Roger Simon's Sanctimony Overdose [Kevin D. Williamson]
Writing at Politico.com, Roger Simon defends the media's hysterical performance covering Sarah Palin and her family:
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.)
Sarcasm isn't an argument, but to the extent that Simon makes an argument at all, it's a pretty lame one. Is there any evidence that Sarah Palin really honestly "thinks that ... the media should report only on what is good for her campaign"? She might prefer that the media only report the good stuff — what politician wouldn't? — but Simon here is almost certainly falsely attributing to Palin something she doesn't think. That's a pretty weak way to argue.
The complaints about the media are well founded. Compare the media's rather circumspect performance in the matter of John Edwards — in which they ignored the story about a lying Democrat until they were forced to cover it by the National Enquirer, a familiar development — and the criticism is put in sharp relief. The Palins announced that their daughter is pregnant — no media sleuth had to dig that story up. They Palins were open; much less did they lie about it. The media guys were surprised because they were busy chasing down a paranoid conspiracy story (that Gov. Palin is not the mother of her son Trig). They should be embarrassed, not because they dug up some big scoop — they didn't — but because they have behaved in a way that trivializes important issues. They aren't being criticized for doing their job, but for failing to do their job.
09/04 10:34 AM
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