Palin for VP

[matmat]

I'm sure her skills at English and math are just fine.

What does "just fine" mean for a vice president and why do you think Palin's skills satisfy your conditions?

his definition of fine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbQwAFobQxQ

[jdonn]

For Jdonn, the country names keep changing on me.

This is your excuse for thinking it's ok to believe a country that has never existed does exist? Really?

[han]

At a minimum, a Vice President should have a solid understanding of integral calculus, and be comfortable using a slide rule.

Why on earth should a VP need to know about integral calculus?

[luke warm]

BTW, I don't think it's all that odd.  South Africa is a country.  Why would it shock people if there was a place bordering Liberia who called itself West Africa?

It wouldn't shock people. WHEN THEY ARE 10 YEARS OLD LEARNING THAT IT'S NOT TRUE.

do you feel the same way about the many gaffes biden has made and continues to make? true, a non-existent diner (that he lied about frequenting) or the wrong decade for tv or ww1, etc etc are't the same as an existing continent, but biden hasn't been what i'd call a towering intellect... oh that's right, "that's just joe"

[han]

Honestly, given how many nonsensical sentences came out of her mouth in her interviews, I wasn't worried at all about whether she could compute the area of a volume of rotation.

[han]

I don't know so much about Biden, but I never thought of him as a towering intellect or even an inspiring VP. Did anybody here think otherwise?

[Lobowolf]

Was Biden running for something, too?

 

Edit: ok, that's a joke. My perception of Biden improved over the course of the campaign. However, I think Luke makes a valid point: The guy came under just about NO mainstream scrutiny (and had more than a few questionable things to say). Having said that, I think he's a good guy who fills some gaps in Obama's resume.

[kenberg]

At a minimum, a Vice President should have a solid understanding of integral calculus, and be comfortable using a slide rule.

Why on earth should a VP need to know about integral calculus?

I think the Wolf was funning around a bit here!

 

Some of us grew up in less than intellectual surroundings. When I was in college some friends asked if I wanted to go with them to see tha Monet exhibit. Who's Monet, I asked. For years after that whenever someone said something particularly stupid someone would bring up "Who's Monet". I still have largely preserved precious areas of ignorance. For example I had to go to the Internet to find out who the Rays were. This gives me a feeling of comradeship for some folks. When one of the Washington scandals broke out, one of the players wanted to meet with the gal to shut her up and suggested that they meet at the East Wing of the National Gallery. Where's that, she asked. I found myself beginning to like her.

 

 

See Born Yesterday (the Judy Holliday version, 1950, please)

[helene_t]

At a minimum, a Vice President should have a solid understanding of integral calculus, and be comfortable using a slide rule.

Why on earth should a VP need to know about integral calculus?

Lol, I would have expected you to be able to catch an ironic remark from someone else, Han.

[hrothgar]

Was Biden running for something, too?

 

Edit: ok, that's a joke.  My perception of Biden improved over the course of the campaign.  However, I think Luke makes a valid point: The guy came under just about NO mainstream scrutiny (and had more than a few questionable things to say).  Having said that, I think he's a good guy who fills some gaps in Obama's resume.

There's very good reason why Palin came under more scrutiny than Biden.

 

Biden is a known quantity. He's served in the Senate for 36 years. His positions and his qualifications are pretty well known.

 

Do I consider him a towering intellect? Probably not... (I do believe that Obama qualifies as such btw)

 

Do I believe that Biden is gaff prone? Absolutely... However, I also think that he's experienced and competent.

 

The reason that the media was all over Palin is that she was a near complete unknown. The McCain campaign certainly didn't bother with any kind of vetting. It was entirely appropriate for the media to do so. (Honestly, I think that they went pretty easy on her)

[Lobowolf]

There's very good reason why Palin came under more scrutiny than Biden.

 

Biden is a known quantity. He's served in the Senate for 36 years. His positions and his qualifications are pretty well known.

That's one reason, and I think it's a valid one.

 

Another reason that I think is valid is that the members of the media favored Obama by far more than the 52-46 margin that the country-at-large favored him by.

