Gov. Sarah Palin Comes Out Swinging

Prime time viewers got their first look at Republican VP designate Gov. Sarah Palin -- and she came out swinging.

I'm really surprised at the attacks Republicans are leveling at the media. Gov. Palin went after them tonight, and Sen. McCain and his spokespeople earlier. McCain has always seemed to receive pretty favorable coverage from the media, but for some reason the campaign has now decided to go on the attack.

I think it's more in response to the great speeches we heard from the Democratic convention last week. Clearly the Republicans have to try and hide from the past eight years, so maybe the best way to do that is to try and play "the victim" card and claim the media is biased.

Joe Klein posted a pretty strong response to this:

The story of the day out here in Minneapolis is the McCain campaign's war against the press. This has been building for some time. Those of us who have criticized the candidate--and especially those of us who enjoyed good relations with McCain in the past--have been subject to off-the-record browbeating and attempted bullying all year. But things have gotten much worse in recent days: there was McCain's rude, bizarre interview with Time Magazine last week. Yesterday, McCain refused to an interview with Larry King, for God's sake, because Campbell Brown had been caught in the commission of journalism on CNN the night before, asking McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds what decisions Sarah Palin had made as commander-in-chief of the Alaska national guard. (There was an answer that the unprepared Bounds didn't have: she had deployed them to fight fires.) [...]

There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God." The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.

Good for you, Joe!

I also have to comment, however, on the apparent awakening the media has on the issue of sexism. CNN's Campbell Brown, who just yesterday took on McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds in what some are describing as 'finally doing her job', has suddenly decided that sexist comments are really offensive. Apparently a spokesperson for Sen. Harry Reid described Gov. Palin's speech as "shrill." Brown, looking to Gloria Borger for affirmation, commented that shrill is never used to describe men, only women. Gee, I wonder why she didn't think of that when it was being leveled at Sen. Hillary Clinton? Come to think of it, a lot of the commentators have suddenly decided that their might be sexism in some of the coverage of women candidates. Get outta town!

I hope the MSM will heed Klein's advise and not let up on the McCain/Palin ticket. The public needs to know exactly how they plan to dig the country out of the mess left behind by George W. Bush.