I am almost sure that when former Alaska Governor and 2008 GOP Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin goes home at night, she laughs herself silly at how well she can play the mainstream media on a daily basis.
Last weekend was Memorial Day and most Americans took time to remember the sacrifices of fallen veterans and celebrated the unofficial start of summer. Memorial Day weekend is also the weekend that the activist group “Rolling Thunder” holds its annual rally in Washington D.C. to keep the public attention focused on the issue of POW/MIA. In recent years the mainstream press has simply ignored “Rolling Thunder” for the most part and the annual gathering has often been relegated to local news coverage or C-SPAN at best, but this year’s gathering got a public relations shot in the arm by the name of Sarah Palin.
Members of the mainstream media once again seemed to go nuts when Palin announced, through a press release, that she and her family would be attending the rally as the starting point of her East Coast bus tour. Some in the media speculated this is a prelude to a Presidential run. MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell carried out the first hatchet job on the Palin’s appearance by trying to convince her viewers that Palin would draw attention away from the meaning of the Washington D.C. rally and brought on Rolling Thunder Spokesmen Ted Shpak to reinforce her point:
While the Palin detractors saw this as an attempt to steal the spotlight, many members of Rolling Thunder were actually quite please by her appearance and in the end she simply rode on the back of one of the thousands of motorcycles along with members of her family. She left without speaking to the gathering or engaging in political grandstanding.
It can be said that Palin has learned how to play the press: all she has to do is put out a press release of when and where she will be speaking or appearing and the mainstream media will follow her like the bunch of obsessive/paranoids they are. The obsession is so ingrained that the mainstream media is willing to devote more time to a Palin appearance at Rolling Thunder than to President Obama’s visit to Joplin Missouri in the wake of the massive EF-5 tornado that nearly wiped the town from the face of the Earth. Most mainstream media outlets made the Palin appearance at Rolling Thunder the lead story last weekend while coverage of President Obama’s speech to grieving victims in Missouri was relegated to follow-on status.
Sarah Palin must once again must have chuckled to herself.
While most members of the mainstream media have labeled Palin as profoundly stupid and unqualified to be President, like any great boxer, Palin seem to find a way to hit her opponents where it really counts.