[jdonn]

There's very good reason why Palin came under more scrutiny than Biden.

 

Biden is a known quantity.  He's served in the Senate for 36 years.  His positions and his qualifications are pretty well known.

That's one reason, and I think it's a valid one.

 

Another reason that I think is valid is that the members of the media favored Obama by far more than the 52-46 margin that the country-at-large favored him by.

The media reports what people want to see. If the media favored someone, it's a reflection of what brought them ratings.

 

Not that a Republican would ever say the media didn't treat the other side much better...

[hrothgar]

There's very good reason why Palin came under more scrutiny than Biden.

 

Biden is a known quantity.  He's served in the Senate for 36 years.  His positions and his qualifications are pretty well known.

That's one reason, and I think it's a valid one.

 

Another reason that I think is valid is that the members of the media favored Obama by far more than the 52-46 margin that the country-at-large favored him by.

So, how do you explain Fox, the Wall Street Journal, Drudge, and the rest of the echo chamber?

 

Fox News is, for all intents and purposes, a propaganda wing of the Republican Party. I don't recall that they launched any killer exposes regarding Biden... Yes, they covered Biden's gaffes (as did NBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and most everyone else). If there was any real dirt, I suspect that someone would have found it. (They were certainly happy enough to manufacture a bunch of ridiculous accusations about Obama)

 

You might enjoy your silly little conspiracy theory... Me - I think the reason that Palin got negative coverage was that she was utter unqualified for the position.

[cherdano]

There's very good reason why Palin came under more scrutiny than Biden.

 

Biden is a known quantity.  He's served in the Senate for 36 years.  His positions and his qualifications are pretty well known.

That's one reason, and I think it's a valid one.

 

Another reason that I think is valid is that the members of the media favored Obama by far more than the 52-46 margin that the country-at-large favored him by.

I think any comparison between Biden's gaffe's and Palin's in-what-respect-Charlies is the principle of false equivalence driven to the extreme. If you think the media was biased you should really find better examples.

 

My impression was that the media was pretty unbiased until the summer months. During the summer months, the main message from the McCain campaign consisted in comparing the achievements of a biracial man, grown up as a single child in a working class family and who had made it himself (by earning scholarships etc.) to become president of Harvard Law Review, with the daughter of billionaires who had become famous be the accidental release of a private sex tape.

 

How do you expect any journalist with some self-respect and intellect to remain unbiased when comparing the first successful national grass-roots, bottom-up campaign (read any report on the "respect empower include" principles of the Obama ground game) with Karl-Rove-wannabe miserable failures?

 

McCain certainly didn't start out with the media against him.

[Lobowolf]

So, how do you explain Fox, the Wall Street Journal, Drudge, and the rest of the echo chamber?

The same way I explain vegans, black conservatives, and vegetables that taste good -- They exist, and they're by and large strongly outnumbered by their counterparts.

[Lobowolf]

 

The media reports what people want to see. If the media favored someone, it's a reflection of what brought them ratings.

I agree. I think that's perfectly reasonable with respect to entertainment media, and problematic with respect to news media.

 

 

 

Not that a Republican would ever say the media didn't treat the other side much better...

I have a hard time imagining a Democrat, a Republican, OR an independent with any intellectual honesty disputing that Obama was disproportionately(*) the media favorite in this election.

 

 

 

(*) = as compared with the popular vote ratio.

[awm]

Part of the problem was that Palin was kept away from the press for so long.

 

When she finally did an interview, she came off as an idiot. Hopefully she's not really that dumb, but if you watched the Katie Couric interview especially her answers are really terrible.

 

I'm surprised they didn't let her talk a lot more, especially to the right-wing portions of the media. Eventually she did start doing interviews with Limbaugh, Hannity, etc. but this was after she had made such a fool of herself in the highly anticipated Gibson and Couric interviews.

 

I think that Palin also has some pretty serious ethical issues. She doesn't seem to understand what it is and is not proper to charge to her work. The law is pretty clear that you can't spend campaign money buying clothes for the candidate. Similarly you can't pay yourself per diem for days spent at home, and you can't charge your office to fly your kids with you to events where they're not invited. I don't think calling her on this is particularly biased.

