In Which I Go Iowahawk

Probably not as good as the exalted one, but hey, I do Holmes now and again.

“So the Mambo beat the Foxtrot!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama wowed them on Dancing With the Stars.

According to Lucille (or Esmeralda, or Susie or Beldar - our pseudonym engine is on the fritz), the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, and apparently unaware that the left would turn her comments into something they were not, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

“It was kind of disgusting,” Lucille (or whatever), who is part Aboriginal, part transplant, part Estonian and, we suspect, partly Presbyterian, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the “lower 48” about life near the North Pole.

Then, almost with a sigh, she added, “But that’s just Alaska.”

Dancing slurs may be “just Alaska” but, clearly, they are common, everyday chatter for the left in the lower 48. Hell, we make this stuff up at the drop of a hat.

Besides insulting Obama with a Patrick Swayze, Dirty Dancing swipe, people who know her say she refers regularly to Alaska’s Aboriginal people as “Mambo Maniacs” or “Tango Twits” – how efficient, lumping two apparently Unrelated dance styles into one ugly description – as well as the more colorful “Twists” along with the totally unimaginative “Limbo Loonies,” according to a number of Alaskans and Wasillians interviewed for this article. (They took a break from the dance marathon to be interviewed for this article.)

But being openly dancist is only the tip of the Palin iceberg. According to Alaskans interviewed for this article, she is also vindictive and mean, eats puppies for breakfast, uses kitties for doormats at her vacation home and has a sideline business selling walrus burgers. We’re making all of this up, of course.

Frankly, at this point I got tired of the vitriolic tripe from the left. This is how low they will go. And worse, I’m sure. Keep excavating kids. Maybe at some point you’ll realize that your trench will only serve to bury your candidate’s chance for election.

But I rather doubt it. Carry on.

UPDATE: Don Surber has the news that the leftosphere is now trying to pass off (faked) nude pictures of Julia Louis-Dreyfus as nude pictures of Sarah Palin. The absolutely hysterical best take on the whole thing comes from one of Don’s commenters, MU78 who has this absolute gem:

I’ve come to the conclusion that if there are swimsuit pictures out there, McCain goes to 55% in the polls. Bikini shots will push his numbers to 70% and if the photos are in color Obama and Biden will vote for her.

Short, compact, blistering. Funny as all hell. Absolutely perfect. Kudos, This is better than my effort!

Heh

I can’t recall ever linking to No Quarter, Larry Johnson’s blog. For a time, Johnson was a darling of the far left, now he’s a die hard Hillary supporter who has run some, shall we say, questionable “scoops.” He’s also no longer the darling of the left, but that’s beside the point. Since a commenter here already linked to a video of Sarah Palin going all rock and roll with an M-4 carbine, I figured this was worth linking.

One thing that strikes me as a shooter: Palin is not faking it here. She honestly knows how to handle that weapon (and as a shooter, I’m ticked that I haven’t had that chance!). The juxtaposition with the video of the late, unlamented Zarqawi showing his absurd inability to clear a straightforward jam is pretty funny.

Side question: Does anyone believe that Barack Obama could handle that M-4 with anything like the natural ease that Sarah Palin displays? This is the difference between posturing about the individual right to bear arms and actually living that right.

UPDATE: Quilly Mammoth, in comments, notes that the interview linked in No Quarter by the head of the Alaska National Guard is fascinating in and of itself. He’s absolutely right, and I would prefer that people see it, in case they don’t click through. So I am adding it directly here.

When Pinot Noir Democrats Attack!

Anyone with even a moderately long lived memory when it comes to American politics has to be mesmerized by the class role reversal going on today. It wasn’t all that long ago when the print media was the domain of the working and middle class in this country. Oh, sure there were a few papers that catered to the “country club” set, and others that wrote for the East Coast financial elite. Typical was the stance announced by Joseph Pulitzer and still adorning the Editorial section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

“I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.”

Noble words, and words echoed on newspaper mast heads across the country.

Too bad the people working at newspapers today never take the time to read them.

While it is true that newspapers of Pulitzer’s day violated the letter of his pledge, many lived up to its spirit. Today does anybody, left or right, really believe that is true? Today, maybe because of dimly understood “post-modern” ideas concerning the nature of truth, most newspapers seem to be operating under the assumption that it is impossible to be objective therefore there is no need to try to be. If anyone complains about the treatment they receive, well, they must be hypocrites because “objectiveness” is a fraud. “They,” so the argument goes, “must be on the side doing the sinning just as often as they are on the side being sinned against.” This would make sense if print or electronic media catered to different ideological groups in a roughly proportional manner. However, they certainly do not. A disproportionate number of papers, for example, serve a left of center ideological group, even if they do so imperfectly. For example, in a 2006 Pew Center survey on the media, self identified Democrats found the following news sources more reliable than did Republicans:

