Vox News
Got spin? Elections always have lots of it. Vox News tracks what media outlets contribute to the cycle, from funny guys Leno and Letterman to commentators Limbaugh and Maher to, yes, the good ol' news anchors and commentators of the MSM.
Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin speaks at the 'Restoring Honor' rally in Washington on Saturday. (Robert A. Martin/The Free Lance-Star/AP)
Vanity Fair publishes 18-page attack on Sarah Palin
If you are trying to sell books or magazines or get clicks for your website, Republican Party star Sarah Palin is the gift that keeps giving.
This week, two new offerings provide glimpses of the former Alaska governor who generally avoids one-on-one interviews with the national political press. Vanity Fair has just released a lengthy, critical article from its forthcoming October issue titled, “Sarah Palin the Sound and the Fury."
The exhaustive article appears the same week as Meghan McCain is promoting her new book, “Dirty Sexy Politics.” The first-time author offers an outspoken daughter’s view of her father’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign.
Of the two documents, Ms. McCain’s is the kinder to Ms. Palin, who emerged on the national scene after Sen. John McCain named her his vice presidential running mate. Palin is now a high profile commentator for Fox News and makes scores of highly paid speeches nationwide.
Speaking to George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday’s “Good Morning America,” Ms. McCain said, "I'm speaking out now because I do have conflicting feelings about her.” Ms. McCain, who blogged and Tweeted during the campaign, told "Good Morning America" that Palin “brought so much momentum and enthusiasm to the campaign. You saw the crowds double and you saw a lot more women coming to the rallies."
But as Mr. Stephanpoulos noted, “You also wrote that she brought 'drama, stress, complications, panic, and loads of uncertainty.' ”
The Vanity Fair article by Michael Joseph Gross is largely accusatory in tone and, when printed out, covers 18 double spaced pages.
“Even as Sarah Palin’s public voice grows louder, she has become increasingly secretive, walling herself off from old friends and associates, and attempting to enforce silence from those around her,” the article begins. It claims that Palin now inhabits a “surreal new world … a place of fear, anger, and illusion, which has swallowed up the engaging, small-town hockey mom and her family.”
Details range from Palin’s alleged reliance on “prayer warriors” to protect her from opponents to the charge she billed the McCain campaign for Spanx girdles.
Douglas McMarlin, a spokesman for SarahPAC, said, “the article is a collection of lies cobbled together by an outlet without standards. As the message continues to succeed, the messenger will continue to be attacked by yellow journalists seeking to increase sales."
[Editor's note: Mr. McMarlin's quote was added when he responded to a Monitor request for comment after the story was published.]
Vanity Fair’s Palin coverage has ranged widely. In August 2009 it ran a perceptive, beautifully written political analysis, “It Came from Wasilla” by Todd S. Purdum. The magazine also published “Me and Mrs. Palin,” the musings of Levi Johnston, who fathered a baby with Bristol Palin, the former governor's teenage daughter.
Glenn Beck waves to the crowd at the start of the 'Restoring Honor' rally in Washington Saturday. The success of the rally had many people wondering: What will he do for an encore. Tuesday, America got its answer. He started The Blaze, a news website. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
The Blaze: reviews are in on new Glenn Beck website
Watch out Rupert Murdoch, Glenn Beck has got news on his mind.
Yes, contrary to much media speculation over the weekend that Mr. Beck’s next venture might be a run for political office, turns out he wants to join the crew of weary warriors in the world of online news gathering. His new website is dubbed "The Blaze.”
According to Beck, the site is intended to give folks a helping hand. “If you are like me,“ Beck said in a statement, “watching the news or reading the paper can be an exercise in exasperation. It's so hard to find a place that helps me make sense of the world I see."
"We want this to be a place where you can find breaking news, original reporting, insightful opinions, and engaging videos about the stories that matter most,“ he added.
Join the conversation about Glenn Beck on our Facebook politics page
A project of Beck’s own company, Mercury, it is headed up by managing editor Scott Baker, who hails from Breitbart TV and “The B-Cast.”
The good, the bad, and the unprofitable?
Not surprisingly, The Blaze – like its founder – sparks strong emotions.
On the one side, there is political blogger Shel Horowitz, who writes about The Blaze in terms more commonly used in describing natural disasters. “The juxtaposition of ‘Glenn Beck’ and ‘honest source of information’ in the same sentence would be amusing, if it weren't scary," he writes in an e-mail. "Kind of like Fox calling itself ‘fair and balanced.' ”
But wait. There's more. Mr. Horowitz navigates his way to TheBlaze.com and offers a running commentary of its content. All he lacks, it seems, is a dart board with Beck's face.
