Andrea Mitchell: You Wouldn't Say Caroline Kennedy was in "Harriet Miers Country" if You Knew Her, Pat

Andrea Mitchell is all-in on every liberal-defending hand, isn't she?

I won't bother to look for her similar defenses of Sarah Palin because I know damn well she didn't offer them.

Interestingly, when Pat Buchanan (her interlocutor here) suggests that Caroline Kennedy sit down with Katie Couric for an hour (a lot less time than Palin gave her) so that the public could judge her qualifications and knowledge, Andrea Mitchell actually balks at the idea, citing the farcical claim that such an interview might offend Gov. David Patterson.

So if I understand this correctly:

It was the worst thing in the world that Palin didn't talk to the national press for a week or so, but Andrea Mitchell is against Caroline Kennedy doing so herself.

But she's qualified. She can't prove it in an interview due to circumstances, but you can take Andrea Mitchell's word for it.

Andrea Mitchell is increasingly resorting to the appeal to authority -- the authority being herself -- to dispense with charges made against liberals. Time and time again, she assures us that Democrat X or Liberal Y could not possibly be involved in Sketchy Behavior Z.

And you have Andrea Mitchell's word for that. She knows these people. Like Mike Barnicle, she has "instincts."

Compare and Contrast: Andrea Mitchell compared Palin's treatment of the press... to the way North Korea treats the press.

Here she appears on archliberal Rachel Maddow's show, regarding Palin's meetings with various high-level foreign dignitaries before the election.

Mitchell says that it's standard practice to allow at least one member of the press in the room for the meeting... unless it's North Korea, Syria, or the Sudan booting the press out.

Maddow: You have covered these sorts of high-level meetings with foreign dignitaries and getting at least one editorial staff member in the room to represent the entire network is standard practice right?

Mitchell: It is standard practice. It's standard for the White House, for the State Department. And often we are in foreign countries where it is not standard practice, like in Pyongyang or in Damascus, and usually the State Department insists upon it and then we are at risk for whatever happens. In Sudan... we were pushed and shoved and thrown out by the Sudanese, but that's not by American officials and certainly not by Republican campaign officials running a national election here in the United States."

Maybe Palin just thought that allowing the press in the room would "offend" Gov. David Patterson.

Thanks to Slublog.

More: This has really put a bee in Slublog's bonnet. Here's Mitchell on what kind of voters would vote for Palin.

Note she fails to offer the "you wouldn't say that if you knew her, as I do, intimately" defense.

Brokaw: ...There are other Republicans who are saying, listen we'll be able to pull those Hillary Clinton voters who are not happy the way Obama treated her across the line. What are the chances of that Andrea?

Mitchel: Well, they think now that they have a story. They have a story of a working mom, she is a colorful character, an Annie Oakley... you know, Annie get your gun. They love her story, but when she tried to talk about Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, in western Pennsylvania, yesterday at a rally with conservative Republican voters, Hillary Clinton was booed. So, she can use the Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro analogy if she wants to in interviews, she cannot use that at Republican rallies.

She is not appealing to the same women who were really voting or supporting Hillary Clinton on ideological issues but they think that they can peel off some of these working class women, not college educated, who, the blue collar women who were voting for Hillary Clinton and may be more conservative on social causes.

That's not necessarily a slam, unless you put yourself in the mind of Andrea Mitchell. There's nothing wrong with being blue collar or not college educated -- but Andrea Mitchell sure thinks so.

They never discuss the non-college educated or blue collar vote as a demographic we can learn from, but rather a phenomenon that must be studied, like the grooming habits of lab rats. The eternal question is always why such people -- or sub-people, perhaps -- vote differently than their betters do.

In other words, to put this into the language of the left, college-educated, white-collar values are "normative," the standard to which all else is compared, and all else is considered to be deviant from the normative values, requiring theorizing of a derogatory nature to explain the deviation from the norm.

Bitterly clinging, and all that. A belief in religion and positive attitude towards hunting and self-defense is not considered a positive value, but rather elements of a retarded culture in need of diagnosis.

(And I use the word "retarded" there for multiple meaning -- not just the comical overstatement meaning. They really do consider other values to be "retarded" in the medical sense of developmentally impaired and deviant.)

Giving Slublog Another Dig: In an email he writes:

She just strikes me as one of those people who thinks she's smart because she managed to make it onto television.

Indeed. I think this is 90% of the press corps' problem -- they're overly taken with themselves for, um, having a job.

Mechanics don't assume they're all-purpose experts without portfolio on every subject in the universe simply because they're fixing cars.

Reporters shouldn't assume that merely because they are capable of asking questions, writing down the answers, and cranking out pedestrian copy they've somehow become Einstein.

Mitchell's Testimony: "Mrs. Greenspan" writes about how she knows Princess Caroline is of Senatorial timber:

"The highlight of the meeting was when [Princess Caroline] pulled a silver spoon from under her fanny and allowed me to smell the wonderful fragrance of jasmine....and scotch. Such a delightfully patrician odor from America's royal family......"

posted by Ace at 03:59 PM

| Access Comments