NewsHour
NPR
AP
their daily newspaper
60 Minutes
CBS News
Local TV News
CNN
ABC News
MSNBC
C-Span
NBC News
New York Times
USA Today
Newsweek
Time

The following were found more trustworthy by Republicans than Democrats:

Wall Street Journal
Fox News

So, if it is fair to say media sources have done a better job catering to those on the left of the ideological spectrum, it is also fair to say they also do the same for the better educated and wealthier. (Go read the entire Pew Survey for confirmation of that.) Indeed, as time goes on, the focus of most of the media has moved further and further away from that laid out by Pulitzer for his newspapers. In one sense this does seem logical; if more highly educated and wealthy consumers use your product than you will customize it to best suit that audience. However, it would be wrong to assume that this is merely a question of market forces playing out. Let’s face it, it helps the bottom line of these media sources if their paying customers have more cash. So, in some sense at least, media in this country have the audiences they recruited. As a result, the ideological makeup of that audience is not a result of happenstance but it is deliberately cultivated. Publishers know how to read market research. They know that poor people are not buying and reading their products, so why should they write for them?

So who are they writing for? I think it would be fair to call them the Pinot Noir Democrats; they are college educated, largely urban, relatively wealthy, non or lightly religious (in a mainline Protestant or Catholic sense,) liberal ideologically, and either ignorant or disdainful of lower middle class lifestyles or values. For themselves they see their personal worldview as “normal” and anything else as decidedly “reactionary” or “deviant.” This explain, I believe, the reaction of the MSM to the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican VP candidate. William Kristol summed it up:

A special thank you to our friends in the liberal media establishment. Who knew they would come through so spectacularly? The ludicrous media feeding frenzy about the Palin family hyped interest in her speech, enabling her to win a huge audience for her smashing success Wednesday night at the convention. Indeed, it even renewed interest in McCain, who seems to have gotten still more viewers for his less smashing–but well-received–presentation the following evening.

The astounding (even to me, after all these years!) smugness and mean-spiritedness of so many in the media engendered not just interest in but sympathy for Palin. It allowed Palin to speak not just to conservatives but to the many Americans who are repulsed by the media’s prurient interest in and adolescent snickering about her family. It allowed the McCain-Palin ticket to become the populist standard-bearer against an Obama-Media ticket that has disdain for Middle America.

By the end of the week, after Palin’s tour de force in St. Paul, the liberal media were so befuddled that they were reduced to complaining that conservatives aren’t being narrow-minded enough. Thus, Hanna Rosin–who has covered religion and politics for the Washington Post, and has also written for the New Yorker, the New Republic, and the New York Times–lamented in a piece for Slate: “So cavalier are conservatives about Sarah Palin’s wreck of a home life that they make the rest of us look stuffy and slow-witted by comparison.” I suppose it was ungenerous of conservatives, in our broad-mindedness and tolerance of human frailty, to have let Ms. Rosin down, just when she was counting on us to bring out the tar and feathers. But she gives us too much credit when she suggests we make the liberal media look stuffy and slow-witted. They do that all by themselves.

What is amazing about Kristol’s complaint about the media is how true it rings, even coming from the old bastion of what used to be called “country club Republicans.” The fact the media has reacted with such incredulity to the criticism directed towards it (for example), simply underscores how alien they have become to huge segments of the American population.

Their response has been, in effect, to sneer at middle America. “You ignorant hayseeds! Don’t you understand we know what’s best for you? Sure, we don’t respect you, understand you, or even like you, but you must believe we have your economic well being as our number one priority. Therefore, if you ever feel the need to get involved in politics, don’t bother. Leave it to us. Besides, you will be too busy with all of your deformed babies.”

It’s the new style of noblese oblige and it’s every bit as distasteful as the old style.

However, the sad fact is this is all they have to offer. This is the approach to news they have crafted to appeal to the Pinot Noir Democratic audience and they don’t know how to do much else. So, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a different approach to emerge this election cycle.

(Cross posted at The Iconic Midwest)

Recycling

Readers may remember my post in which I described the efforts of the Democrats to make Denver a “green” convention. They deployed an army (or a regiment, at least) of 900 volunteers to “help” delegates sort their recyclables. No, really, they did. But they left it up to the Republicans to do the heavy duty recycling. It seems the Democrats took thousands upon thousands - as many as 12,000 - American flags, put them into trash bags and threw them into dumpsters.

This morning, Republicans tell me that a worker at Invesco Field in Denver saved thousands of unused flags from the Democratic National Convention that were headed for the garbage. Guerrilla campaigning. They will use these flags at their own event today in Colorado Springs with John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Before McCain speaks today, veterans will haul these garbage bags filled with flags out onto the stage — with dramatic effect, no doubt — and tell the story.