The site “claims that MLK and the Democratic Party had/have a 'radical leftist agenda,' pays homage to the climate-change deniers, accuses Al Sharpton of racism, and claims that 70 percent of New Yorkers oppose the Ground Zero mosque (a figure I question),” Horowitz writes.
Other critics more closely aligned with Beck are, predictably, more complimentary. "The Blaze is off and to the races. I really like the look of this site," writes Erick Erickson of RedState.com. "It’s kind of a Huffington Post-y sort of Big Government/Daily Caller-y sort of news and blog site."
What The Blaze will ultimately be remains a mystery for now. Beck’s chances of making money with this venture are slim, given the lack of a proven and broadly applicable online business model, says branding expert Adam Hanft, who also blogs for sites such as the Huffington post.
“It remains to be seen whether Beck will yield to the web's furious cacophony of voices – can get comfortable with dissenting views presented without curation – or if The Blaze will occupy a much more narrow niche as a source of aggressive, pointed commentary alone,” Mr. Hanft says via e-mail.
'The power to persuade'
For Mr. Horowitz, The Blaze's first-day offerings leave little doubt. “The only real issue here is whether enough people will be deluded to think this is actually anything resembling honest news coverage," says Horowitz. "That could be a problem, just as it was when the New York Times' publication of Judith Miller's false reports in the run-up to the Iraq war helped to justify an illegal and arbitrary invasion.”
But in the virtually "anything goes" world of online journalism, where the liberal Huffington Post has no direct conservative counterweight, Beck's effort should not be easily dismissed, says Richard Goedkoop, a professor of communication at La Salle University in Philadelphia.
"We should care because he reaches a lot of people who seem to believe in what he says. So much so that he was able to get between 100,000 to 500,000 people (depending upon who you believe) to go to Washington to hear him this weekend," says Mr. Goedkoop in an e-mail. "That carries with it a degree of political power and the power to persuade. Whether or not he is a messiah or a demagogue will be decided in due course."
Sarah Palin walks to the podium at the Glenn Beck rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Saturday, Aug. 28. Palin will headline the Sept. 17 annual Ronald Reagan dinner and state GOP fundraiser in Iowa. (Alex Brandon/AP)
Sarah Palin to visit Iowa: Think you know what that means?
Sarah Palin will headline the Sept. 17 annual Ronald Reagan dinner and state GOP fundraiser in Iowa, a move sure to feed media speculation about her plans vis a vis the 2012 presidential campaign, given that Iowa holds the first-in-the-nation caucuses on Feb. 6, 2012.
The Iowa appearance is yet another high-profile event focusing attention on the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential nominee of the Republican Party. Last weekend, Ms. Palin was a featured speaker at Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
Palin, a Fox News contributor, has played down speculation about her own political future. She told Fox News on Monday evening that she is currently focused on helping to elect conservative Republicans in the November midterm elections, according to a report on the broadcast by The Hill.
The website theiowarepublican.com broke the news about her Iowa appearance, highlighting the rising role of political websites unaffiliated with old-line print and broadcast news organizations. The annual dinner is a major fundraiser for the Iowa Republican Party, and GOP presidential hopefuls often attend.
The Iowa visit would be Palin’s first to the Hawkeye State since December, when she was in Sioux City to autograph copies of her autobiography “Going Rogue.” Hundreds of Iowans packed that event at Southern Hills Mall. [Editor's note: This paragraph was changed to locate the Southern Hills Mall in the correct city (and correct state).]
But Palin could face an uphill climb winning the 2012 Iowa Republican caucus, according to a poll by theiowarepublican.com published earlier this month. It showed Iowa Republicans ranked Palin fourth as a presidential candidate, with support from 11 percent of respondents. That put her behind former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
The survey, conducted July 25-28 with a margin of error of 4.39 percent, also showed Palin with very high unfavorable ratings among Iowa Republicans – the worst of the potential candidates in the survey. Some 37 percent of Iowans polled had a favorable view of Palin, while 57 percent had an unfavorable opinion. By contrast, Mr. Huckabee had a 48 percent favorable, 22 percent unfavorable rating.
Glenn Beck speaks at the 'Restoring Honor' rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington Saturday. (Alex Brandon/AP)
Who is Glenn Beck? Rally adds to his mystique.
