Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:10:15 +0000 – By Andrea TantarosRepublican Political Commentator/FoxNews.com Contributor
Finally, Sarah Palin speaks out against the mainstream media who slandered and slaughtered her this past election cycle in an interview with documentary filmmaker John Ziegler. Though it is absolutely unfathomable that she still must defend her reputation and her family, I’m thrilled she is on offense.
I’m even more impressed that she didn’t waste time fighting with the media during the campaign and waited until now so as not to distract from the mission at hand. That is a recurring and flawed Republican campaign strategy: wage war on the press instead of your opponent. It’s a tactic that never works and it reaffirms my past points that Palin was — and is — much savvier than the handlers that advised her and the press that covered her.
Even at her toughest moments, when the media was questioning the paternity of her son handicapped son Trig, she demonstrated with keen political shrewdness that when you acknowledge your most tactless detractors, they win.
Palin also didn’t echo a common complaint in this interview: that she was vilified for being a member of the wrong party. Sure that’s a huge part of the pie. The left viewed Palin as an anomaly because of her bio. The Democratic Party is a constituency that has long believed they have cornered the working mother market. In their minds a mother of five kids should be running to the government for a handout, not running for second in command. If she were a single mother, they really would have liked her. But because she was a pro-life, cultural conservative, they detested her.
Most truthful was Palin’s point to Ziegler that her lashing from press came down to a simple issue: class. She couldn’t be more correct. The mainstream media’s full frontal assault grew out of their perception that she was a backwater politician. To them, the thought of being governed by a gun-toting, winking, hunting, fishing, moose-chili-making rural Alaskan with a beehive was intolerable. The sight of her husband snowmobiling made the lefties wince. The outrage over her expensive wardrobe was not because the media thinks spending money on clothes is excessive. It’s because they don’t believe that Palin should be able to don designer duds. To the liberals, the sight of her in costly clothing is as disorienting as Kennedy in camouflage. “What is Palin doing wearing that?” they thought. So they mocked her. Because to them, a down home gal doesn’t belong in Neiman Marcus.
For a group so opposed to torture, the left wing media sure knew how to use it on Palin. Until they realize elitist snobbery leaves a stench in the nose of almost every American their credibility as journalists will be questioned. For now we’ve got to remain vigilant in tracking down blatant bias and holding their feet to the fire. I know a hunter who’d be perfect for the job.
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