“Later that day, Carney — who last week had a much-buzzed about interview with McCain in which the candidate became testy, and refused to answer some questions — told Politico that the McCain campaign is acting ‘condescending and smug’ toward the press.”
Well, that’s a bummer. Yet another plus of the Palin selection is that the McCain campaign has tapped into the American peoples’ distaste with the popular news media. Conservatives will argue that Americans are tired of liberal news coverage - which may have a grain of truth to it. But I think the larger frustration we see in the public comes from the sense of entitlement and arrogance modern journalists display in general.
Just in this article, Michael Calderone runs down the list of “top” reporters that will be hitting the Palin trail hard - as if most readers even know who these people are, never mind care. People are tired of the action movie music, the whipping cameras and dizzying scene changes, the shouting round tables and faux aggressive reporting, the never ending obsession that journalists have with their own careers at the expense of real news. Nine times out of ten it’s about the reporter telling the story rather than the actual story itself. Destroy people, destroy families, destroy careers, shamelessly promote yourself and focus on tearing everyone else down to build up your own career.
The end result is that Americans love the fact that Palin and McCain are ignoring and dirting the reporters. Smug? It’s a taste of their own medicine. As John Malkovich once noted, “no one has thinner skins than journalists, in my experience, and I come from a family of them…” Also, it plays right into the McCain strategy of taking it to the Washington establishment. Reporters in the press corps don’t necessarily see themselves as part of this establishment but of course, that’s part of the problem.
Eventually, Palin will have to go on the record and do some interviews. Sigh… For now though, riding this wave of popularity and backlash against the media is a great move. Think of it like a waterslide or an ice cream cone - short lived, but fun while it lasts.