partially…

langer:

Jamison Foser hit a home run in today’s MediaMatters with regard to the massive orgy the media are having over Sarah Palin right now, and one part stood out for me in particular. In an exchange between MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Meet the Press host David Gregory, the latter said:

It’s extraordinary, and, I mean, she’s extraordinary from that point of view of not just the book. I mean, all this year, it’s as if she’s like a senator or something. I mean, she issues statements and posts things on Facebook as if she’s an incumbent or if she’s a candidate for something.

To which Foser appropriately responded:

Palin “posts things on Facebook” and it’s “as if she’s like a senator or something.” Yeah, “or something”: There are about 300 million people who post things on Facebook. Posting things on Facebook doesn’t mean you’re behaving like a senator; it means you’re behaving like someone who has a pulse and an Internet connection. But David Gregory finds it extraordinary and senatorial that Sarah Palin does so.

Somehow anything this woman does is remarkable to these idiots, and yet only 23 percent of the country has a favorable opinion of the woman and a whopping 71 percent think she’s not even qualified to be President.

But what really terrifies me is the following thought experiment: imagine someone who knew nothing of politics decided to take an interest in government. Imagine she had two methods at her disposal for informing herself. On the one hand, she could discuss politics with her peers. On the other, she could turn to the fourth estate for her news.

Were she to simply talk with her peers she’d have a 71% chance of running into someone who would tell her that Sarah Palin is a hack. Were she to turn to our media, however, our watchdogs, the institution on which we rely to keep our democracy healthy, she’d have a 100% chance of being told that a woman whose political experience consisted of a half-term in the Alaska statehouse and two terms in the city hall of a 5,000-person town who couldn’t name a Supreme Court case beyond Roe that she even had an opinion on was behaving senatorially by posting updates to her Facebook page.