If you listen to the comments, you notice that it sounds like a few of the technicians talking to a reporter.  Regardless of what people think of the media, I think everyone can agree that the men and women who run the wires, operate the cameras, or just pack up and unpack the gear are ordinary folk.

The interesting thing about this story is that when ordinary folk heard her speak, they were not impressed.  It wasn’t that they thought she was *right* or *wrong.*  It was that they thought there was *nothing there* for them to sink their teeth into.  They wanted to give her ideas a chance to be considered, but she flat out had none.  That was the main gist of the comments.

For the record, the most telling comment of all was:

Her speech was kind of like a bad college term paper, where “you just try to jam as many quotes in as possible, from as many random things.”

to Janette:  The men & women who run the wires may not be ordinary folks..how can you make that determination?  These men that made the snyde remarks are most likely Dems/liberals and intentionally made those negative comments without really ‘listening’ to Sarah’s comments.  I feel she gets over our heads and as you said the ‘ordinary’ folks can’t grasp what she is trying to warn us of &  what is happening to the U.S. right before our eyes.  Your eyes & ears are evidently closed and not listening to what is happening to America. 
Listen to her speech again, without hate being your first thought.

How about rather than hoping journalists be more charitable, we ask them to be blunter and more honest to their readers.

They should be willing to write down what Janette described in their stories, not play along with political theater and be complicit in Palin’s (and other politicians’) lack of information/knowledge.

Barb,

Your logic is circular: You’re saying that because someone is critical of Palin, therefore they are liberals and didn’t listen to her and set it up.

What evidence do you have for that?

She’s a dynamic speaker and quite attractive.  Poor student in college, quit her more recent job, and is very minimally informted about facts in key national and international political and economic issues

PS - I am a liberal. That doesn’t make what I wrote in the paragraph above less true.  You can dismiss my opinion of her policies if you want, but it’s a fact that she did floated around in school, quit her job, etc.

It probably has to do with her manner of speaking which doesn’t sound like a Harvard grad and of course the media types do not like her virtuous (pro life) stance.  She has not ventured too deeply into substance issues to the point where one can decide that she has the intellectual prowess to address issues that are expected of presidential candidates. 
    On the other hand, in this context, it is interesting that the media have not demanded substance from our president.  He speaks in a commanding and charming way but speaks in sound bites and statistics or speaks in a way that he knows will result in the audience having a different take than that the direction in which he intends to go.  For example, during the house healthcare bill process, he spoke of many issues such as abortion, keeping your doctor etc while you can read in the bill in front of you the opposite.  Careful review of his speech shows that he was referring to “his” healthcare bill which didn’t exist.  So was he lying or being disenguous?

It has become apparent to me that media in the US isn’t impartial any longer.  IF reporters reported instead of providing opinion pieces, the general public would have a fact set from which conclusions could be drawn.  Unfortunately, what I take away from reporting today is a less than thorough job of tracking down facts and presenting them so the reading public can make informed decisions. I resent being made to feel that media types think the rest of us are too stupid to understand the facts and draw appropriate conclusions - instead, it seems like we’re being told what to think.  That makes the media a slave to whatever group controls the sources of information, and no longer a free media.  No free media, no free country.

I am not Sarah Palin’s biggest fan, and I do not feel that she was the best choice for the VP nominee on the Republican ticket, but I have to admit to rooting for her and cheering for her mainly due to the media’s constant slamming of her and their constant and very often unfair criticism of her. I believe that she exhibits uncommon grace under fire and I believe that she represents much more of America than our disdainful media elites would like to believe.
I cheer Sarah Palin on and wish the best for her and her family.

Obama takes five minutes to spit out every 12 words, probably so we dopes listening can digest each word and worship his genius. Never mind that he’s been caught in lie after lie (he denied his role in killing an anti- infanticide bill in Illinois repeatedly, for example, until video proof was shown on Fox, still denies public funding of abortion in the healthcare bill despite evidence in the bill itself, etc.), this guy can do no wrong as far as the media is concerned.

Sarah Palin must be a threat to the liberals or they wouldn’t spend so much time trying to trash her.

JT: Your point about her lackluster performance in college might be received better if you hadn’t had at least three errors in grammar/spelling.

