how her fifth son, Trig, is really the son of her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol. The lunacy forced the Palins to issue a statement that Bristol is pregnant, setting off a feeding frenzy from the same press that went out of its way to protect the privacy of John Edwards."

This was the day before the acceptance speech, and the media assault on Sarah Palin was already ramped up.

So enough of drive-bys like Henneberger trying to justify her colleagues' attacks on the governor by whining, "She started it." She most certainly did not. This is just one illustration of why nothing the media says about Sarah Palin can be accepted at face value. Even in an article claiming to explain why the media doesn't understand Palin, the drive-bys have to resort to prevarication and distortion. 

- JP