Back in January, when the media firestorm over my “Media Malpractice” interview with Governor Sarah Palin erupted, I wrote on this website that it was my belief that she was no George W. Bush. I can now say with even greater certainty that I was absolutely correct in that assertion.
The reason I felt that way initially, was that after several days of the news media cherry picking snippets from my interview with her in an out of context way that appeared designed to make Palin seem whiny and weak (the exact opposite of what she actually was during the interview), she had a couple of choices. Basically she could try to pretend the interview and the issue of how the media lied to destroy her candidacy didn’t really exist, lick her wounds, mitigate whatever perceived political damage there might have been (though with her base the interview was CLEARLY a huge hit) and never speak of the topic again, or she could continue the fight for the truth regardless of the potential consequences.
The vast majority of politicians (like George W. Bush) would curl up into the fetal position and concede defeat to the media in such situations, and I have to confess that I feared Palin may wilt under the same pressure that shattered the previous administration. But when the Governor called me that weekend and I mentioned learning the lessons of George Bush not fighting back against the news media, it was immediately obvious to me that Palin “got it.”
Well, that was clearly confirmed by a stem winder of a speech she gave this week at a Lincoln Day Dinner in Alaska. If there was any doubt about Palin standing strong in her desire to correct the historical record about her, her family and her VP candidacy, it now appears to have vanished. As reported prominently today by AOL/CNN (it took a shocking long time for the speech to be reported on at all in the “lower 48,” and if you go through the photo gallery most of the quotes are from my interview, and a “Big Hollywood” column of mine regarding Keith Olbermann is misreported), Palin continued to express many of the themes that she outlined in my documentary.
Governor Palin plainly stated the obvious reality (as proven beyond a doubt in “Media Malpractice”) that there was an “unprecedented level of media slant” against her during the campaign. She also verified a personal theory of mine as to why Palin, in her own words, was “naïve” about how the news media would treat her.
She declared, “Some in the media actually participated in not so much the ‘who-what-where-when-why’ objective reporting on candidates and positions, those five W’s that I learned when I had a journalism degree so many years ago in college, when the world of journalism was quite different than it is today.”
Who could blame someone who graduated in the 80’s during a year in journalism when there was at least some self restraint on the inherent liberal agenda (I always find it amusing that Sam Donaldson, the scourge of conservatives during the Reagan years, now seems downright fair in retrospect) for being more than a bit shocked that the rules had been completely changed without anyone officially doing so.
“No, things have changed,” she said. “But complaining? Or whining? Absolutely not. But I am going to call it like I see it. It doesn’t do any good to whine about any of this. But I can call it like I see it. Sometimes it gets me in a lot of trouble when I speak candidly, and I speak from the heart and I do such a thing. But I am going to.”
No, Sarah Palin has clearly learned the lessons of George W. Bush, and anyone who cares about fairness and justice in the media should be thankful for that reality.
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