mccain campaign sets controls over media access to sarah palin

I'm getting really disappointed in John McCain. For someone who claims not to be a regular Republican, he sure is acting like one.

It's been an increasingly trope of the Republican Party since the days of Richard Nixon to complain that the media have it in for them. We can argue and debate how much merit there is to accusations of liberal media bias, but it seems there are times conservatives like to trot this out because they don't like being caught unprepared.

For a political party that claims people need to stop blaming outside forces for their failures and find success through hard work, the GOP does like to blame negative perceptions on the news media.

Case in point: The McCain campaign has announced that Alaska Gov. and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin will no longer answer questions from reporters "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference." Gov. Palin apparently has made it a practice in the past not to talk to just any media, but only to those who put her in a favorable light.

It's not a liberal bias that makes Gov. Palin look unprepared for the big time. It's the fact that she's unprepard to answer even basic questions, even when someone like Katie Couric throws her a bunch of softballs.

The governor's answers in her interviews have shown a lack of depth and understanding and a ready defensiveness that are enough to make anyone question her fitness for the vice presidency, let alone the presidency, should McCain win and something happen to him.

Limiting press access to Palin to strictly favorable outlets disturbs me. While McCain talks about straight talk and bringing us together, actions such as this contribute to further polarizing the nation by encouraging a divide in how we get our information.

Our nation doesn't need conservative media and liberal media, we need news media, period. We also need politicians who aren't so afraid of the public that they feel a need to control how they appear in the media.

But that control is exactly what McCain is aiming for. So much for straight talk.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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When media coverage of media goes too far

Is it inappropriate for a news outlet to report that the first lady recently was tested for skin cancer? Is it appropriate for news outlet to wonder if such reporting is appropriate?

ABC News has brought both questions into focus recently with a news story that U.S. first lady Laura Bush had been treated for skin cancer. A reporter noticed that Bush had had surgery on her leg, asked her about it, and discovered that the surgery had been to remove a cancerous mole.

This is not a particularly big story, and apparently not one that the first lady had pushed, since it's a fairly personal issue and not everyone likes to draw everyone in the world into their personal battles with cancer.

Still, she's first lady and therefore highly public, she got the treatment, and someone wrote a story on it. No big deal.

What was unusual was that ABC News then did a story exploring whether that initial report had made a private matter too public. The news desk even took a poll of its online readers about whether the reporter had turned a personal matter into a public story needlessly.

If you have to ask ...

A friend of mine who likes to snark at the media predictably complained that ABC News was being idiotic and too concerned with itself. How soon we forget. This was nothing.

The ultimate in media narcissism came back during Clinton's infamous Zippergate scandal with his intern.

First came the tidal wave of coverage over the details of the scandal. Then came the surge of stories on how many media outlets were reporting all the salacious details. Lastly came an Associated Press story on how many media outlets were reporting on the oversaturation of news stories about the scandal.

The media can overdo their job, but that one really took the cake. I wish I were making it up.

Media aren't understanding the Christian Left

Here's an important fact-check point for media commentators: Being an evangelical does not make someone a conservative.

Writing for Nightline, Jake Tapper and Dan Morris discuss efforts by some evangelicals to extend the church's focus from traditional conservative  causes like opposing gay rights and abortion access, to include issues like global warming and poverty.

Not surprisingly, those making these efforts are being pushed out of the organizations they're trying to take in new directions. Tapper and Morris portray this is as a split in the conservative evangelical community.

News flash! The conservatives aren't split at all. This divide is not between Right and Right, but between the Right and the Left in Christianity. The story is the growing number of evangelicals and post-evangelicals who identify themselves with something other than the GOP.

The story is the growing awareness in the church of our responsibility to the whole message of Christ, not just to areas of morality that he never addressed himself.

Jesus never said a word in the gospels about abortion or homosexuality. But he said plenty about caring for the weak and the outcast, the poor and the downtrodden. He talked about a revolution of values that utterly transformed society so the poor were fed and the wealty were sent away hungry.

Do those sound like conservative talking points to you? Conservative voices have a place in the church, but stop pretending that they speak for all of us. They don't, and the truth is that they never did.

narnia negativity

Polly Toynbee at British newspaper The Guardian has written a most interesting critique of the new "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" movie.

The movie, which appeared in theaters last Friday, is based on the popular children's book of the same title by C.S. Lewis. The book is especially popular among Christians, who love its allegorical elements, with Aslan representing Christ; the White Witch, Satan; and her castle with stone statues, the grave with all those who died in the time before Christ came and broke the power of death.

I won't be seeing the movie until tomorrow, but still, I got a kick out of reading Toynbee's piece, because it's so laden with irony. The writer, who obviously has a serious grudge not just with Narnia with Christianity, nonetheless deserves high points for spiritual perception. She seems to understand the gospel very well:

Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to? Poor child Edmund, to blame for everything, must bear the full weight of a guilt only Christians know how to inflict, with a twisted knife to the heart. Every one of those thorns, the nuns used to tell my mother, is hammered into Jesus's holy head every day that you don't eat your greens or say your prayers when you are told. So the resurrected Aslan gives Edmund a long, life-changing talking-to high up on the rocks out of our earshot. When the poor boy comes back down with the sacred lion's breath upon him he is transformed unrecognisably into a Stepford brother, well and truly purged.

