Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Sarah Palin for VP!

In the interest of fairness there's been quite a bit of "flaming" towards Obama on the boards, definitely more hostility towards him than towards Palin, so I do think that the defensiveness is a bit uneven.

The hoopla around "lipstickgate" was pretty unwarranted imo.

And generally that's why I stopped posting--it seems that "unwarranted" is in the eye of the beholder too.

alcyone

I think that there appears to have been some merit in that report, although it turns out to be unfair to single out Wasilla (and Sarah Palin) for a practice that appears to have been in effect in other parts of the United States, too.

But, Terry, you are right that I called an editorial an article. That was wrong and misleading, and I apologize for that.

Ann

That's an interesting observation. My perception of this thread and other political threads on these boards is that there has been very little flaming of either Obama or Pailin. Of course, there has been criticism of both candidates, but that's to be expected in discussions of this sort.

Also it strikes me that there has been not been substantially more hostility to one candidate than another. It may be, Alcyone, that you percieve that there has been more toward Obama because he has been a candidate for a much longer time than has Palin and so there have been more comments about him? Just a thought.

Actually I haven't detected much *hostility* (although there has been some) -instead, what I have sensed is a respect by most commentators for the 'other' side's candidate even as they critique that person.

This is not to say that some people haven't offered up quickly written and unsupported generalizations, both for or against either candidate, but that's the nature of mbs , here or elsewhere. MSM too.

Also, these "hasty generalizations" have hardly ever crossed the line into "flames", imo.

btw , and this is very OT, are sites like Salon, Huffington Post, etc now considered MSM? (I have such a short attention span these days )

c.

"Sir, I disagree with what you have said but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
(attributed to Voltaire)

To specify, I was taking issue with Terry's assertion that Palin just got "flamed." And I put it in scare quotes for a reason. Terry said:

I really don't want get into the gray area of the hows and whys of the hostility I've seen, so let me walk that back and suppose, okay *qualitatively* they've been criticized about the same (I don't feel this, but for the sake of argument...). Under that metric then they both got "flamed" or neither did.

Quantitatively, however, there's been significant pro-right voices over pro-left voices. So that's a more tangible reason why Terry's protests over Palin's treatment on the boards (how many questioned her again? Two?) appears harsh and uneven to me.

I was thinking specifically about this thread, plus the Wall Street thread. So, not from where I'm standing.

But complaining (as far as my feelings about hostility and the number of voices on one side or another go), I want to stress, was never the point.

My statements centered around Terry's strong assertion (to the extent of stating Palin got "flamed") that Palin was somehow recieving "unwarranted attacks" on the boards supported by some implicitly objective metric ("My comments were not prompted by attacks against "my candidate."[...]"), that he would also stand up if the same had been thrown at Obama.

That claim shows me that "unwarranted" is not really an objective judgement though its being presented as such (it's that last part that strikes me). As I mentioned, in light of the support Palin has recieved on this thread, the lack of objectivity (the "uneveness") in that statement/defense becomes all the more clear to me.

alcyone

Speaking about hostility and flaming, this is from today's Washington Post:

This sounds really bad to me, and it smacks of the Swift Boat campaign that helped George W. Bush defeat John Kerry. I'm still appalled at how the GOP smear campaign managed to make a decorated Vietnam war hero look cowardly compared with a man who never served his country in Vietnam at all, perhaps thanks to his infuential father. Well, I think I understand why the Swift Boat campaign worked, and it was not because Americans were almost criminally gullible and willing to listen to anything the GOP said. No, it was because most Americans wanted to give Bush more time to win the war on terror that he himself had started. Most Americans probably felt, and probably rightly so, that John Kerry wouldn't be as committed to winning the Iraq war as George Bush would be. To put it simply, the question of who had been a war hero in the past paled beside the question of who would be a war hero in the present.

Well, the American people shouldn't feel obliged to give McCain more time to steer America down a path along which America has already been shooed for almost eight years now. I fervently hope that a GOP smear campaign won't work this time.

Ann

I very much want to know if either of the candidates for president has executed bad judgment in the past. I also want to know if either has been, or is being, dishonest. And, yes, I want to know who their friends are, who their mentors were, who they listen to and who's opinions they respect. These are all valid areas in inquiry, as far as I am concerned.