This Sunday, apparently, no one knew who Glenn Beck was.
The "Chris Matthews Show" on NBC had a roundtable panel discussion about the man who claimed to be “restoring honor” in America, with panelists delving into Mr. Beck’s character as though he were lying on a couch in front of them.
Fox’s Chris Wallace, who works in the same office as Beck, marveled that he still doesn’t “know" who Beck is.
And ABC’s Rick Klein called his power to attract audiences “the most potent political force in American life today” – even though Beck suggested his rally was not about politics.
Why all the confusion?
Granted, Beck casting the event in a religious light caused for some scratching of heads. But whatever the motivation for the rally, the result was hardly unfamiliar to Beck-watchers.
Beck, after all, is no cipher. He is on television no fewer than five times a week, and during those five hours of head shaking and finger-wagging, he is not exactly shy about sharing his opinion.
And the Beck who brought thousands of Americans – 65,000 or 650,000? – to the National Mall Saturday is no more or less than what he is at 5 p.m. nightly on Fox News: The voice of the conservative, middle class, and red-tinted core of the country, which sees in America’s future only increasing cause for alienation – illegal immigration, more entitlement programs, and a perceived decay of America’s sense of rugged individualism.
The Sunday post-mortems, then, had some savor either of triumph or panic at Beck's success. It was like that scene from “Little Shop of Horrors” when the hapless Seymour wakes up to find his innocuous little plant has grown monstrous and taken over the entire greenhouse. Saturday was Beck’s greenhouse, and the entire country was made to watch.
'Gripping television'
With Fox's Mr. Wallace, Beck was given the platform to further add to his mystique as a conservative talisman. For critics, though, it was a spectacle as upsetting as it was surprising.
Time’s Joe Klein decreed that Beck was a “paranoid lunatic who is a great entertainer, and he is exploiting something that always happens in our country when the economy is bad and when we are at war.” Cue clips of World War II internment camps for Japanese-Americans and tales of German-speaking Americans being beaten up by fellow Americans.
It was, however, “gripping television,” said the BBC’s Katty Kay on the "Chris Matthews" roundtable, expressing no doubts as to the rally's political purpose.
Beck is “appealing to a broader section of the American public that feels that it needs to put a check on the administration," she said. "If we see a big Republican turnout in November, it's going to be partly not because people are loving Republicans but because they will do anything to check the power that is there.”
Ms. Kay had company in questioning Beck's motives. “Beck's claim that his rally is not political is laughable,” says Matthew Hale, a political scientist at Seton Hall University, in an e-mail.
Political echoes
But is there something inherently wrong with that? Longtime journalist Donald Mazzella, who covered the Rev. Martin Luther King’s speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 47 years ago, says in an e-mail: “Rallies of this sort always have a political element attached."
"The original march was as much political as social and clearly galvanized a whole generation of activists and political activity,” he adds.
Beck’s role today is to galvanize the other side of the political spectrum, Mr. Mazzella says, adding, "There seems to be a questioning of the Tea Party attendance, when the real question is: Why are so many apparently middle class people so concerned?”
So, does the media think like Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) of California, who said: “They can’t be protesters, they’re too well dressed”? Does a protest have to be liberal to be legitimate in their eyes?
Writer and book critic Antoinette Kuritz, who says she has in the past voted both sides of political tickets, thinks so.
People are trying to figure out Beck “because of the way his influence has grown. Arguably, he will impact more voters than MTV or Bono or Alec Baldwin or even Oprah. And he is not espousing liberal causes."
"Glenn Beck has made a point: The people are rejecting the paternalism of this administration, of [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi in particular," she says by e-mail. "They are tired of being told what is good for them, of having legislation thrust upon them with which they disagree. The people want a louder voice. They want to be heard. And, if necessary, they will band together until they are.”
Religion and politics
The packaging of the event in religious overtones, however, caused discomfort in some quarters.
“What is interesting to me is that Beck seems to see a benefit in cloaking his politics in religion, as if that somehow makes him safer and less threatening," says Mr. Hale, the political scientist. "It is as if he is arguing that religion is above the fray of messy and ugly politics.”
“The danger of Mr. Beck's claim that he is focused on religion is that he is attempting to define being a 'good Christian' with a host of other values that have nothing to do with a person's faith," he adds. "There are religiously observant people in all faiths who would actually call themselves politically liberal, yet Mr. Beck seeks to deny that as a possibility.”
Previous
Become part of the Monitor community