It's not the first time I've heard such complaints, but I don't get them where the faith is concerned. Jesus is revealed in the book of Revelation as the Lion of Judah, and (paradoxically) as a Lamb. The lion's glory and power is manifest in the Lamb's weakness and humility, but he's still a Lion -- and while he's not militaristic or fascist, I don't think Lewis' Narnia, for all its failings, depicts him as such.

I'm curious to see how well the movie treats the subject matter. I've heard a few people express concerns that it might be too violent, upsetting or scary for the girls in a few parts. I guess we'll find out this weekend.

(Personally, I thought Toynbee's article would have been well served with a headline like "The Chronicles of Narnia: Why I hate God, Christians, Jesus, America, and you.")

liberal media bias

I was only 6 when Carter became president, and only 10 when he lost re-election to Reagan, but I remember quite clearly that he was viewed as a dimwit for several reasons, including his mangling of the pronunciation of the word "nuclear." Other great failings on his part:

• Iran hostage crisis lasted over a year, had a badly botched rescue mission and American handling overall displayed a poor understanding of Shi'a Islam. 
• Inflation was out of control.
• Gas rationing, energy crisis.
• Went by Jimmy instead of James or Jim.
• His wife, Rosemary, had dandruff.
• His daughter, Amy, read a book at the table during a state dinner.
• Boycotted Olympics in Soviet Union to protest human rights abuses.

And the list goes on. Bush's problems with image and media treatment are hardly unique to him. Cast your memory back about six years and you might recall the media being accused of having it in for Bill Clinton in the way we covered the Monica Lewinsky affair. Clinton complained about a year into office that no other president had been picked on by the media as much as he had.

It's par for the course. Dring a president's term, he gets blamed for everything wrong and credit for little right. Most presidents come out all right in the long run once there has been time for the rabid partisans to move on to their next target or object of veneration. History's even been somewhat kind to Nixon.

There's a great scene in "The Paper" where a city bureaucrat is flipping out about the media treatment of his department as a total disaster. "I know it's a mess," he screams. "It was like that when I got the job. Why are you blaming me?" The reporter's answer? "Because it was your turn."

No, that's not really fair, but at least it's consistent.

the unacknowledged elephant

Have you ever felt like there's an elephant in the living room, and you're the only one who notices it?


It's an odd feeling. You watch in disbelief as the rest of your family and all your guests walk around or under the elephant. You expect at any minute for someone to chase the elephant away, or at least to say, "Why is there an elephant in the living room?"


Oddly enough, no one ever does, and after a while you wonder if there's a problem with you for even noticing the stupid thing.


That's the way I've felt for the past week or so. Well, all right, that's not true -- I've felt that way all my life, but that's beside the point.


During the past week, I've watched in profound mystification as first regional media and then national news media began to give air time to a dispute between Lorraine Zdeb and the Borough Council in Millstone, N.J.


Back in September, when Hurricane Floyd struck New Jersey, Ms. Zdeb went into neighboring Manville and Bound Brook, and saved nearly a hundred pets from drowning. Dogs, cats, snakes, you name it -- probably even an elephant or two -- she saved them.


It was a touching story, and when someone wrote a lengthy letter to the newspaper describing Ms. Zdeb's efforts, I was moved enough to recast it as a guest column, giving it a little more attention than it would have received as a letter.


Still, it's worth noting that earlier in 1999 Ms. Zdeb had applied to the Millstone Planning Board to build a permanent-standing animal shelter on her five-acre property, but the Planning Board denied her request. So it should come as a surprise to no one that Millstone slapped Ms. Zdeb with a fine when she sheltered the animals on her property in September, since she was doing what the Planning Board had told her she couldn't.


In the ensuing weeks, I have watched from my editorial desk as Ms. Zdeb's star has risen higher and higher into the stratosphere. Some area newspapers took an interest in her plight, and then one of the New Jersey 101.5 talk show hosts focused on her for an hour or so. It was when the Associated Press ran a story on her that things really got going.


Toward the end of November, my curiosity got the better of me, and I punched Ms. Zdeb's name into a few search engines on the Web. I found hits on CNN.com, on FOXNews.com, and a few others. On Nov. 30, ABC News called one of my reporters and asked him to fax them the stories he's written about Ms. Zdeb.


Celebrities like actress Mary Tyler Moore and model Rachel Hunter have taken an interest in her case. Ms. Zdeb has -- unwittingly, she claims -- become an overnight celebrity of sorts herself.


Not surprisingly, with all this attention, the Millstone Borough Council agreed to drop the case, which would have gone to trial Dec. 1.