It is only a "smear campaign" if the allegations are known to be false by the persons making or repeating them. Or if the persons repeating the charge have no idea what the facts are, but repeat the allegations anyway. Or, if the "search" for facts was one-sided. For example, if a liberal repeated an allegation against the GOP, after having "verified" the charge by looking for confirmation in the New York Times. I would call that a "smear".

I think I must not be understanding this comment because it reads as though "criticize" means the same as "flame". That's not what you meant, is it?

Ann, I agree with your concern that attacks on character can easily cross the line into "Swift Boating" a candidate. But remember that character attacks have been a feature of this campaign from the beginning. All candidates have engaged in it. Remember too that the NY Times is pro- Democrat ( but I have no idea what on earth Maureen Dowd is . ) and that bias is often evident in its selection of news items.

Vicki raises a good point - we need to assess the integrity of the people we vote for, as well as their experience and their policies. Their character is a legitimate concern for voters. But sometimes campaigns cross the line into what's now become known as 'Swfit boating".

btw, what to make of Biden's reference to Franklin Roosevelt being President in 1929 and his television chats? Did he mean that as a joke?

The New Scientist has an interesting article on political spin in the sept 17 issue. Not sure any of the candidates would be too happy with it. The chart alone is worth looking at.

New Scientist: Political Spin

c.

From my point of view there have been very few to no attacks on any of the candidates that don't have some sort of backing from other sources, though of course everyone is entitled to ignore or disagree with the sources presented. None of the criticisms have come out of left field. Of course, liberals have a much easier time when virtually the entire media is on their side. When conservatives are left with basically the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal (the main paper is very liberal, and oddly liberal Al Hunt is the editor of the editorial section), Fox News, the Boston Herald, the New York Post, and the Washington Times, we have to rely on liberals to criticize their own when coming up with evidence against them, seeing as the use of any of the sources above or the blogosphere are immediately discounted by leftists. Fortunately, that's not too hard to do since there's so much to criticize about them that they eventually leak into the leftist press. <beg>

I will have to say that the blogosphere, though rarely used as a source here, has its own uses especially when the MSM ignores certain issues, and they do so often. Without the blogosphere, Dan Rather's fraud against President Bush with those forged documents would never have come to light.

I'm still wondering why people are criticizing the Swift Boat Veterans so much as a tool of the right, especially since they weren't. Agree with them or not, they independently formed out of people who had served with John Kerry, not all of them being right wing Republicans. Many of the members were liberals who supported other Democratic candidates. Their chief spokesman was an Edwards supporter. When all but four of the people who served with him joined the group (who were still alive), and only one of those four came out to support Kerry, that tells me there's something to them. It seems to me, though, that the left wanted to delegitimize them somehow as a defense of Kerry by casting them all as the far right wing. Perhaps the men were angry that Kerry had turned into a big anti-war activist who accused his fellow soldiers of killing civilians deliberately, and were making everything up. We'll never know since we weren't with those men. But to dismiss them out of hand as a tool of the right wing shows a disregard of the mounds of eye witness testimony they produced.

You can even say that the left invented things about Bush when it came to his Air National Guard service to unjustly smear him. It was a myth that his dad got him in when the man in charge of recruiting said that there was no waiting list for officers, only for enlisted men. It was a myth that he had tried to avoid combat when he volunteered three times for Palace Alert, a program that would have sent him immediately to Vietnam. He was turned down by his superiors each time because he lacked sufficient hours in his jet. It was also little known that his unit was actually in Vietnam at the time he joined, but had returned by the time he completing basic training. To me, that doesn't sound like a coward who was trying to avoid combat at all costs.


It's quite well known that Joe Biden makes A LOT of gaffes when he isn't reading prepared material. I think he just didn't think through his answer very well and said something that gave his opponents a lot to laugh about. I'm sure if he sat down and thought about it, he would have remembered that Hoover was president and that TV's didn't reach the American public until the early 1950's. Most will just laugh and say, "Oh, that's just Joe."

Another recent Joe gaffe was when he insisted he would never support clean coal ("Not here in America!"), only to be reminded that his boss supported clean coal. He then had to backtrack and claim he'd always supported it and was merely misquoted, despite his voting record that was solidly against clean coal. That was one of his whoppers in the debate. I'm not sure why he had to do that since no two people agree on everything. Just as an example, it's well known Palin and McCain disagree on drilling in ANWR.

