Sarah Palin resigns

[F1fth]

Read it. It's summary of the nature of American journalism was pretty good (I say "no shit" to the statement that our journalism model is broken ). After that, the article accounts for some of the ways Palin was treated unfairly by some of the media (such as the pregnancy of her daughter) and in some cases she was.

But in the end, it doesn't make the notion that she was unfit for vice-presidency any less valid. The fact that she would go into a television interview with Couric woefully unprepared (which even the author admitted) speaks something of her politics. Similarly, she tried to respond to Gilbert without knowing what he meant when he said "Bush Doctrine," trying to BS her way through with generalities instead of saying "Which policy are you implying when you say 'Bush Doctrine.' " Also, the article writes that "Palin cleaned Joe Biden's clock in their only debate, and nobody in the media could even see it, let alone report it." Fiirst, that's an entirely subjective statement first, and second, nobody ever reports on the VP debate.

So in essence, I can't really agree with the overarching point the article was trying to make.

The fact of the matter is people sling shit during elections. Everyone gets their share, some more than others unfortunately, but everyone does get it. But despite that, I still REALLY, REALLY, REALLY don't want her to come anywhere near the executive office.

[mpjh]

personally I thought Ms palin's explanation for her resignation made perfect sense.

She doesn't want to milk a lame duck. She's not going down that road.

how much clearer could you want it?

Yeah, it is tough to milk a fowl.

[thegreekdog]

Unfortunately, the media has nearly absolute control over how a candidate for public office is perceived. That probably was always how it was, even back in the 19th century. Based on my limited college courses on American media in history (parts of two classes), it appeared, to me at least, that newspapers throughout US history were very biased towards one or another candidate. However, there were generally two competing newspapers in each major city, so one could read the bad things about Candidate X in Paper 1 and the good things about Candidate X in Paper 2.

We sort of have the same thing now, but it's more like most ot felevision and print media on one side and radio media on the other side. In any event, during the latest presidential election, the New York Times endorsed then-candidate Obama. They also included, on their website, a list of the presidential candidates they've endorsed throughout their history. I thought it was rather telling that since 1960, the New York Times has only endorsed Democrats. Anyway, I'm disgressing here... the point I'm trying to make is that I don't think media has changed all that much. I do think that a candidate's personality tends to determine whether he or she is elected, rather than his or her views on certain issues.

[jonesthecurl]

I forget the exact statistics, and don't know if it applies to US politics too, but in the UK the taller party leader wins a statistically significant part of the time.