Media Bias: Our vice president's foot lands in his mouth almost every time he speaks. Yet the news and entertainment elites are giving the Dan Quayle treatment not to Joe Biden, but to Sara Palin.
Speaking before Congress in February, President Obama proudly named Vice President Biden to run what he called "a tough, unprecedented oversight effort" of his administration's economic program, "because nobody messes with Joe."
But Joe himself is kind of a mess when it comes to the plan. For instance, this month we found the vice president referring to the federal stimulus-supported new New Jersey transit tunnel under the Hudson River as "designed to provide for automobile traffic." Someone had to tell the man leading the tough, unprecedented oversight of the stimulus that the tunnel was for trains only.
That's just a start when it comes to the veep's verbal miscues.
When Biden last month advised Americans to avoid swine flu by staying off planes and subways, even White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs felt compelled to say that "I think the vice president misrepresented what the vice president wanted to say."
At the Washington press corps' Gridiron Dinner last month, Biden may have compromised national security by revealing the location of the secret underground protective facility built for the vice president's protection during an enemy attack or other emergency.
And after Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal delivered the GOP response to Obama's first speech to Congress in February, the vice president claimed that "in Louisiana there's 400 people a day losing their jobs. What's he doing?" Louisiana, in fact, was the only state in the union adding jobs.
The new occupant of the office he once called "not worth a bucket of warm spit" wasted no time acclimating himself. At a ball for Obama staff the day after he was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Biden seemed to think his oath was administered by Justice Potter Stewart, who died in 1985. After calling Stewart "one of the great justices," even members of the friendly audience were heard guffawing and yelling "Stevens!" to the new VP.
During last year's campaign it got so bad that even the liberal New Republic started running a "Biden Gaffe-o-Meter" feature.
Then-Sen. Biden had claimed in a CBS interview with Katie Couric during the campaign that FDR got on television after the 1929 stock market crash — though Herbert Hoover was president at the time and TVs were still in the laboratory stage. Biden also referred to Palin during the campaign as "the lieutenant governor of Alaska," instead of governor.
The vice-presidential hopeful has said that "the No. 1 job facing the middle class . . . happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs, J-O-B-S, jobs." And of course in 2007, while running for the Democratic presidential nomination against Obama, Biden infamously called his rival "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean . . . ."
It all makes ex-Vice President J. Danforth Quayle's much-lampooned misspelling of "potato" pale in comparison. Yet the media treat Biden not as a buffoon, as they did Quayle — whose supposed incompetence, they suggested, would imperil the nation if he advanced to the presidency. Instead, they have pegged him as sort of the eccentric uncle of the executive branch; it's best to ignore him because the president has so many important things to accomplish.
Instead, remarkably, the person who lost the vice presidency to Biden is the one getting the Dan Quayle treatment — and then some.
The media treated Palin's attendance at Monday night's fundraising dinner for the GOP congressional campaign committees as if it were a soap opera. Her appearance there and a Fox interview with Sean Hannity, in which she correctly suggested the president was moving America toward socialism, has meant open season on Palin.
The worst of it was David Letterman's comparison of Palin to a "slutty flight attendant" and a joke about her 14-year-old daughter being raped on their family visit to New York City.
The media and Hollywood's political double standard is as pervasive — and perverse — as ever.
Letterman Owes Palin, Flight Attendants, Women in General an Apology
This is why I stopped watching David Letterman even before Jon Stewart came along: He was forever either drooling on women or treating them like they were perfect idiots, in a way he never behaved with male guests. (I did, however, enjoy the appearances of his mom Dorothy, a church secretary who was occasionally able to summon Good Dave, live from her kitchen in Indiana.)
At age 62, he shouldn't need Dorothy to tell him that referring to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as having updated her "slutty flight attendant look'' is outrageous – and his "joke'' about Palin's daughter was even worse. During his Tuesday monologue, Letterman mentioned that last year's GOP vice presidential nominee was in New York, and had attended a Yankees game with her daughter. "During the seventh inning,'' he said, "her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez." Palin had taken her 14-year-old daughter Willow to the game.
