Examiner Editorial: Media give Palin the third degree
Examiner Editorial 10/6/08
SAN FRANCISCO – Political elites scorn Middle America’s Sarah Palin. The mainstream media have invested astronomical resources digging into every crevice of Alaska for dirt and parsing every word that comes from her lips while seeking to embarrass her. But they have carried out precious little vigilance against her Democratic counterpart Joe Biden, despite 36 years of easily available records.Despite the obstacles, Palin emerged from Thursday night’s debate with 84 percent of respondents in one poll saying she had exceeded expectations (easy enough, perhaps, since she could hardly have entered the debate with lower expectations, thanks to the media critics). And she was judged “more likable” than Biden by a 54-36 margin in the same survey.
After the debate, Michael Goldfarb of The Weekly Standard detailed 14 clear factual errors by Biden. Palin had some misstatements, too, but don’t expect the media mavens to spend a dime holding Biden accountable for his errors. Yet, as the Power Line blog noted before the debate, the same media work overtime to trip up Palin on the mildest of technicalities, such as when she told CBS’s Katie Couric that the Alaska governor must worry about the many times Russian planes cross into American (Alaskan) airspace. The Associated Press called foul because no Russian planes had done so during her governorship before acknowledging that she had been briefed when Russian planes entered an area just outside official airspace called the “outer air defense identification zone.” As an error, that’s something like you saying tom-ay-to and me saying tom-ah-to.
Meanwhile, long before Barack Obama chose Biden as his running mate, The Examiner detailed how Biden scored zero on class-action plaintiffs lawsuit-abuse votes monitored by the National Association of Manufacturers. More recently, the indefatigable editorial page of The Wall Street Journal laid out questions Biden should answer regarding his slavish devotion to class-action plaintiffs’ attorneys.
The Journal noted the curious fact that the Delaware senator’s top campaign contributor is a law firm from Madison County, Ill., among the worst “tort hells” in the country. The same firm has been busily transferring its lawsuits to Delaware ever since new Illinois judges started cracking down on lawsuit abuse.
A neutral observer might conclude that Biden is too obeisant to one of the special interests Palin criticized in the debate. But will anybody in the media ever ask him about these issues?
1 Comments
Reader Comments:
POSTED Oct 6, 2008
Rolo: "Thank you Examiner and your ilk for giving us eight years of the worst Presidency this country has ever endeared. Did you learn from it? No, you continue to shill for the most unqualified Vice-Presidential candidate ever. Do this great country a favor and stay home this election day. We can't afford another four years of mismanagement and incompetence courtesy of your insane ideology."