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Media Still Doesn't Get It

Roger Simon (no, the other one) attempts sarcasm in an attempt to explain away the media's sins.

The results are not pretty.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — On behalf of the media, I would like to say we are sorry.

On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry.

We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked.

We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice?

Bad questions. Bad media. Bad.

Let's get the obvious out of the way first - yes, Roger. Those are legitimate questions to ask. Conservatives asked many of the same questions, and were not all that disturbed that you asked them. However, we were just a wee bit curious as to why you did not and have not asked similar questions about the guy at the top of the other ticket with equal vigor.

Let's face it - you guys have spent more time vetting Bristol Palin than Barack Obama.

It is not our job to ask questions. Or it shouldn’t be. To hear from the pols at the Republican National Convention this week, our job is to endorse and support the decisions of the pols.

Oh, this is just too precious. You've spent the last few days trolling leftist websites and using the deranged, lunatic ravings you found there as legitimate news tips.

When you weren't doing that, your own website wasted bandwidth with stories in which you found scholars who donated to Obama who were *SHOCKER* willing to trash Palin. You want to talk about doing your job? I found in five minutes what your two idiot reporters and your multiple layers of editors and fact-checkers couldn't be bothered to discover. So unless you elite media start actually doing some...I don't know...actual fricking fact finding, don't snark at us about doing your damned job, you sniveling little jackweasel.

Ahem.

Sorry about that.

Let us continue.

First, we should have stuck to the warm, human interest stuff like how she likes mooseburgers and hit an important free throw at her high school basketball tournament even though she had a stress fracture.

Second, we should have stuck to the press release stuff like how she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere (after she supported it).

Third, we should never have strayed into the other stuff. Like when The Washington Post recently wrote: “Palin is under investigation by a bipartisan state legislative body. … Palin had promised to cooperate with the legislative inquiry, but this week she hired a lawyer to fight to move the case to the jurisdiction of the state personnel board, which Palin appoints.”

Why go there? What trees does that plant?

Again, you bring up some points that are perfectly legitimate avenues of investigation. The problem with your increasingly defensive analysis is that you and your ink-stained compatriots didn't stop there. The New York Times 'flooded the zone' with three front-page stories about Palin's pregnant teenage daughter. So far the Obama-Rezko and Obama-Ayers zones have gone shockingly un-flooded.

Some of your broadcast compatriots actually raised the claims of the Trig trutherists as a segue into talking about Bristol Palin. You and your media pals spent loads of time asking whether Palin could really do the job of vice president because after all, she's one of those females who's presumably always seconds away from needing a fainting couch. You've insinuated she's a bad mother who is neglecting her kids by running for vice president.

And then there were the many things that were wrong, and yet somehow ended up online, in newspapers on on the air:

You said Palin was a member of the AIP. Except, um. She wasn't.

You allowed Democrats to assert in your newspapers and airwaves that Palin was a Nazi sympathizer because she supported Buchanan. You didn't challenge those assertions or bother to look up the facts.

You've "raised questions" about the vetting process time and time again, despite evidence that contradicts your assertions.

And then there was "Palin hates pregnant teenagers!!!" Except she doesn't.

We don't mind you "going there." We'd just appreciate a little basic honesty and integrity. Is that too much to ask?

Fourth, we should stop making with all the questions already. She gave a really good speech. And why go beyond that? As we all know, speeches cannot be written by others and rehearsed for days. They are true windows to the soul.

Unless they are delivered by Barack Obama, that is. In which case, as Palin said Wednesday, speeches are just a “cloud of rhetoric.”

Apparently it is.

You. have. got. to. be. kidding. me.

This, from the same media (and as it turns out, the same writer) that swoons every time the Chosen One speaks, and who have allowed his purty words to hypnotize them into a state of worship where unpleasant questions about how he purchased his house or how close he and a terrorist are go unasked.

Fifth, we should stop reporting on the families of the candidates. Unless the candidates want us to.

Sarah Palin wanted the media to report on her teenage son, Track, who enlisted in the Army on Sept. 11, 2007, and soon will deploy to Iraq.

Sarah Palin did not want the media to report on her teenage daughter, Bristol, who is pregnant and unmarried.

Sarah Palin thinks that one is good for her campaign and one is not, and that the media should report only on what is good for her campaign. That is our job, and that is our duty. If that is not actually in the Constitution, it should be. (And someday may be.)

Now we're really in deep. Let's not forget the media refused to report on anything Chelsea did, even when she was on the campaign trail with her mother. They've all but embargoed the fact that George Obama lives in abject poverty while his well-off half-brother is piously telling America that we should be our brother's keeper. So, tell me...why did Michelle get that huge raise and what has she said about this country on the campaign trail? How much protection did Elizabeth Edwards really need, anyway?

None of that goes mentioned. Why is that? Could it be because you think some stories about Democrat families are good for their campaigns and some are not? You reported the mythology of the strong Edwards marriage and showed happy pictures of the Clintons embracing after he admitted to foolin' around with an intern. In fact, the only times you seem to think some family stories are off-limits is when those stories might harm certain campaigns. Why is it that only Democrats are allowed to pick and choose which of their family members get smeared by the media?

The official theme of the convention’s third day was “prosperity,” but the unofficial theme was “the media are really, really awful.”

In the words of Livia Soprano, "Oh, poor you." The whining, snarky sanctimony of this entire column makes me want to give you the Johnny Fontaine treatment with extreme prejudice.

You want to know why conservatives roared last night when the media was bashed and why many of us have spent the week in a simmering rage? It's because you're hypocrites. You claim to be objective, yet have spent the past few days absolutely smearing a woman and her family because she had the audacity to be a conservative Republican. You have expended more time and effort discussing her daughter's sex life than you've spent looking into the business and political associates of the Democrat candidate for president of the United States. When you did explore Palin's actual record, you have often done so with little regard for the truth. You and your colleagues have relinquished your right to be taken seriously as honest brokers of information.

And what this column shows me is that you know it. Behind the sarcasm lies an attempt to justify your behavior of the past week. Your little snark-fest is step one in the rehabilitation campaign. I don't think it's going to work all that well.

I'll end with the following quote from the Corner that pretty much sums up what conservatives have been thinking this week:

I have always tended to think that conservative complaints about the media are a little exaggerated. There are occasionally obvious instances of bias and clear examples of a double standard, but most reporters don’t want to fall into those and some conservatives are surely too sensitive to them. But this week has changed my view. I have never seen, and I admit that I could never have imagined, such shameful, out-of-control, frenzied, angry, condescending, and pathetic journalistic malpractice. The ignorant assault on Palin’s accomplishments and experience, the breathless careless airing of deranged rumors about her private life, the staggeringly indecent mistreatment of her teenage daughter in a difficult time, the ill-informed piling on about the vetting process, the self-intensifying circle of tisking nodding heads utterly detached from a straightforward political event, have been amazing and eye-opening.

I hope your little hatin' on Palin temper tantrum was worth the credibility you sacrificed in having it.