By Carter Clews
There’s this thing called “The Darwin Award.” It’s given to sheer idiots who manage to shoot themselves in the foot (usually fatally) in a manner so embarrassing that they’re usually better off dead.
One such award recently went to 30-yer-old Krystof Azninski, a Polish farmer who after a long night of drinking with friends suggested they strip naked and play some “men’s games”. Initially they hit each other over the head with frozen turnips, but then one man upped the ante by seizing a chainsaw and cutting off the end of his foot. Not to be outdone, Azninski grabbed the saw and, shouting “Watch this then,” he and chopped off his own head.
Enter the mainstream media and their anything-but-warm welcome to one Sarah Palin, now of Anchorage, Alaska—and, perhaps, one day to be of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That Mrs. Palin may now be positioned to be “movin’ on up” to the West Wing can be attributed in no small part to the delirious denizens of the leftwing media—and an angry populace thoroughly repulsed by the media’s ill-fated attempt at a chainsaw massacre.
(“Pardon me, Katie, but I wonder if you could hand me the chainsaw? Keith Olbermann over here wants to take a whack at his own head right before I hand it to the editors of US Weekly who have gathered the entire staff out on the parking lot for a little self-decapitation party.”)
Lest you have any doubt about the media’s failed attempt at veepacide, here are the facts of the matter. According to the highly respected Rasmussen Polls, more than half of the American people say that the media has been deliberately trying to hurt Sarah Palin. And those poll reports came out before the Governor’s blockbuster speech Wednesday evening!
Now, there’s no need to go into any great detail here about the mainstream media’s feeding frenzy on what they clearly hoped would soon be the rotting corpse of Gov. Palin. Apparently having been enraptured by far too many Jack London tales of decaying carrion in the frozen tundra, they descended like rabid, ravenous wolves on Mrs. Palin’s mortal remains. Unfortunately for them, Mrs. Palin’s mortal remains were far from mortally wounded. And now, she may be immortally ensconced in the annals of history.
In sum, the hoi poloi of the mainstream media first decided to attack Mrs. Palin for choosing to have a baby whom they considered flawed merchandise. Then, when that backfired, they decided to spread the rumor that the baby wasn’t Sarah’s at all; she had deceptively claimed the offspring of her own daughter. When the selfsame daughter then turned up pregnant with her own baby, the media attacked both Sarah and her daughter for daring to spawn a child out of wedlock. This being the very same media who giggle and goggle at their fellow celebrities who do so on a routine basis, that ploy didn’t play too well either.
So, then, they just sputtered that, well, they hated her anyway—largely because (thanks be to God) she wasn’t one of them.
(“Meredith, when you’re done with the chainsaw, can you hand it to the crew over at The View? Ms. Hasselbeck, you’ll be needing to step back a little there.”)
And how did the media hate-fest sit with the general public (and remember: all of the following findings are before Ms. Palin’s match-game convention speech)?
• One in every four Americans said that the media’s attack dog stories on Sarah Palin made them more likely to vote for the governor.
• Better than one in three said that vice-presidential nominee Palin was better experienced to be president of the United States than Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
• And after nearly a week of being inundated with the mainstream media’s daily we-hate-Sarah barrage, a full 52% of the American people said they had a favorable opinion of Alaska’s governor.
(“Excuse me, Campbell Brown, could you hand me the chainsaw please? I know you’re not quite done, but the whole gang over at 60 Minutes has been waiting so patiently – and at their age, you just can’t afford to stand in line too long.”)
The mainstream media just never seem to get it, do they? The broadcast news networks see their ratings fall to the point where the only people left watching are still using TV antennas. The cable nets see Fox beat their ratings like a bad drum. The nation’s “newspapers of record” barely sell enough copies for fish wrap. And they still think the American people want to watch and read the peevish leftwing views of a bunch of bilious, bumptious prima donnas.
(“Ummm, Katie, could you kind of pass the chainsaw for a second—no, I’ll give it right back, I can see your head is only half off. It’s just that Chrissy Matthews over here needs to whack off his head to stop the tingling in his left leg. No, forget Andrew Sullivan over there—he’s just going to have to use the paring knife he usually uses for self-flagellation.”)
As bad as the Palin results are for the mainstream media, the results of earlier Rasmussen polls pertaining to their overall credibility (or, more precisely, lack of the same) portend even worse for the prima donnas’ future employment. Here’s a direct quote from the Rasmussen Report, “The [Palin] findings, nevertheless, are troublesome for the embattled news industry and parallel what voters said in surveys earlier this summer. Sixty-eight percent (68%) of voters now believe most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win, and 49% believe reporters are trying to help Obama this year. Only 14% think they are trying to help McCain.”
Clearly, that’s not good for a mainstream news media that stakes its entire claim to fame (and profits) on its self-styled reputation as the unbiased arbiter of world events (an unbiased arbiter, one might add, that can’t even get straight who’s carrying which baby). And, actually, it gets even worse. Here, again, from Rasmussen is the coup de grace, “In another survey, 55% said media bias is a bigger problem for the electoral process than large campaign donations.”
So, there you have it. So miserably have the reigning poobahs of the mainstream media fatally shot themselves in the foot that the majority of the American people are now convinced that the very element of modern electioneering the media have portrayed as the root of all evil—the bugaboo of money—is seen as less a threat than its own bias.
(“Say, Wolfe, did you ever get all the blood off the blades old Dan left behind when he whacked himself over little Georgie’s Texas Air National Guard records? Just needed to know because, as we all know, Diane Sawyer never could stand Captain Dan, and she says that before she fires up the chainsaw, she wants to make sure it’s clean enough to make a sharp cut … What’s that? Well you tell little Alan Colmes that he’ll just have to wait his turn. That’s what he gets for going with Fox!”)
Somewhere this week in the far reaches of the Polish outback, a group of hard-bitten farmers was gathered around the bar watching Sarah Palin deliver her convention address. They then watched the mainstream media continue to vengefully hack away at this poised and polished lady. And shaking their heads in disbelief, they said to each other in utter astonishment, “And we thought old Krystof was an idiot.”
Carter Clews is the Executive Editor of ALG News.