Fooled and Angry

John McCain fooled almost everyone. And the media doesn't like it. Could the wonderful storyline of Sarah Palin be damaged by reporters and pundits who don't like being made to look bad? The AP isn't happy:

In two short years, Sarah Palin moved from small-town mayor with a taste for mooseburgers to the governor's office and now - making history - to John McCain's side as the first female running mate on a Republican presidential ticket.

She has more experience catching fish than dealing with foreign policy or national affairs.

When did foreign affairs experience become important to reporters, in lust with Barack who has no experience doing anything but teaching constitutional law? Joe Conason writes with contempt in Salon:

But if Palin's résumé is limited, to put it politely, she possesses the only two qualities that McCain now seems to consider essential: She is a right-wing religious ideologue with female gender characteristics. Suddenly that is all anyone needs to qualify as a potential commander in chief of the world's most powerful military.

And Joe Biden was chosen because he's a man who is white and who has experience to make up for Barack's lack of it. Where is the matching contempt? Would Biden have been chosen were he a woman? Nope. Black? Nope. A first term senator? Nope. If he hadn't had the hair transplant? Probably not.

James Rainey tells McCain in the LA Times:

You gave the media what it always claims it wants: Surprises. Original thinking. News.

What a mistake.

In trying to reclaim your maverick brand, you appear to have pushed an unknown, unformed and under-vetted politician onto the world's biggest political stage.

Reporters like new faces because the status quo is tiresome to write about. They also like new faces like a lion likes a baby wildebeest -- fresh meat on the hoof, not much energy to make the kill.

As Andrew Halco, an anti-Palin blogger who ran against Palin for Governor says about her election there:

it was, like, this isn't about policy or Alaska issues, this is about people's most basic instincts: 'I like you, and you make me feel good.'"

"You know," Halcro said, invoking the Democratic presidential nominee, "that's kind of like Obama."

The media looks to be more comfortable with stars they create rather than self-made ones. While there is an argument to be made that Palin lacks the experience to be vice president, there's also an argument to be made that her 13 years holding elective office, including executive positions, makes her more qualified to be president than Barack.