Sarah Palin's back, and she still doesn't like the media
On the day that Barack Obama was officially certified as the next President of the United States, Sarah Palin (not to mention Joe the Plumber) is back in the news. And she's got a gripe or two. Or three.
It's not like she went berserk, but while speaking to conservative filmmaker John Ziegler, a clearly frustrated Palin outlines her problems with the media, her campaign handlers, the media, the media again, and the media (especially bloggers).
Republican
The problem with Palin, according to Palin, is that she's a Republican. If she were a Democrat, the media would have embraced her.
“I think they would have loved me as a candidate, and I’ve already lived through that more on a local level,” Palin said. “There have been times where here in Alaska, I’ve taken on my own Republican Party when there has been corruption."
“The mainstream media here in Alaska, they’ve loved me through those episodes. And then though the minute … that I have done something that is … back to the conservative roots … that’s when the mainstream media here in Alaska, they turn on you. So there’s so much hypocrisy in it all,” she continued.
“It’s pretty baffling, but yeah, had I been chosen to run as a reformer on the Democrat ticket, we would have seen an absolutely different and I think, if you will, a much prettier profile of Sarah Palin and the Palin family and my administration,” Palin said.
Those dern bloggers
This thing you're reading right now? In Palin's eyes, an abomination.
"When did we start accepting as hard news sources bloggers?" she asked. "Anonymous bloggers especially. It is a sad state of affairs in the world of the media today – mainstream media especially – if they are going to rely on anonymous bloggers for their hard news information. Very scary."
Well, she said "anonymous bloggers" are the bad ones. So maybe we're OK.
On the Katie Couric interview
Palin admits her interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric was not very good. Why'd she go back for more? The campaign made her.
"I knew it didn't do well," Palin said. "Then we gave her a couple segments after that."
"My question to the campaign was, 'After it didn't go well the first day, why are we going to go back for more?'" she asked. "And however it works in the upper echelon of [the campaign], I was told we were going to go back for more."
"Going back for more was not a wise decision either," she said.
No one will dispute that.
On Caroline Kennedy
Palin wonders if there is a "class-bias" in the media. As in Kennedy gets better coverage than Palin.
“I’ve been interested to see how Caroline Kennedy will be handled and if she will be handled with kid gloves or if she will be under such a microscope,”she said.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out and I think that as we watch that we will perhaps be able to prove that there is a class issue here also that was such a factor in the scrutiny of my candidacy versus, say, the scrutiny of what her candidacy may be.”
Documentary
The filmmaker interviewed Palin for an upcoming documentary called, "Media Malpractice".
In promoting the documentary on his web site, Ziegler writes of his admiration for Palin -- his real admiration for Palin.
"I also know now, with morally certitude, that the media assassination of her, her character and her family was one of the greatest public injustices of our time and I am totally justified in devoting my life to correcting the historical record in my forthcoming film “Media Malpractice…How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Smeared”.
Morally certitude?
Regardless, here are some excerpts: