Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Ziegler reflects on the year since "Media Malpractice" release

*
A year ago John Ziegler released his documentary film “Media Malpractice… How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted.” Tuesday in an opinion piece for The Daily Caller, he reflects on the events which have transpired over the past year:
While I am not nearly delusional enough to think that the film or my efforts are primarily responsible, there is no doubt that there has been a substantial (and for conservatives, rare) victory in this realm. The evidence, both scientific and anecdotal, is now overwhelming that the majority of Americans rightly now believe that the media coverage of Obama has been far too favorable and downright unfair to Palin.

As for Palin, while she was bizarrely attacked from all sides for having the gall to do an interview for the film which boldly and accurately corrected the record about a Presidential election, it is my belief that this story ended up helping her by far more than simply providing the sometimes vastly overrated value of telling the truth. Weirdly, since it was her first interview after returning to “normal life” in Alaska, the coverage of that episode set the precedent that any time Palin speaks it is considered a media event. This phenomenon became so ingrained in the media matrix that still today even sometimes rather innocuous postings on her Facebook page often make major news.

In a bit of poetic justice, the wrongly crucified Palin has benefited greatly from the right’s understandable and nearly primal instinct to intuitively gravitate to whichever conservative the news media attacks the most. She has become a master at riding this wind at her back to defy all predictions of her inevitable political irrelevance to become by far the most powerful and exciting force in Republican politics.

While my view of her politically is far more nuanced than perceived by the public and the media, it is by the most satisfying result of the last year that Palin has not only survived but personally prospered through all of this (for the record, she “endorsed” the film and I am still occasionally in touch with her, but, for many reasons, I have no official role in anything she does).
While Sarah Palin’s life and career appear to be much better off than they were a year ago, Ziegler laments that the same can not be said for him. Read his full op-ed at The DC.

- JP

No comments:

Post a Comment