Of course not. As I stated before, I'm responding to Terry's assertion that Labrat's Palin skepticism was equal to "flaming." I even quoted his exact words.

And like I said, I disagree with that assertion since I don't see Palin getting significantly different treatment on the boards than Obama.

That is all.

I also wanted to weigh in on the bias, because I initially did think there was a pro-left bias (as does a majority of people according to Gallup). But after digging around about bias quite a bit, I don't think that liberal bias is to the proportions that the right claims it is. For one, I've seen both sides make complaints about the MSM and I've noticed a conservative presence even in so-called liberal newspapers (gasp! ). There was also that study I posted on in the Gibson interview thread, which went counter to what I thought, so I decided to be more skeptical.

Now, does that mean I think that there is no bias? That wouldn't be accurate either in my view. What seems reasonable to me is that it shifts up and down depending on what story garners the most interest at any given cycle. The most salacious story will be given the most interest regardless who is at the center. I think it's more about what pays the bills than ideology in the mainstream.

I just don't buy that just because media people vote democratic that they're all out to get republicans. That's too big a jump for me. I should make it clear that while I wouldn't deny that people's beliefs influence them, I don't think it's to the extent that the right makes it out to be with this liberal conspiracy theory.

alcyone

PS
Factcheck has a fact-filled article on one of the Swiftboat smear ads, most people link them to the right because more than half their funding according to the IRS was from prominent members of the Republican party.

This is a small detail, Carol, but since you seemed to say that to me, I want to point out that I'm fully aware that the New York Times is a liberal newspaper promoting liberal ideas (although they do have a few conservative columnists too, among them William Kristol), and I also want to point out that I don't always quote the New York Times. In my post about the upcoming GOP smear campaign, I quoted the Washington Post.

Ann

(emphasis mine)

It hasn't even happened yet, but I see your mind is already made up. You have determined in advance that any criticisms made by the GOP regarding Obama's judgment, honesty, or associates will be, ipso facto, lies and smears.

And you'd expect their funding to come from pro-Kerry, left-wing sources? After they formed, of course they'd go to more right wing sources for money. To do otherwise would be like Bush going to Hollywood for a fundraiser. He'd get, what? Maybe three people who'd donate to him? And of those, maybe only one who would admit to donating? To say that right wing sources funded the Swift Boaters is rather an obvious statement. Who else would give them money when their objective was to take down the Democratic nominee? I would have expected it to be 100%, not just more than half. That doesn't mean they're a creation of the right wing or that they had anything to do with the Republican Party. That just means when they needed money for their political activities, they knew where to go.

You go where the donations are, just as I'd expect MoveOn.org's funding to come from prominent Democratic sources. I simply can't imagine them going up to Richard Mellon Scaife for a donation, would you?

I would define bias as more that not using objective standards when covering a candidate.

Bias is also there in the application of more rigorous standards to one candidate than the other. (for example, using follow-up questions more on one candidate than the other). As well it's there in the selection of material that's presented plus the time alloted to each candidate.

two example from recent news: (neither American, btw just to show that I'm as critical of other media, too )

1. Tom Clark, who's US bureau chief for CTV- News (a major Canadian network_ reporting on the CTV news channel about the US VP debate was critical of Palin but did not mention any of the factual errors that Biden made during the debate.

2. I was watching last night's BBC news. They had an item on the latest US election poll. Then they cut to a clip of Obama on stage making a speech - the clip was long enough for him to present a list of what he stands for and also to criticise McCain. In the interest of balanced reporting, what I would then have expected a similar clip of McCain. But there was nothing, only one simple sentence that McCain was campaigning.

I'm going to repeat here what I've said before - I'm not a conservative. Palin has some beliefs and views that I don't.

But I've been dismayed by the bias shown in this election by both the MSM and by websites like Salon, Slate, The Huffington Post, etc. This goes beyond editorial and journalist's columns. It's there in the selection of material for news reports, in the narrative used to cover political events, the amount of time/space given to candidates, the headlines used, the visuals, etc.

