The Media: Wrong on Jackson, Wrong on Palin

I have been driving around the Midwest for the last six days with my son playing golf, watching baseball games, visiting old friends and doing a few shows. There are a lot of benefits to this well-timed vacation. The weather was perfect and I missed the entire hullabaloo known as the Michael Jackson memorial. I didn’t see a minute of the lead-up coverage, the “service,” or the postmortem, no pun intended.

I was listening to evil talk radio in the car and did hear and read a number of reports on the event. Depending on whom I was listening to, it was a freak show/circus, a fitting memorial or “not as bad as I thought it might be.”

I always thought of Mr. Jackson as a talented singer/dancer/songwriter who had poor impulse control. I thought this was due to the fact that the leeches and toadies who depended on him for money never said one simple word to him: “No!” Apparently I was very wrong! Until I heard and read reports from his memorial, I was unaware of his role in our society as everything from a civil rights pioneer to basketball coach. Martin Luther King Jr. and Pat Riley, take a break, the king of pop has got your back. I heard he was quite the philanthropist too; although there isn’t a Michael Jackson Foundation, he did at one time donate a reported $22 million to a single California family.

The weekend before the deification of Mr. Jackson, there was another small media event which got a lot of coverage: the resignation of Sarah Palin. If you still have any doubt that there is a vast left-wing media conspiracy in this country all you need to do is look at the coverage of these two people and these events by alleged journalists.

On Tuesday, July 7th the Chicago Tribune featured a half page mocking Ms. Palin by Rob Manker on page three. Page three is usually where one might find the hard news of the day, but not in the Trib when there is a conservative to be skewered. Did this paper give the same kind ribbing to Mr. Jackson at any point?

I use the Chicago Tribune only as an example. The general tone of the reporting of these two events from television to the New York Times was to elevate and rehabilitate the reputation on Mr. Jackson and to denigrate that of Ms. Palin.

The real divide in this country is not political but cultural. As far as I know Michael Jackson was not political. I doubt if he even voted in the last election. The picture of him coming out of the voting booth may have shown up somewhere. He may have voted absentee but I am pretty sure if he had voiced an opinion on the election it would have been reported. Yet the media holds up this man as an icon to be admired. A talented man who lived an extremely degenerate and narcissistic life is not only exonerated but also held up and praised.

Sarah Palin, a woman who has served God, her country, and raised a family is mocked. Why? Bcause she doesn’t fit the stereotype that the media prefers for successful and powerful women. She is from humble origins and has worked for everything she has gotten. The real sin of Ms. Palin is that she is not only a conservative but a devout Christian. To the east coast, Ivy League, taxicab progressives, allowing morality into government is the greatest stupidity.