Andrew Sullivan has done a superb (and relentless) job in calling out Palin's many lies. Lawrence Lessig chronicles in excruciating detail how the Palin nomination is without historical precedent for her total lack of any salient qualifications. The right extols Palin's "I'm just like you" perky supermom personna (I though Bay Buchanan was going to french kiss Palin's photo on air) while the left is not sure whether she will single-handedly kill all the polar bears and/or make the Left Behind books required grade school reading.
But, since her selection as his running mate about four weeks ago, what do we really KNOW about Sarah Palin? Not much. There was a well-received speech (repeated ad nauseum on the campaign trail) and two questionable performances in interviews with ABC and Fox. Yesterday and today, she's at the United Nations shaking hands with world leaders so she can put a check mark in that foreign policy experience box. Maureen Dowd called it speed-dating diplomacy.
Put all that you've read and seen about Sarah Palin aside for a moment and just consider this: As the VP nominee, she has not had an open, unscripted exchange with reporters and yet she aspires to arguably the second most powerful job in the world? Get real, people. This fact alone is a deal breaker.
Much was made of the press' little stomp-their-feet and hold-their-breath moment yesterday when the McCain camp wouldn't let a pool reporter accompany the cameras in for Sarah's glamor shots photo ops at the U.N. To hear the press tell it, they took a firm stand for journalism, banding together in a refusal to air the photos unless the one scribe was allowed in to shout a question or two that Sarah then would not answer.
This was not some act of media heroism; it was a childish tantrum. And just like a two-year-old banging his fists on the floor for some candy -- right then and right there, the hissy fit got the desired immediate appeased response: the reporter was admitted in for the 29-second photo session. What a frickin' coup for the Fourth Estate!
If our nation's media really was serious about doing its job, reporters, producers and news exectuives would be conducting a complete media blackout on Palin's candidacy until she showed up to truly meet the press - unscripted, unfettered. They need to boycott Sarah Palin until she holds a real press conference. No photos. No soundbites. Nothing.
The Vice Presidential debate is next week, folks. October 2nd. The format has been altered, at the request of the McCain campaign, to keep answers short and sweet, with no chance for interplay between the candidates. How much honesty and revealing insight into the candidates will that produce?
Will John McCain ever allow his vaunted VP pick to really be introduced to the citizens they seek to lead?
Palin's media avoidance, McCain's orcestrating that avoidance and the press complicity in letting it happen is as much an assault on our American principles as voter suppression, torture, the abandonment of habeas corpus and a host of other corrosions to our democracy. We must call it for what it is. And call it out for what it is doing to our country.
Cross-posted at Daily Kos and Progressive Puppy.