Dear Jay Nordlinger

from tmorange
to jnordlinger@nationalreview.com
date Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 2:08 PM
subject Re: Sick

Dear Jay Nordlinger,

You're actually serious, aren't you? Sure, politics can be sickening; but it can hardly be the press, for the first time in long-term memory actually doing its job by scrutinzing the claims and record of a virtual political unknown less than two months and plausibly a heartbeat away from the land's highest office, causing the sickness.

Let's be honest: the media loves nothing more than a fresh new face. And what's not to like about Sarah Palin's rather compelling story? In fact, as Rex Huppke has reported for the Chicago Tribune, coverage of Palin in the first week of September slightly edged out that of Obama and dwarfed that of Biden; it also helped give McCain 60% more coverage than Obama. What's more, "Based on 6,027 stories analyzed, LexisNexis found that 26 percent were positive, 22 percent negative and 52 percent neutral." Can you refute these numbers?

Well, you may say, that was then and this is now. Perhaps -- but as I see it the difference is this. Palin has lied, blatantly and repeatedly, to the media and the nation. Even after her lies have been refuted, she lies all the same. (You don't seriously believe in spite of clear evidence to the contrary, for example, that she "said thanks but no thanks to that bridge to nowhere," do you?)

Indeed this so-called "liberal media" of ours rarely objects to being lied to; more often than not, they usher the lies right along, swallowing them whole and shitting them out undigested upon the American public. Thing is, when you have a relative unknown competing for the highest office in the land, one with a highly questionable record that includes several pending investigations that her campaign is actively stonewalling, the press has not simply a right but a duty to scrutinize her record and subject her claims to tests of truth.

NOT because she's a woman, and NOT because she's a conservative -- but because she has proven herself thus far to be a consummate liar.

Here's to the First Amendment, and to the exercise of a free press that is essential to our democracy!

*     *     *     *     *    *

from tmorange
to jnordlinger@nationalreview.com
date Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 2:32 PM
subject Re: Something About Sarah

Dear Jay Nordlinger,

The "hacked" yahoo email account makes you sick too? Give me a break. Until the offenders are caught and the matter investigated fully you have no basis for crying foul about this.

In fact, given that Palin has, like Karl Rove and other GOP operatives, been using her personal email account for matters of the public trust (presumably to avoid detection), and that she withheld 1,100 emails from a FOIA request filed by one Andree McLeod on a cronyism charge, Palin claiming like Bush and Cheney, "executive privilege" as the basis for the withholding -- I would not be surprised one bit if this "hacking" episode were not an altogether convenient way of disposing with such emails and the details about Troopergate and other investigations currently being stonewalled on which such emails might shed light. (After all, the only mistake Nixon conceded was not destroying the evidence...)

Palin is cut wholly from Rove-Bush-Cheney cloth.

And by the way, consider listening to the Geoff Nunberg piece from NPR's "Fresh Air" from Tuesday on the opportunism of playing the victim, which your recent Corner posts are managing all too well. If you don't have the time or inclination, here's Nunberg's final analysis:

And in fact, there were plenty of conservatives who wanted no part of this [the "lipstick on a pig" nonsense]. David Brooks described the episode as "stupidity on stilts." And David Frum warned against what he called the "inflammation of imaginary grievances." And others on the right worried that the McCain campaign might be perceived as whining, which as it happens was the word that Sarah Palin used last spring to describe Hillary Clinton's complaints about her press coverage. But whine they did, and with pitch-perfect proficiency. You decide whether that's hypocrisy or opportunism or simply adaptiveness.

What's remarkable is how naturally the idiom came to them, as if they'd been speaking it all their lives. For all the ridicule that's been heaped on the language of political correctness and identity politics--and the right has no monopoly here--there's no group that hasn't learned to work it to its advantage. Whether or not you ultimately persuade people that your grievance is justified, you can at least count on owning the discussion for the next news cycles.

Enjoy your new victimhood.