In his column in the Post-Gazette this week, Jack Kelly defends, yet again, his favorite ex (because you know she quit) Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin.
Specifically he's writing about the pile of emails of hers recently released by the State of Alaska. And he starts with three examples of praise from the media. Take a look:
Emails from Sarah Palin's time as Alaska governor "show a double-fisted Blackberry user fully comfortable with handling nearly every aspect of state government," wrote the McClatchy Newspapers.The point he's trying to make, of course, is that the emails showed Palin to be anything other than what the lame stream media portrays her to be and now once they've been made public even that same lame stream media is forced to be honest and to show her in a good light.
The emails paint "a picture of her as an idealistic, conscientious, humorous and humane woman slightly bemused by the world of politics," said Toby Harnden of the London Telegraph.
"She comes across as practical and not doctrinaire," wrote Molly Ball in Politico. "She was hands-on and adverse to partisan politics."
This was not what some journalists expected to write. "If critics were hoping to see Palin revealed as a hypocrite, they're out of luck," said Ms. Ball. "Her private statements are in line with her public ones."
Oh the stuff Jack leaves out. Take a look at what in the very next two paragraphs in that McClatchy piece:
But long before she became a national figure, the documents also hint at the obsession Palin had with managing her image - and the frustration the prolific e-mailer had with the news coverage of her governorship.Or this from Harden of the Telegraph:
She came into office with a January 2007 reminder to members of her staff that they should feel free to "share your opinions, speak freely to the press, public, legislators, one another, etc." But that changed as time went on. A little more than a year later, she ghostwrote a proposed letter to the editor of the Anchorage Daily News - quoting herself - in reply to a complaint that she had failed to appear at the 2008 Miss Alaska pageant.
To an extent, the emails remind Americans of the person they saw take the stage at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota nearly three years ago – refreshing, plain-speaking, open and uncomplicated.Or this from Molly Ball at Politico:
Since then, her image has hardened into one of a brittle, even paranoid, politician who seethes with resentment, feels aggrieved and entitled and is intent on pursuing celebrity even at the expense of her family.
Once, there was a different Sarah Palin.Such praise.
She was hands-on and averse to partisan politics. She championed openness in government and had normal relations with the media. She was a little starstruck by her interactions with national politicians but unafraid to do battle with the chief executives of the world’s largest oil companies.
The emails from her governorship, released Friday, brought back the memory of a long-lost Palin: the popular, charismatic, competent woman of the people.
This was the vice presidential candidate John McCain’s team thought they were getting, before her darker tendencies — defensiveness, thin skin, grudge-keeping — hardened into tics. Together with the newly released, pro-Palin documentary “The Undefeated,” which focuses on her rise to the spotlight, the emails are reminders of a sympathetic figure who was not yet the brittle, divisive caricature Palin has become.
His larger point is that any positive coverage of Palin (like his) is a reliable picture of reality and any negative coverage is just so much more of the Palin Derangement Syndrome. Coverage that doesn't need to be taken seriously.
Jack is certainly reliable in his support of the failed Governor of Alaska but how realistic is he?
When has have to selectively quote his positive coverage in order to make it, in fact, postive, what does that say about the subject matter?
