Chasing Sarah: The Boys Behind the Bus
Chasing Sarah: The Boys Behind the Bus
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011
In the 1970s, “The Boys on the Bus” exposed how a clubby pack of male political reporters ruled the road to the White House and shaped the news. Four decades later, an outsider gal from Alaska has commandeered the 2012 media bus — and left Beltway journalism insiders eating her dust. We’ve come a long way, baby.
Amid frenzied speculation over her potential presidential campaign plans, former GOP Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin launched an all-American road trip with her family this Memorial Day weekend. Establishment media types didn’t get reserved seats or advance notice of her itinerary. Palin rubbed the Washington media mob’s institutional sense of entitlement right back in its face. “I don’t think I owe anything to the mainstream media. I want them to have to do a little bit of work on a tour like this,” she jabbed.
Robbed of the reflexive genuflection customarily paid by publicity-seeking candidates to the political press, scribes, cameramen and producers on the campaign trail began howling louder than the Rolling Thunder Harleys that Palin rode along with on Sunday in Washington, D.C. One miffed CBS News producer, Ryan Corsaro, pouted that the O.J. Simpson-style media caravan giving chase to Palin had created hazardous working conditions for all the intrepid news correspondents.
“I just hope to God that one of these young producers with a camera whose bosses are making them follow Sarah Palin as a potential Republican candidate don’t get in a car crash, because this is dangerous,” Corsaro said. Puh-lease. As if traveling America’s highways to historic tourist spots were akin to driving in an armored tank on Baghdad’s road of death.
In Philadelphia, a pair of news helicopters braved treacherous conditions to monitor the enemy on the ground. Soon, editors tracking the story from their cubbies will be filing workers’ comp claims asserting exposure to secondhand exhaust fumes from Palin’s bus. And I’m counting the minutes until some cub reporter double-parks somewhere in hot pursuit of Team Sarah and demands that she pay his ticket. I mean, how dare Palin “make them follow” her!
As my friend and blogging colleague Doug Powers put it: “Reporters whining about Palin are like kids who can’t reach the cookie jar because she keeps moving it.”
For more than two years, Palin-bashing journalists (on the establishment left and the right) have mocked the conservative supernova while milking her for headlines, circulation, viewership and Web traffic.
They lambaste her as trivial, while obsessing over her shoes, glasses and hair — and turning one of her misspelled words on Twitter into Watergate.
They label her a grievance-monger for calling out media double standards and then kvetch, moan and wallow in a pool of self-pity when she doesn’t spoon-feed them coveted political scoops.
They call her dumb and then run around in circles trying to figure out her “mystery” tour and blame her for “faking them out.”
They blast her for incompetence, but grudgingly acknowledge that she is a master of social media who has changed the rules of the presidential campaign game.
The Atlantic’s Garance Franke-Ruta griped that “reality TV star Palin” was “treating pol reporters like paparazzi — needing and hating, inviting and making chase.” Perhaps Franke-Ruta needs a reminder of what a truly parasitic press-pol relationship looks like. I have stacks of Obama 2008 profiles exulting over his glistening pecs and soaring oratorical skills, followed by countless spurned-lover laments from reporters disappointed about the control freaks who stage-manage his every press appearance.
What makes Sarah stand out in the national GOP field is that she is beholden to no one and controls her own destiny. She doesn’t need media kingmakers to make her. They need her. She doesn’t need newspaper or TV producers to drive her story. She drives them. Crazy.
The unhinged reaction of the Palin-hating convoy reveals what its attendants fear most: a politician who doesn’t fear them.
***
Hah. Commenter beachmom: “Maybe a waaahmbulance should follow the media.”
***
Another bawling bus chaser via Newsbusters: MSNBC’s Martin Bashir…
MSNBC’s Martin Bashir on May 31 insisted that Sarah Palin’s bus tour amounts to a “breach of a federal law.”
Anchoring his eponymous program, Bashir scolded, “In fact, the whole thing could be in breach of a federal law because the United States Flag Code establishes important rules for the use and display of the stars and stripes, the flag of the United States.”
See what others have said
Note from Michelle: This section is for comments from michellemalkin.com's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that I agree with or endorse any particular comment just because I let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with my terms of use may lose his or her posting privilege.
Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.
 |
GOP Texas primary fight: Desperate Dewhurst slimes conservative challenger Ted Cruz
May 25, 2012 07:31 PM by Michelle Malkin
4 CommentsWho’s funding Brett Kimberlin?
May 25, 2012 01:52 PM by Michelle Malkin
24 CommentsObama’s Land of the LOST
May 25, 2012 01:42 PM by Michelle Malkin
50 CommentsObama’s latest campaign angle: I’ve been saving America from wild Republican debts
May 24, 2012 04:33 PM by Doug Powers
53 Comments
Senate finally passes a budget approves bill striking word ‘lunatic’ from federal law
May 24, 2012 11:22 AM by Doug Powers
193 CommentsStammertime: Jay Carney asked if Chicago protests have soured Obama’s support for OWS
May 23, 2012 07:44 PM by Doug Powers
54 Comments
S.E. Cupp, Hustler, and the four stages of conservative female abuse
May 23, 2012 02:13 PM by Michelle Malkin
142 CommentsPig Maher’s boy Bill Burton mocks my support of Hatch challenger Dan Liljenquist
May 23, 2012 11:37 AM by Michelle Malkin
32 CommentsFree speech blogburst: Show solidarity for targeted conservative bloggers; Update: It’s Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day; Donation fund for targets
May 23, 2012 05:59 AM by Michelle Malkin
114 Comments
Categories: Politics,Sarah Palin
Babalu Blog
» U.S. Manned Space Flight in The 21st CenturyVillainous Company
» Must Read Post of the Day. Possibly, the YearRedstate
» Kimberlin’s Associates Caught on Tape?