Ann, I apologise for thinking you were quoting the NY Times rather than the Post. But yes, I'm aware that the Times have a few conservative writers - that was the point of my , I admit snarky, comment about Dowd )

Thanks for clarifying what you meant Alcyone.

c.

If Moveon.org was behind an attack on a Republican candidate (as they have been in this cycle with some ads) then most people would associate that attack with the left. It wouldn't be an unreasonable link, so it's an obvious statement, of course. I don't see what you're refuting. In my eyes it's quite obvious that they are a tool of the right.

But I do know the benefit of the doubt is pretty one-sided here, so I'll leave it there, before we get into semantics and what "tool" or "right" or "Republican Party" means.

Like I said in my post above, in my view the bias is towards what sells. Palin as the new addition to politics will sell stories, so reporters will pursue dirt on her at the expense of others. That is because as it goes nice stories don't sell as much as tabloid junk. Same with Obama when you place him side by side with McCain (the more appropriate comparison for coverage imo), people want to see the new kid, unless they have something else to go on. Again, the bias I see has to do with what generates money. The two examples above actually fit cleanly into this, even being outside of the US.

Also I question the unproblematic assertion (mostly peddled by the right) that Obama hasn't been vetted by the media. That's a double standard in play. As the study results suggest (the ones I posted in the interview thread), once the gen elections started the media was much more critical of Obama than McCain (again fitting into the "new kid" theory). And according to that study IIRC up until the Girbson interview the Palin coverage was pretty positive. Following the right's complaints about the Gibson-Palin interview, I immediately remembered that debate in the primaries where Obama got questioned pretty harshly about flagpins and so on--that was when he was new--and quite a few people from the right enjoyed that grilling (lol even the Bush Doctrine came up, seems Gibson likes that topic). As it was mentioned in a previous post, he's been a candidate longer, so expecting him to get treated like Palin at this stage of the race, considering that Palin hasn't had that media spotlight and has a more unconventional/interesting story, is rather unrealistic. Cycles are by definition constant flux, so it's not as clean cut as it might seem on one side or another. It could have to do as was mentioned in the interview thread with lacking certain channels to complement the material. Watching FOX or MSNBC exclusively would give one a very different perspective than if one alternated between both and then went on to CNN, ABC, CBS.

And I also want to add that no news isn't necessarily good news either (as McCain would tell you, when he got shafted by Obama's European tour). Biden operated under complete silence from the media for several weeks despite being open to the media and seeking coverage. It was to be expected however, because he was just not selling as much as the Governor.

For me, as I've repeated, it goes up and down in the MSM (which includes big newspapers and local ones which btw are much less left-leaning, not the online publications you mention here). McCain got focused on a couple of cycles ago (although he whined about it--my bias here-- which made the media smell blood and go after him some more). I expect it's Obama's turn now, if that non-article on Ayers is to stand as an example. Oooh and from a liberal newspaper (what was it again a "pro-Obama advocacy org"?).

And by the way speaking of the phenomenon of the one-sided benefit of the doubt, how is Palin's assertion that Obama "pals around with terrorists" not a smear when the Times article she cites concludes that the men are not close?

Oh right, it depends what the meaning of "is" is.

Which is to say, if you're right-leaning it's not a smear--unless someone from the left had made a similarly assertion about someone from the right. Then it's groundless and a smear. Double standards.

I think HuffPo is much, much more liberal than the MSM (I don't see it as the MSM myself) and extremely unapologetic about it's bias. I wouldn't be surprised at the pro-Obama sentiment there. I personally go there when I want to get a political "pick me up," not when I want news.

Slate and Salon try to show less their leanings, but they also are both associated with the left. I'm not sure I would read them as straight news either. There's a study out there showing that the internet is extremely polarized, which makes it hard to get news online without it being substancially left or right leaning. I've come to believe that.

Now, I usually read/see something from the MSM and skim online sources from both sides to judge the validity of it. That means I trawl through Slate and Salon, but I also trawl through the Weekly Standard and NRO (I hate Drudge's layout) before figuring out how best to take it (keeping their biases in mind). Among others. I read more than watch tv (though my husband is the opposite), so my blogroll is pretty extensive and I try to keep it diverse.

That is, as I wait for the claims to hit factcheck and politifact which have that mystical non-partisanship I find incredibly helpful.