“What you see in the picture I sent you is less than half of total flags,” a Republican official emailed. “We estimate the total number to be around 12,000 small flags and one full size 3×5 flag.”

I’m not sure what the DNC was supposed to do with unused hand-flags, frankly. But the Republicans are obviously questioning someone’s patriotism here.

Contrary to that little snark at the end, it is quite clear what they could have done with the unwanted flags. They could have - no - should have - given them to the local American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars to reuse and/or dispose of properly. Or they could have donated them to the nearest National Cemetery.

Just about anything but throw them into the trash to be hauled away to a landfill.

What this shows is what the Democrats think the flag is: just something to use as window dressing, another prop to be discarded just like Obama’s fake Greek Temple. It also shows that the people shown waving those flags on camera had no use for them after the photo-op. They didn’t even want them as souvenirs.

Absolutely brilliant way to damage yourselves, Democrats. The funny thing is, even a lot of your party members will not be happy about this. This was bone-deep stupid. You deserve the bashing you are already getting.

Frankly, if the Republicans are smart, they will ship those flags to every single campaign event for the next two months and tell the story to every audience. Then donate them as suggested above.

UPDATE: The link has updated to include the Democrat’s response. As the reporter points out, the original finder of the flags thinks both the Republican take on the events and Democratic response are a bit too much. The fact is that the flags were not taken care of and would have been thrown away had the finder of them not intervened. A mistake, a dropped detail, by the Dems? Maybe. Maybe. But the excuses do not negate the fact that the flags were not taken care of properly. That is a detail that should not have been overlooked. Period. This is literally a phone call to take care of. I’m not really impressed by the Democrat’s war room response on this. Have the Republicans jumped on this as an issue? Yup. Rightfully so. The Democrats gave them the club they are getting beaten with.

A Reflection

I’ve been making my morning reading rounds and have been thinking about what is out there today. I predicted when the savage attacks on Sarah Palin began that there would be a backlash. Lo and behold, that backlash has happened. Sarah Palin is now viewed favorably by more people than is Barack Obama.

Another thought occurred to me this morning as well, the left and the media (yes, I know that’s redundant, at least for many of the media outlets) have accomplished one thing with their vitriol.

They have steadily eroded what little credibility they had prior to this.

By unleashing a steady stream of sewage, more and more people are convinced the media is anything but reliable. Let’s just take a look at what one media outlet has chosen to report today, shall we? Ben Smith at The Politico files this piece (which is pointing to another Politico article):

PALMER, Alaska — The liberal blogosphere was abuzz Friday with news that a friend of Sarah and Todd Palin had tried to seal his divorce records.

Surely, the Netroots speculated, that friend must be the unnamed business partner whom this week’s edition of the National Enquirer alleges — without proof so far — was romantically linked to Palin. The McCain campaign’s characterization of the story as a “vicious lie” seemed to only fuel more speculation.

And then the moment of truth, as the motion to seal was denied.

The filings, housed in a district courthouse in this town about eight miles east of the Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, contained a lot of hot news — presuming, that is, you’re interested in the child-custody agreement reached by Scott Richter and his ex-wife Deborah Richter, or in the former couple’s holdings, which include a recreational property that Scott owns with Sarah and Todd Palin.

That hasn’t stopped a stream of journalists and couriers from NBC, the Los Angeles Times, Court TV and other outlets (including this reporter, presently serving as Politico’s Alaska bureau) from making their way to the Palmer courthouse to photocopy, at 25 cents a page, the 75 or so pages in the Richters’ marriage dissolution file.

So, do you get that? The major media is cheerfully copying the divorce file of some poor guy - who is NOT a public figure - for no reason at all. They know it, but they flock in droves to copy it anyway. Thus the media demonstrates what? That it will do anything to damage Sarah Palin? Its lack of judgment? Its lack of ethics? Its complete absence of a sense of decency and respect for the privacy of others?

Yeah, all that. Plus a complete loss of credibility.

What about the lefty bloggers, then? The more sane elements of the left have been trying to warn their colleagues that their attacks were in serious danger of backfiring, yet all too many of them continued on regardless of the risk. One after another of their lies have been proven to be just that, yet they keep right on going. Little Energizer Bunnies of slime production.

As a result, they have presented lies, smears, stuff they made up out of the whole cloth and what looks more and more like the insane rantings of people off their medications. Many of the leftwing blogs that have indulged in this orgy of lies are the same ones who ardently support Barack Obama - and who have been ardently courted by the Obama campaign. What does that say about that campaign’s collective judgment?

It’s all so hopey-changey, isn’t it?

(Links via Memeorandum)