Why The Media Is So Mad At McPalin

The media is getting mad. Their Chosen One's star is starting to fade and they don't like it one bit. With a crafty bit of footwork, Obama sidelined Clinton but McCain saw a gap in the market and along came Wonder Woman. 

The media darling is now trailing in the polls but it wasn't supposed to turn out like this.

The pitbull with lipstick is wowing TV audiences and McCain, the Vietnam war hero, brings nothing but admiration.

McCain's strategy of attacking media bias is starting to pay off, with the media now accusing the McCain camp of manipulating them. That's rich. Obama has been manipulating the media for years. But now the boot's on the other foot. 

Obama's manipulation didn't make the media mad though, because journalists and commentators were willing accomplices to try to get Obama elected. It's the thought that McCain could be manipulating them that has the media seeing red.

Political journalists, including the Orange Party have seen it all coming for a while and now it's happening can be forgiven for just a slight wry smile.

Voters are seeing through Obama as Chicago's Mr Cellophane. Charles Krauthammer, writing in Real Clear Politics, describes Obama's 'Altitude Sickness' as a fading celebrity. 

"The Democrats are in a panic. In a presidential race that is impossible to lose, they are behind. Obama devotees are frantically giving advice. Tom Friedman tells him to "start slamming down some phones." Camille Paglia suggests, "be boring!"

Howard Kurtz, in the Washington Post, is surprisingly blunt for a Democrat. The mainstream media, Kurtz says, are mad.

"The more interesting question is whether Obama is starting to come apart at the seams ... Over the last couple of days, several generally apolitical people have told me that they think Obama has been melting down ever since Palin's nomination was announced. Hysteria does appear to be sweeping the Obama camp, with over the top attacks on both Palin and McCain. One wonders whether their internal polling numbers are really, really bad."

The attack on Palin has been unprecedented in US presidential elections. The truth is that Palin has been the object of the most vicious and concerted smear campaign in modern American history.

Democratic lawyers, reporters, bloggers and assorted Obamaphiles have descended on Alaska for something, anything, to bring down Palin.

One fascinating line of attack was the soon discredited line that Palin hadn't been vetted by Republicans and that turned into another own goal. 

Obama has neatly side-stepped the vetting process for the Democrats. If he had been properly vetted he would not have stood a chance for nomination - there are just too many skeletons lurking in the cupboard.

US political commentators, not in the pay or the pockets of either camps,  are picking up on all this and asking the question now asked by voters. If Palin and indeed McCain are fair or unfair game. Why not Obama? 

The fact is that they've been sat on. The lawsuit over Obama's eligibility to stand for president has been highlighted by the Orange Party  here and picked up by some. But that's as far as it goes, for the moment. 

More importantly, Obama's links to the Annenberg Foundation and Weather Underground bomber, William Ayes, got an airing in McCain US TV ads, before the lawsuits arrived and pressure was put on to pull the ads. 

Melanie Philips, writing in the Spectator, is one of the few to give a detailed account of Obama's time as a Chicago 'community organiser'.

Meanwhile over at Power Line:

"One star fades, another is born. The very next morning McCain picks Sarah Palin and a new celebrity is launched. And in the celebrity game, novelty is trump." 

The media is seizing on anything to try to discredit McCain and Palin and rightfully challenging false or questionable claims by the McCain campaign. 

But claims and falsehoods by the Obama campaign aren't what the press is "getting mad" about and reporters have no intention of reporting them.

It's not too hard to diagnose why "the media are getting mad." Power Line  sums up with their usual astute vitriol: 

"They're getting mad because their candidate is losing. They've spent years building him up and covering for his mistakes and shortcomings, and he is such a stiff that he can't coast across the finish line. I'd be mad too, I guess, but I think I'd have the decency not to take it out on Sarah Palin."

It's all in the timing. The Obama machine managed to keep up the momentum for four years. For McCain and Palin their job is easier. They only have to remain airborne for a few more weeks. 

In the US elections, it's only the finish that counts. And the voters just want a strong commander-in-chief and a trusted hand on the economy.

JB Williams, in  The New Media Journal, is in no doubt that Obama is getting too easy a ride: 

"It means that if the press avoids asking those questions, they are derelict in their primary purpose of keeping the public informed. Their only task during an election cycle is to help the American people know as much as possible about those who seek to run their nation. If they won’t ask the questions, then they aren’t doing their job."