Generally though when I feel the left is being too biased, I think it's a good time to see what the right is saying (with the same skepticism of course).

alcyone

The implication was that the Republican Party created the Swift Boat organization in order to unfairly smear John Kerry. That has certain implications as it puts into question the validity of the organization and its credibility. That is why the left tried so hard to tie them to Republicans to delegitimize them.

If they are considered to be a group that was created independent of the political parties, that gives them a powerful legitimacy because groups don't come into being for no reason.

That is why I try to make the distinction between an entity created by the Republican Party or its operatives and one that came into being on its own. It all has to do with legitimacy. People tend to disregard party machines, naturally assuming that they're going to attack the other party and ignore them as part of standard partisanship. When they are a separate group that had nothing to do with the party apparatus, then people sit up and take notice as they are not part of the standard partisan noise. MoveOn.org, for instance, is basically made up of ex-Clinton people, so people treat them as just another cog in the Democratic Party machine. The Swift Boaters differed in that they self-organized with people who had no ties to any particular political party and in fact differed greatly in their party affiliation. That gives them a certain credibility that a cog in the Republican apparatus wouldn't have, and that's why they were so effective in bringing down John Kerry.

Do you see the difference now in what I'm trying to say and why funding by the right in no way actually ties them to the official Republican Party apparatus? With no ties to the GOP, that means they were not considered by the public to be a right-wing smear machine, but rather a group with legitimate criticisms.

Yes, Vicki, I'm afraid I jumped to conclusions when I talked about the upcoming GOP smear campaign. It hasn't happened yet, and I can't know if it will. I apologize.

Ann

How so?

Perhaps his more critical, and really, it hasn't been all that critical, treatment by the MSM since the pres. campaigns started is a reflection of the lighter treatment he received during the primaries?

Not going to disagree that 'selling papers' isn't behind the volume of coverage. Has been so since the days of Pulitzer at al. Nevertheless, I don't think it's just a one variable thing.

I have to admit, I'm not too familiar with right-wing American media. I've never watched Fox news, for example. I do read the Globe and Mail which some Canadians regard as somewhat conservative, although it depends on which columnists you read. But I also read the Toronto Star, a liberal paper, and listen to the CBc, definitely liberal. Was at one time a card carrying NDP'r (am now politically promiscuous, however )

Won't bore you with the rest of my sources.

c.

To you. We can agree to disagree, since we're definitely reading/viewing different things (both only accessing a teensy bit of the vast US MSM)-- to name one of the multiple factors that shape our perception of bias.

But I will agree, however, that I don't think there is a way to get to a black and white assessment of bias. How could I? It's much more complicated than one person's perception (like my own which changes depending on a number of things), conventional wisdom or even the mathematical formula in that study I cited. Not that both aren't helpful--I don't discount any of those possibilities working together at any number of points. All I said was that I find money on the whole more persuasive than ideology. But it's not an either/or proposition.

I do, however, dispute the conventional wisdom in the US (evidenced by the Gallup survey of Americans who feel the news is more liberal) that coverage is defined by a liberal tilt alone. I am also skeptical of the idea that the media has always treated Obama with kid gloves and continues to do so. I find that notion reductive. I don't think it acknowledges all the possible factors that make up coverage and it's ups and downs, which are probably impossible to pin down that definitively.

The MSM is huge and ever-changing, anything but chaos and disorder within it is hard for me to believe, especially when thinking about it over time.

*shrug*

alcyone

Oh yes, most definitely. That's been something I've been trying to get at, although very clumsily.

That was my point. I'd also add to that list of variables, btw.

I'm not familiar with this poll, but am going to ask anyway. How did Gallop define "news". For most Americans, I'd guess that would mean TV major network news. But that news source has a limited audience these days. It also depends, I gather on demographics. For example, I saw one poll that indicated that more Americans under the age of 30 cited The Daily report as their major news source. Really?? Were the respondents being ironic?

So, back to my question how did the respondents define 'news'? How did Gallop?

I've certainly never made that claim, nor have I seen it here on the mbs. "Always" is an extreme term.

This is such an important election - the issues the US faces are daunting, perhaps the most serious of the last 60 years. Sadly, there is no more wiggle room.

c.

Sadly, probably not. I know a number of people who would say that. Or if not the major source, one of very few.

Carol