from Wikipedia:
“Bashir was born in Wandsworth, South London to parents of Pakistani origin”
Makes him an expert on federal law and all things American, right? Like Obama?
Didn’t Ed Bradley (according to reports) brave the wilds of the Saigon Zoo for his in-the-field reporting?
On June 1st, 2011 at 11:37 am, DallasE said:
Perhaps Steve Erkel? It would be an improvement over what we have in the WH now.
When the whiny media perps complain about needing to vet Palin should she decide to run for president in 2012, I would like to remind them that they did a poor job of vetting Barry in ’07 & ’08 and should not be trusted now to vet Sarah or any other conservative candidate. They will continue to run interference for Barry until the election in Nov. 2012.
We aren’t voting for any National Republicans either. We are going to vote for the National Conservatives.
We aren’t voting for any National Republicans either. We are going to vote for the National Conservatives.
Ah, so your ignorance of Islam shows so that you can bring in their lame ‘bigoted’ argument. You enjoying your dhimmitude? Careful, your capitulance will not necessarily protect you.
Isn’t it ironic after the disastrous interviews with the “stars” of LSM in ’08 she has THEM eating her dust and chasing her around begging her to talk to them in 2011. If Libs and RINO’s think Sarah is a loser there sure ain’t no winners around. GO SARAH!
Just ask the Egyptian and Pakastani Christians how that approach is working for them right now.
Sarah Palin
President of Fight Club
(and maybe someday, President of the USA)
I thought the first rule of Fight Club was to never talk about Fight Club?
I guess it is not really mysogyny when all the criticism comes from males who are more effeminate than Ms. Palin.
I guess you could call it catfighting.
Oops.
You forgot to include the common ability to make the Vogon Media trip over their own feet dancing to her tune.
Sooooooooo, I guess your problem is with strong assertive women? Can you, uh describe the chip? Or maybe it’s because she can ride a motorcycle and you can’t?
Let me ask some more questions. Do you also have a problem with MM? Ann Coulter? Michelle Bachman? Condi Rice?
I don’t know about you, but for me an intelligent woman who is “one of da [sic] boys” is quite a turn on. I may have to post an underwear shot on twitter right now just from thinking aboiut it. Of course, being smokin’ hot never hurts, either.
And what’s wrong with hangin’ out wit da boyz? I’m a guy and I sure don’t mind hangin’ out wit da ladies…
RSS
Quite frankly, the Republicans are doing it because
1) They need the votes. Contrary to all the positive coverage of the “Greatest Generation” and baby boomers, we live in a country top to bottom where we want to cut our neighbor’s subsidy and keep ours. You’ll never admit it pubicly, but you know just as well as everyone else that liberals have to campaign like conservatives to win, because their ideas and philosophy are a total failure.
And the people they send money too make excuses when they go to the voting booth in interest of protecting their government check.
I can’t even say how many farmers, teachers, municipal workers in small towns and even African-Americans (disproportionally poor) who say “we’re with you on abortion, gay rights and the USDA, DNR and EPA running our lives but we’re still gonna vote democrat because of greedy republicans or because like me just do”.
All you have to do is follow the money.
2) The people over 55 paid into the system. That’s what they keep telling me, anyways. Then I proceed to point that those folks—the “Greatest Generation” and baby boomers, voted the same morons back into office even after they plundered their precious savings for a get-cash-now scam in the way of welfare, grant, student aid, or a corn or cotton subsidy.
I knew a guy who’s father started working right after FDR and the boys passed SS. He worked for 50 years, paid into the system for as much, and less than a month into retirement, he died and collected about $200.
That’s life.
Here’s your girl, Flyoverman..
http://tammybruce.com/2011/06/piper-palin-not-so-shy-open-thread.html
>>>Piper Head of Security
Actually the more I think about what went wrong in her 2008 campaign, the more it seems to me that for the first time, she wasn’t using her own shrewd political instincts. She was saddled with a bunch of “handlers” who were cast in the GOP mold (emphasis on the “O”) and the fundamental mistake she made was, in the spirit of a true team-player, humbly to accept their clueless coaching. No doubt these were the same people who “handled” Dan Quayle’s photo op. In more than one respect, ahe was flying a Cessna with a dead elephant on its back. No surprise that it crashed and burned.
Now, like the mythological Phoenix, out of the ashes she is once again a rising political star and, thank you very much, this time she’s following her own well-grounded instincts. I hope she wins the Republican nomination, whether by running or by being drafted, and I hope this time she lets the GOP follow her lead, like the Vogon Media that is now gagging on her dust.
Test comment
Test comment 2