Maybe I'm stupid, or maybe my brother hit me in the head with that log harder than I thought at the playground when I was 6, but I just don't get it. All I see is an elephant.


I'm not unsympathetic to Ms. Zdeb or her love of animals. If my dog Hamlet had been caught in flood waters, I would have been in the thick of things too. But I can't help feeling my colleagues in the national news media really missed the mark on this one.


When Hurricane Floyd hit Manville back on Sept. 16, it put more than a third of the borough under water, according to some estimates I've heard. About 200 people have asked the state to buy their homes because the flood damage was so severe.


Visit, if you can, Manville's Lost Valley section. There are people whose homes remain uninhabitable, putting them in trailers while they try to rebuild and find a way to pay for it all.


I was on the phone earlier today with a woman whose house has been hit four times in as many floods. She's hoping the government will buy her house from her so she can leave. Is her story worth less than the story of a couple parrots?


Then there's Main Street. A number of businesses have reopened, but there are many that haven't, and some that may never again, including businesses that have been part of the community for decades. Should they be ignored in favor of dogs and cats?


And don't forget the children whose homes were hit, and who probably won't have as big a Christmas this year as they have in years past. There's real tragedy in their stories, as well as real joy. Their stories are worth hearing.


When Hurricane Floyd hit Manville, it appeared as though the local news media were the only ones to give a rip; the national media were more concerned with the drama of fires in Bound Brook and the tragedy of the two deaths there.


A little more than two months after the flood has passed, and now the spotlight is turned back to Central Jersey, not to highlight the people who are digging out and deciding what to do with their lives, nor on the real fiscal problems Manville and Bound Brook will face if state buyouts proceed and they can't make up their lost population somewhere else.


It's a shame that Millstone wanted to prosecute Ms. Zdeb for giving animals temporary lodging on her property, and I'm glad the Borough Council dropped their case, but that's not where the real story is.


The real news about the flood is found in places like Manville, amid the continuing heartache of the losses and in the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.


To pretend otherwise is an insult.

it's a conspiracy

There is nothing quite like a good conspiracy theory, and even they have nothing on the really far-out ones.

Bad or cheesy conspiracy theories are easy to come up with -- just ask the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy. During the 1950s, he was able to whip up enough hysteria over communism to create dozens of rabid theories.

During the McCarthy era, everything was a Red plot. The decision to put fluorides in our drinking water was a communist attempt to alter our precious bodily fluids. The invention of margarine was a Red plot to undermine the dairy industry.

Actually, even good conspiracy theories are easy to come up with. Just find something or someone you don't like, find a few unrelated coincidences -- only two or three are necessary, but friends and family enjoy it more if you can list a couple dozen -- and then use some logic too sketchy to find fault with.

If coincidences aren't readily available and you can't make any up, a cover-up is always a good defensive posture to take since critics are reluctant to engage in further discussion at this point.

An example of a conspiracy at this point could be:

"The federal government is covering up UFO activity in the Northeast because it has an arrangement with the aliens to sell the citizens of Rhode Island for mind-control experiments, in exchange for technology. I had some evidence but it was all destroyed."

I can't argue with that one, can you? Just as a side note, my oldest brother once bought our father a $1 million insurance policy against abduction by aliens, payable in annual increments of $1. It's too bad Dad lives in Pennsylvania; we'll never get to collect now.

Aliens and government make for some of the best conspiracy theories -- and remember, there really is no conspiracy afoot among our elected officials, they just want us to think there is -- but my personal favorite has to be the media conspiracy. I don't know why; I guess I just get a kick out of hearing how powerful I am. The news media supposedly are engaged in an all-out assault on, well, everything.

If you believe the conspiracy buffs, we're out to see Bill Clinton appointed president for life, wipe out the Republican Party, cover up murders at area movie theaters, eradicate traditional morals and religious beliefs, and back business interests in New Jersey at the expense of the common man.

Oddly enough, we're also working hard to get President Clinton removed from office, wipe out all the third parties, undermine local businesses, enforce a harsh moral code that makes the Inquisition look like a day in the park, and smear all the businesses in New Jersey so they can't function any more.

Apparently there are a couple high-level conspiracies and I haven't been initiated into either one. (Actually I have, but when they hired me I had to swear in blood not to tell.)

Truth to tell, there aren't enough truly soulless people to manage any one of these large-scale conspiracies, not even in the federal government. Sooner or later, someone would feel bad for all the people in Rhode Island and would crack, and the whole thing would come out unless it were an episode of "X-Files."

I used to get annoyed by people who accuse the federal government of blowing up buildings in Oklahoma City, who feel the news media are the Great Satan for not obsessing as much as they do, or who are afraid to admire the beauty of the stars because of the little bug-eyed aliens in their minds.

But after a while, it occurred to me that they're only like that because of the satellites broadcasting microwave signals directly into their minds from Rhode Island that we in the media have refused to cover, and so I figure it's OK if they're like that.