http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/72-72/2504-palin-not-tough-enough-to-be-presidentSarah Palin can't expect anyone to take her seriously as a presidential candidate -- not after what she said this week.
In recent days, the former Alaska governor and Tea Party fave has been on a tear against Journolist, a list-serv for nearly 500 journalists, policy wonks and academics, most of whom are self-identified liberals working for self-identified liberal outfits. The participants on this off-the-record e-mail chain promoted their work, debated politics and policy (occasionally quite sharply), and traded and tested ideas for articles and columns. Last month, The Daily Caller, a conservative website, began running articles based on Journolist archives it somehow obtained. Some conservatives immediately denounced Journolist as a secret cabal that established a party line for the dreaded liberal media.
Palin was one such right-winger. On Tuesday, citing a Daily Caller article that focused on how several liberal opinion journalists in 2008 were pondering how to respond to stories about Jeremiah Wright (Barack Obama's controversial reverend), she contended that Journolist was proof that the mainstream media -- or, as she calls it, the "lamestream" media -- is biased, characterizing Journolist members as " 'prominent' mainstream media personalities." That was a misrepresentation: writers and bloggers for The Nation, The American Prospect, Mother Jones (my home base), the Center for American Progress, the New American Foundation, and other liberal media organizations and think tanks are not usually considered mainstream media leaders. (The founder of Journolist, Ezra Klein, did move from The American Prospect to The Washington Post, but he was knowingly hired by the newspaper as a liberal blogger.) It's hardly surprising that out-of-the-closet progressives would share progressive ideas with colleagues. Journolist was no conspiracy; it was a community -- a virtual bar, without booze. I explain all that here. (Membership declared: I was a mostly nonactive member of Journolist; I haven't used it in years.)
Palin's blast revealed deep ignorance. Journolistas were generally not prominent MSMers. And the few prominent journalists who were part of Journolist were mostly already known as commentators of a liberal bent. Yet Palin was pretending that Journolist was evidence of an MSM cabal. Worst, she tweeted, "forget freedom of speech and freedom of the press if these yahoos ever get their way in America."
During an interview with The Daily Caller, she went further, calling Journolisters "sick puppies" -- as she reacted to another article on the now-defunct list-serv revealing e-mail messages sent the day John McCain surprisingly picked Palin to be his running mate. In these e-mails, several participants -- including two Mother Jones reporters who worked for me at the time -- pondered why McCain had picked Palin and what would be an effective critique of her. That liberal reporters would privately discuss how best to criticize a conservative politician whose policies they oppose does not strike me as shocking. In fact, I am certain that during the 2008 campaign journalists at conservative media outfits talked among themselves about how best to puncture Obama.
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