The McCain campaign has a new strategy: Make the media into a monster for covering the scandalous parts of Sarah Palin's story, and hope the public will be so sympathetic they'll forget all of the other scandals, both legal and political along with the fact that she's completely unprepared to Vice President.
Well, I'm not falling for it, and neither should you.
The media started covering Palin's "family values" when John McCain released a press release about 17 year old Bristol Palin's pregnancy. The campaign claims they did it because of false and slanderous allegations on blogs. But those rumors were anonymous, unsourced, and not a single reputable media outlet had covered the rumors when McCain put Bristol front and center. The story was barely worth a harshly worded denial by a lowly campaign surrogate, and yet McCain responded with a press release announcing the personal details of a teenager's pregnancy.
The reason John McCain chose to drag a 17-year old girl into the media spotlight was so that he could use this family drama to start a fight with the media and accuse them of being sexist, scandalous, and unfair for covering the story that he released to them.
Let me be clear: John McCain himself, like Lot when the angels visited him, offered a 17 year old girl to the tabloid press to do with as they please. This man, who wants to be President of the United States, put a 17-year girl front and center to be used for his own purposes, and that's the real scandalous story here.
When a campaign puts out a press release, it's because they want the media to write, report, and get people talking about a story. And report they did. In between covering Palin's record as mayor and governor, her ethics scandals, her hiring of a personal defense lawyer, her ties to a secessionist group, her connections to the criminally-indicted Ted Stevens, her earmark requests that John McCain opposed, her lobbyist ties to Jack Abramoff, and more, they covered the personal life of Bristol Palin, just as John McCain asked them to.
Now, thanks to the McCain campaign and their cynical strategy, every republican has a set of talking points that villify the media for daring to cover a 17-year old girl's pregnancy. They've said the coverage is sexist and inappropriate, and they're in full-out attack mode on the media for the injustice they asked for.
Of course, this was the plan all along. And if they can convince the talking heads to cover this fake outrage of a "war against the media" instead of continuing the actual journalism looking into who Sarah Palin really is scandals and all, they'll have won this skirmish. And the only causality on their side is an innocent teenager's privacy and dignity.
Sadly, the consequences for the rest of the nation could be much greater.
