Making 'media' sound like something legless and slithering

David Carr:

Before Gov. Sarah Palin came flying in from the wilds of Alaska for the Republican convention in St. Paul, there was a lot of sniggering in media rooms and satellite trucks about her beauty queen looks and rustic hobbies, and the suggestion that she was better suited to be a calendar model for a local auto body shop than a holder of the second-highest office in the land.

Ms. Palin, unwilling to be rendered as a caribou-skinning cartoon, stepped to the microphone on Wednesday and punched back.

“I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone,” she said.

“But here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators,” she continued. “I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion — I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country.”

When she was announced as John McCain’s running mate, I told my wife that the governor had no idea what was about to hit her. By the time she was done speaking, I realized the reverse was precisely true as well.

She was a huge hit in the room and beyond. Ms. Palin, a woman who clearly understands the power of words, had a way of pronouncing media — “MEE-de-ah” — that made it sound like something legless and slithering.

Taking a whack at the media is a well-thumbed page in the convention playbook — and with 15,000 of us on hand at both conventions, it’s tough to resist. But while Ms. Palin may be unfamiliar to the hosts of Sunday morning political shows and to readers of the letters page of The Washington Post, to readers of a whole other kind of media — particularly women’s magazines — she represents the ideal blend of femininity and toughness, mother and mayor, good girl and governor. As the saying goes, “She’s just like us.” Only better.

...

Her cultural resonance is familiar to anyone who’s ever read a fashion makeover article or clipped “Lose the Baby Fat in a Month!” But it is fundamentally different from what we’ve come to expect from women running for higher office. Senator Clinton is a politician who also happens to be a wife and mother. Ms. Palin is a wife and mother who also happens to be a politician. She is a parent of five who joyfully juggles it all, up to and including firing the chef and the driver, a kind of aspirational model that still seems attainable.

In the press galleries at the convention, journalists wrinkled their noses in disgust when Piper, Ms. Palin’s youngest daughter, was filmed kitty-licking her baby brother’s hair into place. But to many Americans — including some I talked to in the convention hall — that looked like family church on Sunday, evidence of good breeding and sibling regard.

...

Carr seems to have grasped the plot even if he did not see it coming. The initial reaction of the media to the criticism was to act wounded. Where they went wrong was failing to separate the defensible inquiry into her record from the indefensible and salacious.

At the end of the piece Carr is grappling for an answer to delegate who is worried about talking to a NY Times reporter for fear her words will be twisted into another meaning. That does not appear to be a problem in this story, and the paper seems to have come a ways since it ran three front page stories on Bristol Palin's pregnancy.

There is still a lot of residual anger toward the media for its mistreatment of Palin that could be seen at the convention and now on the campaign trail. Once they get back to reporting the events, it will probably even out.