On Wednesday night, a semi-apologetic Letterman told viewers that Willow's older sister, 18-year-old Bristol Palin, had been the intended target of the remark: "We were, as we often do, making jokes about people in the news and we made some jokes about Sarah Palin and her daughter, the 18-year-old girl, who is -- her name is Bristol, that's right -- and so, then, now they're upset with me. These are not jokes made about her 14-year-old daughter. I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl. I mean, look at my record. It has never happened. I don't think it's funny. I would never think it was funny. I wouldn't put it in a joke." Which means he thinks rape jokes about an 18-year-old are funny?
"Gov. Palin, if you're watching,'' Letterman continued, "I would like you to consider coming to New York City -- even Todd -- as my guests, or leave Todd at home. I'd love to have you on the show. It'd be exciting. All right, so there, I hope I've cleared part of this up. Am I guilty of poor taste? Yes. Did I suggest that it was okay for her 14-year-old daughter to be having promiscuous sex? No."
While it's true, as I've argued before, that liberals don't seem to grasp that their dismissive treatment of Palin is unwise as well as unseemly, Letterman's long history as an equal opportunity offender in no way lets him off the hook.
Still, if Palin did go on the show to demand a full grovel of an apology for treating her (and flight attendants, for that matter) so disrespectfully, for that I would tune in, for the first time in years.
If you watch her on TV - for example, this morning's Today Show, she is Whiskey Tango (I know you read about that this AM). She is absolutely not prepared for national office. She never will be. Her grammar is awful and she uses inappropriate words. Read her original statement about Letterman - it would get a "D" in 8th grade English.
Need I remind you of the revealing Couric interview? Anyone reading this blog would have handled it far better than Sarah.
I feel sorry for her. She peaked the night of her convention speech.
4 comments:
Palin Vs. Biden
Media Bias: Our vice president's foot lands in his mouth almost every time he speaks. Yet the news and entertainment elites are giving the Dan Quayle treatment not to Joe Biden, but to Sara Palin.
Speaking before Congress in February, President Obama proudly named Vice President Biden to run what he called "a tough, unprecedented oversight effort" of his administration's economic program, "because nobody messes with Joe."
But Joe himself is kind of a mess when it comes to the plan. For instance, this month we found the vice president referring to the federal stimulus-supported new New Jersey transit tunnel under the Hudson River as "designed to provide for automobile traffic." Someone had to tell the man leading the tough, unprecedented oversight of the stimulus that the tunnel was for trains only.
That's just a start when it comes to the veep's verbal miscues.
When Biden last month advised Americans to avoid swine flu by staying off planes and subways, even White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs felt compelled to say that "I think the vice president misrepresented what the vice president wanted to say."
At the Washington press corps' Gridiron Dinner last month, Biden may have compromised national security by revealing the location of the secret underground protective facility built for the vice president's protection during an enemy attack or other emergency.
And after Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal delivered the GOP response to Obama's first speech to Congress in February, the vice president claimed that "in Louisiana there's 400 people a day losing their jobs. What's he doing?" Louisiana, in fact, was the only state in the union adding jobs.
The new occupant of the office he once called "not worth a bucket of warm spit" wasted no time acclimating himself. At a ball for Obama staff the day after he was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Biden seemed to think his oath was administered by Justice Potter Stewart, who died in 1985. After calling Stewart "one of the great justices," even members of the friendly audience were heard guffawing and yelling "Stevens!" to the new VP.
During last year's campaign it got so bad that even the liberal New Republic started running a "Biden Gaffe-o-Meter" feature.
Then-Sen. Biden had claimed in a CBS interview with Katie Couric during the campaign that FDR got on television after the 1929 stock market crash — though Herbert Hoover was president at the time and TVs were still in the laboratory stage. Biden also referred to Palin during the campaign as "the lieutenant governor of Alaska," instead of governor.
