Inside Politics Weekend: Palin pile-on

Bashing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is sport for many journalists, particularly those who are perhaps bored by the summer doldrums.

“She is by far the best-looking woman ever to rise to such heights in national politics, the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs,” writes Todd Purdum in the August issue of Vanity Fair.

He coins the term “polar disorder,” concluding that Mrs. Palin is surrounded by “clouds of tabloid conflict and controversy” and “has disappointed many of those who once had the highest hopes for her.”

Yeah, yeah. Enough already. Mrs. Palin is not running for anything, she’s been off the campaign trail for eight months and has been home managing the affairs of the 49th state.

“Purdum pulls down the black ski mask and whips out the sawed-off shotgun for this utterly predictable hit piece on Sarah Palin,” says Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics.

“To be clear, there are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and the elitist mainstream media’s contract-killer journalism against political figures with whom they disagree — which, more often than not means conservatives. Purdum’s piece is an absolute classic of the genre, complete with a slew of juicy, negative quotes from insiders and a smoothly crafted narrative that demeans and diminishes Palin’s accomplishments and portrays her as an ignorant white trash whack job,” he adds.

Mr. Bevan is perplexed why Mr. Purdum and his magazine continue to display an “insatiable desire to destroy Sarah Palin.” But things don’t always work out as planned, he cautions. All this bashing could backfire.

“There’s the very real possibility that this kind of piling on Palin by the elitist MSM will actually improve her image outside the New York-D.C. corridor and make people in flyover country like her more, not less,” Mr. Bevan observes.

Hmm. Yes, indeed. Perhaps Vanity Fair should rethink its strategy. Put Mrs. Palin on the cover. Hire Annie Liebovitz to shoot the portrait. And add a snappy headline, like “Sarah Palin: Survivor.”

The big O

And speaking of journalists behaving badly, even academics have had it with the press and the chaos of 24/7 news media. Mitchell Stephens, a professor of journalism and mass communications at New York University who is also a journalism fellow at Harvard, is one of the very weary.

“This is a call for a major reworking of journalism — of its purposes and its structures. Quality journalism should be defined not by the ability to bear witness, to pursue facts, to array the five W’s, but by the ability to write stories that are interpretive, informed, intelligent, interesting and insightful. This list of goals should also include a word beginning with another letter: original,” Mr. Stephens says.

“Achieving the five ‘I’s and an ‘O’ will require more of journalists — more education in a subject, probably, more study, more thoughtfulness, fresher thinking. It will require the ambition not to recount, not only to uncover, but to explain, illuminate and enlighten.”

Days of yore

A dubious anniversary, perhaps. But maybe not. Besides, it’s a slow history day today.

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