I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m sick of the all the media coverage of Sarah Palin.
This will be my only comment on this topic. We’re so inundated with Sarah Palin news on the media these days that it is now quite easy for me to return to my real life without watching any news at all.
Prior to the 2008 election, I had stopped watching any news, except for an occasional view of BBC America. What prompted me to totally stop watching? Well, basically the totally biased coverage of the 2000 election was the beginning of the end for me. I felt – as many Republicans complain of now – that the media coverage at that time had a biased slant toward Bush, and not so much Gore. They were more fixated on Clinton’s morality than on Gore. But I continued to watch, even after the election – with one exception. I have never been able to watch and listen to Bush speak. Some say he is intelligent, however I’ve never seen any evidence of that when he speaks. So, whenever he came on the news, I would simply change the channel. As news coverage continued to feature him – the less I watched the news. I never watched any of his State of the Union addresses. Just couldn’t stomach watching or listening.
Then, 9/11 happened. And we all were fixated on that event and the political issues surrounding it. However, I still clicked to any non-news program as soon as Bush came on.
Then the 2004 election. Again, biased coverage toward Bush, against Kerry. So, since I had made my decision to vote for Kerry, and didn’t need the aggravation of biased news coverage – I simply stopped watching the news altogether.
Fast forward to the 2008 Democratic Convention. Since I had stopped watching the news, and the Democratic candidate was Barack Obama, I needed to know more about him. I had hoped that Hillary Clinton would have been the candidate, but that just didn’t happen. I also only knew what people I knew had hinted to along with my own questions about a man with such an unusual name, and how he raised so much money.
After watching the convention, I knew he was the right candidate. A man who can actually articulate thoughts intelligently! How refreshing. I was also impressed that he had graduated from both Columbia and Harvard. And he did so on his own with scholarships and student loans. Yes, he was a community organizer – you know where his heart is. He was a person we can be proud of to represent us to the rest of the world, and that is very important.
What was even more exciting was that I found MSNBC. A station that now had news people who were actually FOR my candidate. I fell in love with Chris Matthews, Keith Oberman and Rachel Maddow. I became addicted to MSNBC. While most other main stream media stations were more positive about Obama, they still didn’t have the heart I found at MSNBC. I was watching Chris, Keith and Rachel almost all night – every show and repeat!
Then the announcement of Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate. It was clear, from the very first Katie Couric interview, that this was another Bush – a person who can’t articulate her thoughts, (if she has any), or think on her feet. It was obvious to me that she was picked because she’s “pretty”, and because she is a woman and the Republicans thought they could win Hillary supporters on that basis. How out of touch can anyone be to think that Sarah Palin comes even close to the character and accomplishments of Hillary Clinton?
Then media coverage turned into the non-stop Sarah Pain show. I don’t even want to go into all the lies she spouted, or her actual connections of palling around with radical secessionist groups. But I do want to say, that I was amazed at the lack of media coverage of these facts.
While I applaud Keith Oberman and Rachel Maddow on their coverage of this issue, I was disgusted that Chris Matthews did not. Even when come of his guests mentioned the topic of her connection to AIK, he would “sush” them. Chris was enamored with Sarah from the beginning – she’s so pretty.
The most irritating thing during the campaign was that the amount of time MSNBC gave to covering Palin and McCain was far greater than to Obama and Biden.
And the fascination with Sarah Palin continues. Can’t we just let her go the way of Geraldine Ferraro? Maybe they’ve all been “bewitched”.
Maybe it’s a good thing. I’m now almost back to my regular life, watching anything but the news all day. I’ve tried watching Chris, but he’s still infatuated with Sarah – and while Keith and Rachel do focus on other issues – they can’t seem to help themselves. I’m down to watching less than one of their shows each. As soon as Sarah appears – I click to something else – anything else. The thrill of watching all the show repeats has definitely gone.
I’m not surprised to hear that their ratings fell – when we all click to something else – they have no viewers. I’ll try watching, I do like their coverage of everything else. But just know – that as soon as Sarah comes on – I’m gone.
Late Boomer Views 