The vice-presidential hopeful has said that "the No. 1 job facing the middle class . . . happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs, J-O-B-S, jobs." And of course in 2007, while running for the Democratic presidential nomination against Obama, Biden infamously called his rival "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean . . . ."
It all makes ex-Vice President J. Danforth Quayle's much-lampooned misspelling of "potato" pale in comparison. Yet the media treat Biden not as a buffoon, as they did Quayle — whose supposed incompetence, they suggested, would imperil the nation if he advanced to the presidency. Instead, they have pegged him as sort of the eccentric uncle of the executive branch; it's best to ignore him because the president has so many important things to accomplish.
Instead, remarkably, the person who lost the vice presidency to Biden is the one getting the Dan Quayle treatment — and then some.
The media treated Palin's attendance at Monday night's fundraising dinner for the GOP congressional campaign committees as if it were a soap opera. Her appearance there and a Fox interview with Sean Hannity, in which she correctly suggested the president was moving America toward socialism, has meant open season on Palin.
The worst of it was David Letterman's comparison of Palin to a "slutty flight attendant" and a joke about her 14-year-old daughter being raped on their family visit to New York City.
The media and Hollywood's political double standard is as pervasive — and perverse — as ever.
Letterman Owes Palin, Flight Attendants, Women in General an Apology
This is why I stopped watching David Letterman even before Jon Stewart came along: He was forever either drooling on women or treating them like they were perfect idiots, in a way he never behaved with male guests. (I did, however, enjoy the appearances of his mom Dorothy, a church secretary who was occasionally able to summon Good Dave, live from her kitchen in Indiana.)
At age 62, he shouldn't need Dorothy to tell him that referring to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as having updated her "slutty flight attendant look'' is outrageous – and his "joke'' about Palin's daughter was even worse. During his Tuesday monologue, Letterman mentioned that last year's GOP vice presidential nominee was in New York, and had attended a Yankees game with her daughter. "During the seventh inning,'' he said, "her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez." Palin had taken her 14-year-old daughter Willow to the game.
On Wednesday night, a semi-apologetic Letterman told viewers that Willow's older sister, 18-year-old Bristol Palin, had been the intended target of the remark: "We were, as we often do, making jokes about people in the news and we made some jokes about Sarah Palin and her daughter, the 18-year-old girl, who is -- her name is Bristol, that's right -- and so, then, now they're upset with me. These are not jokes made about her 14-year-old daughter. I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl. I mean, look at my record. It has never happened. I don't think it's funny. I would never think it was funny. I wouldn't put it in a joke." Which means he thinks rape jokes about an 18-year-old are funny?
"Gov. Palin, if you're watching,'' Letterman continued, "I would like you to consider coming to New York City -- even Todd -- as my guests, or leave Todd at home. I'd love to have you on the show. It'd be exciting. All right, so there, I hope I've cleared part of this up. Am I guilty of poor taste? Yes. Did I suggest that it was okay for her 14-year-old daughter to be having promiscuous sex? No."
While it's true, as I've argued before, that liberals don't seem to grasp that their dismissive treatment of Palin is unwise as well as unseemly, Letterman's long history as an equal opportunity offender in no way lets him off the hook.
Still, if Palin did go on the show to demand a full grovel of an apology for treating her (and flight attendants, for that matter) so disrespectfully, for that I would tune in, for the first time in years.
Jim:
If you watch her on TV - for example, this morning's Today Show, she is Whiskey Tango (I know you read about that this AM). She is absolutely not prepared for national office. She never will be. Her grammar is awful and she uses inappropriate words. Read her original statement about Letterman - it would get a "D" in 8th grade English.
Need I remind you of the revealing Couric interview? Anyone reading this blog would have handled it far better than Sarah.
I feel sorry for her. She peaked the night of her convention speech.
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