The Silence of the Lamb

I'll make this quick.

In a move sure to come as a surprise to absolutely no one, John McCain's people have basically declared Sarah Palin off-limits to most of the press. I qualify that statement because, of course, they'll be more than happy to make her available for appearances on feel-good daytime talk shows, to submit to the softballs of consumate hacks like Larry King, and to spout carefully rehearsed propaganda to the sycophantic white-noise amplifiers of Fox News. It's the real press -- the thousands of responsible journalists not guaranteed to automatically fall in line with the Palin-as-Wonder-Woman mythology and adhere to the specific GOP talking points that go along with it -- which will find itself shut out.

If you didn't see this coming, you haven't been paying attention over the last eight years.

Karl Rove and the new breed of Republican operatives who seek to emulate him have raised playing the press against itself to an art form. They know that they have nothing at all to gain and everything to lose by putting Sarah Palin in a situation they can't carefully control. They've already marginalized and demonized the media -- sowing the usual brand of horseshit distrust among the faithful that can only work to further their agenda -- so Palin's unwillingness to sit down with, say, CNN, MSNBC or the New York Times can easily be sold as a righteous stand against the press's unwillingness to give her a fair shake from the beginning. They'll make the claim that the "liberal media" have already proven that they're out to get Palin, so why give them the opportunity any further? This is of course nonsense. The GOP is pretending that Palin is the victim of vicious media smear tactics precisely to provide an excuse for keeping her out of any unscripted interviews -- interviews that would likely reveal Palin for the grossly underqualified lightweight she really is.

The Republican strategists know that the people who are going to "fall in love" with Sarah Palin won't do so because she held her own against Campbell Brown, George Stephanopoulos or BBC America's Matt Frei -- but if she were to fall flat on her face during one of these hypothetical unscripted interviews, which is a far more likely scenario, the damage to the campaign might be catastrophic. So they sell Palin, in the tawdriest of fashions, using nothing more than the cult of personality. She's the Disaster Movie of U.S. politics: not made available to critics before the release date because there's nothing to be gained from it; the fans are already lined up and excited and a bad review can only serve to turn the undecideds off.

But as with the Bush campaign of 2004 -- which staged dozens of events made to look off-the-cuff but at which, in reality, nothing was left to chance -- millions of voters wind up being screwed over, simply because the free and vital press designed to act as a watchdog against governmental abuses (or election-year deceit) is cleverly bypassed. Reporters are told that if they want access to the candidate, they need to be willing to play ball.

The press, unfortunately, went along with this kind of crap last time around. Let's hope they don't fall for it this time.

Hopefully the media's wised up and realized that they don't need to do stories that feature interviews with Sarah Palin because Sarah Palin's refusal to talk to them is the story -- and one worth shouting far and wide.

As for the Republicans keeping Palin on a short leash and meticulously engineering her image, they should realize that eventually the truth will come out -- even if it takes a debate with Joe Biden, which millions will watch, to finally get to it.

(The Huffington Post: Palin Won't Talk to Press/9.5.08)

(Update, 9.6.08: Ari Melber has a more thorough take on the Palin media blackout and the contempt coming from the McCain-Palin camp in regards to the press itself: The Huffington Post: "Palin Coward Clock Starts Ticking" by Ari Melber/9.6.08)