She may have had a “lackluster” performance in college—much was made of her “floating” through different schools and the like—but little mention is made of the reasons why she took a long time to get through college. It wasn’t because she wasn’t smart enough; it was because she was determined to go to college on her own dime and not be in debt when she graduated. Therefore, she (and several others like her) took “time off” between terms that was spent working for the next term’s money. If more of our kids would do this instead of “pursuing their education” straight through only to end up with five-figure debt at the end of it, I suspect many of the problems we have with ignorant children voting for folks like Obama would have been nipped in the bud. It’s way easier to believe vague promises of “hope” and “change,” way easier to give a guy who talks like a professor a “pass,” and way easier to get on the sheep-bandwagon when you haven’t had to see, with your own eyes, the results of policies like Democratic tax-and-spend.

It’s also baffling to me how people can say that Palin’s never given them anything “solid” or “of substance” when they’re willing to give Obama a pass for exactly the same deficiency—plus accept his lies without the slightest challenge. Whatever happened to the “open hearings” there were going to be on the healthcare bill? Remember the “broadcast it on CNN” promise? CNN didn’t even call him on that, and it was their network that was supposed to cover it!

Double standard? Uhhh…yeah. I think so.

Janny: If Palin were serious about her education, she would not have jumped around to different schools. You do not have to change schools to earn money. Students who jump from one school to another are usually in academic difficulty or are unable to determine what to do with their lives. She did not attend schools with any rigorous curriculums either. She flitted around with schools just as she has done in her so-called “career” (in which she has failed). She has nothing of substance to say, only bashing and lies with no facts to back up her claims. It is disturbing that people actually listen to this dangerous idiot!

THere isn’t a more dangerous a politician out there than the one in the White House !!!!!!!!!

It has become amusing to me to see people jump on the media-motivated ant-Sarah Palin band wagon.

Sarah Palin stands for nothing substantive?

Just cutting taxes.

Being open to life, even a child with Down’s and her first grandchild, both of whom were very politically inconvenient.

You all deserve what you get- Obama and his deathcare, proabortion, tax us ‘til we’re dead policies. Look in the mirror and you will see the culprit.

Carol, said, “She has nothing of substance to say, only bashing and lies with no facts to back up her claims. It is disturbing that people actually listen to this dangerous idiot!”

Carol, if she is such an “idiot” with “nothing of substnce to say,” why do you sound so upset and angry? 

Also, Carol, what “facts” do you have “to back up” your “claims” that Sarah is only “bashing” and telling “lies?”

@JT

“Quit her recent job” is a sound bite that that does not at the complex political situation in Alaska in 2009. The Democrats were out to get her scalp as were many of the members of her own party. Her success had been because she had Democratic allies. Now they deserted her.Not only that the National Democratic Party had started a full court press to ruin her reputation and threw tons of money into the effort.  If they had been smart, they would have let her sink and swim in very treacherous waters and probably she would have been marginalized.  Why didn’t they?  Because she had earned a very large following during the campaign and buoyed up a campaign that sank like a stone after McCain blundered his response to the financial crisis. That she sized up the situation well is shown by what happened after her resignation.  The Book Tour was a smashing success and it rode the growing wave of Tea Party anger at Obama’s whole approach to government.  No, she will never give erudite speeches, but she is the best stump speaker around. yes, she is trading on glamour, but—and I guess you are too young to remember—so did Jack Kennedy.  As to substance, let us not forget that while Jack was intelligent,he was anything but an intellectual. From his college days on, he profited from access to ghost writers hired by his Dad.  The book that early gave him a claim to fame, “While England Slept,” was if not ghosted then heavily edited by professional writers as was “Profiles in Courage,” for which he received a Pulitzer (undserved as we know know.

But of course we are dealing with a living and I say growing and talented politician. She may or may not be in over her head, but what she brings to the table is a lot of political savy, how much remains to be seen. I don’t think she intended to be running for President in 2012 when she accepted the nomination, but just wanted to get on the national stage. So far she is doing better there than Romney who clearly doesn’t know what he is doing. Mostly something like a dark horse will emerge, but so far no other politician has shown her speed.

John Schuh, well stated.