The coordinated right wing assault on the media, and the mega-marketing of Sarah Palin, is in full swing. Step one: intimidate the press into giving her only positive, glowing coverage, and scare them out of pursuing stories related to her family. Mission? Not accomplished. Instead, the bully boy tactics risk provoking a serious journo backlash.
 Step two: hide Sarah from the mainstream media. According to campaign spokesbarbie Nicole Wallace, Sarah doesn't need to talk to the press and that "the American people will learn all they need to know (and all they deserve to know) from Palin's scripted speeches and choreographed appearances on the campaign trail and in campaign ads." So there! Instead, she will be inserted into key swing markets, where she can help John McCain finally draw the big crowds he craves (and that he tried to get by glomming onto Barack Obama in his silly "town halls," and generating lots of local free media. Meanwhile, John Mac Daddy is pimping Sarah out to 30 fundraisers in 60 days.
And now, the right is going after Oprah Winfrey, who came out in support of Barack Obama during hte primaries, igniting a furor from some of her female fans. From Drudge this morning:
Oprah Winfrey may have introduced Democrat Barack Obama to the women of America -- but the talkshow queen is not rushing to embrace the first woman on a Republican presidential ticket!
Oprah's staff is sharply divided on the merits of booking Sarah Palin, sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.
"Half of her staff really wants Sarah Palin on," an insider explains. "Oprah's website is getting tons of requests to put her on, but Oprah and a couple of her top people are adamantly against it because of Obama."
One executive close to Winfrey is warning any Palin ban could ignite a dramatic backlash!
It is not clear if Oprah has softened her position after watching Palin's historic convention speech. And this update:
OPRAH'S STATEMENT: "The item in today's Drudge Report is categorically untrue. There has been absolutely no discussion about having Sarah Palin on my show. At the beginning of this Presidential campaign when I decided that I was going to take my first public stance in support of a candidate, I made the decision not to use my show as a platform for any of the candidates. I agree that Sarah Palin would be a fantastic interview, and I would love to have her on after the campaign is over." But don't look for that to be the end of it. The right, particularly talk radio and the blogs, will now beat up on Oprah daily, and eventually, probably on Limbaugh, it will get racial. And the story will trigger a battle within the ranks of the media, too (it has already begun,) which will distract us into a war between the O and the B (barracuda, I mean...) Because in the end, what the right WANTS is a fist-fight with the media, with Oprah, with the "elite" blacks and effete "libs" (and lowly community organizers) who support Obama, and with anyone they can make noise attacking, because as long as the MSM is clanging and banging about the Oprah wars, they're not talking substantively about the one in ten Americans who are late on their mortgages or in forclosure, the 6.1 percent unemployment rate and eight straight months of job losses, Jack Abramoff, the mess in Iraq, including our government spying on the government we installed there, the fact that John McCain and his party and president and fellow Republicans have been in charge of this mess for 12 years between the Congress and the White House or ... well ... Sarah Palin, and whether she's even remotely qualified to possibly have to take on the biggest job in the country.
As McCain's campaign manager said: this election will not be about issues, it will be about personas, and the battle to write the narratives for the four people on the ballot is on.
In the end, maybe they'll even beat Oprah into submission and get Sarah on her show, which will produce HUGE ratings and even more talk about ... Sarah Palin ... maybe they'll prompt "The View" to schedule her with dispatch, producing still more big ratings, and getting Palin in front of as many potential women voters as possible, which they hope will excite even MORE winger women (and swing voting women) into voting for her ... I mean ... John McCain.
And that's the way the right plans to win this election. When it's over, you won't know anything more about her than you've seen in her speech, their press releases, the mythology and hype, and the lone interviews she will likely do, not with real reporters, but on Fox News (and probably on right wing talk radio, too.)
Watch for it.
The right simply does this better than the left, and its how they convince ordinary people to keep them in power, even as they're screwing them. It worked when they sold you George W. Bush -- twice -- and it's still working to make you lionize Ronald Reagan. It's a game that I've never seen the Democrats out-play them in (except maybe the Clintons, but that wasn't deft myth-making, it was pure Bill charisma.)
| Labels: 2008 election, John McCain, Oprah, right wing message machine, Sarah Palin |