 

Biden doesn't have these sorts of ethical issues. He does manufacture a lot of verbal gaffes (as do all the candidates for that matter -- McCain didn't seem to know that Spain was in Europe, Obama seemed confused about when WWI ended, Palin thought Africa was a country -- although Biden is particularly bad). But all serious news sources accept that occasional random gaffes happen when you're giving as many speeches as these people give, they get called on them but usually it's not a big deal.

[awm]

Media bias is also an interesting phenomenon. Certainly there are reporters and news shows that have an agenda. But there are plenty of right-wing news sources (Fox, most of talk radio, Wall Street Journal, etc) too.

 

However it is worth noting that the candidate who is leading in the polls almost inevitably gets better coverage than the candidate who is losing. Kerry did not exactly get favorable press coverage in '04 (the "swift boat" attacks ate up a lot of news cycles). Obama wasn't getting particularly favorable press coverage during some portions of the primary (Reverend Wright ate up a lot of news cycles, whereas McCain seeking endorsements from some crazy evangelists did not get nearly the coverage). The Palin VP pick ate up a lot of news cycles; Biden could hardly get his face on TV at all even though he had just been selected as VP. It may also be worth mentioning that Palin's minister (the famous witch-hunter, at least as crazy as Rev. Wright) got basically no press. And Palin's husband's membership in the Alaska Independence Party also got basically no press (whereas Michelle Obama saying something that could be interpreted as mildly un-American ate up a huge number of news cycles in the primary).

 

But once McCain started losing badly (i.e. right after the mess on Wall Street came out) and McCain's campaign started going overwhelmingly negative, I admit that from that point on Obama got far more favorable coverage. But I don't think this is so much "press loves Obama" as "press hates the way-behind candidate who resorts to mostly-unfair negative attacks."

[cherdano]

Not that a Republican would ever say the media didn't treat the other side much better...

I have a hard time imagining a Democrat, a Republican, OR an independent with any intellectual honesty disputing that Obama was disproportionately(*) the media favorite in this election.

 

(*) = as compared with the popular vote ratio.

I am not sure what this statement is supposed to mean. Yes, news reporters probably vote Democratic by a big majority. Editorial page editors less so, but this year they also did so in their endorsements.

However, this doesn't matter unless the coverage is unfair. However, is Palin is incompetent and Biden is competent than reporting about Palin's incompetence and not reporting about Biden's incompetence is not unfair.

[Lobowolf]

However, is Palin is incompetent and Biden is competent than reporting about Palin's incompetence and not reporting about Biden's incompetence is not unfair.

I disagree that Biden's being a "known quantity" should be a determination made by the news media, and thus subject him to less scrutiny; I think the media's job is to scrutinize the candidates fairly equally, and let the readers/viewers determine the extent to which they want to allow for Biden's resume.

[jdonn]

However, is Palin is incompetent and Biden is competent than reporting about Palin's incompetence and not reporting about Biden's incompetence is not unfair.

I disagree that Biden's being a "known quantity" should be a determination made by the news media, and thus subject him to less scrutiny; I think the media's job is to scrutinize the candidates fairly equally, and let the readers/viewers determine the extent to which they want to allow for Biden's resume.

You are missing the point, so much so that you replied to a totally different argument than the one you quoted. I'll clarify as best I can.

 

Palin is an idiot. Biden is not an idiot. Therefore Palin has a LOT more idiocy available to scrutinize than does Biden. Therefore Palin was scrutinized a LOT more than Biden. The media was not unfair to behave in this way. In fact they would have been quite irresponsible to behave in any other way.

 

This is like the basketball coach that complains his team got called for 30 more fouls than the other, and thus the referees are unfair. Uh, not if your team committed 30 more fouls than the other team!

 

BTW for a different yet very complete explanation, read awm's last post.

[jonottawa]

If you want to complain about the media ...

 

They've all been in the tank for Obama/Biden. It's been cult-like and disgraceful.

 

They also were all in the tank for Bush's fascist vision of America about 5 years ago. Far more disgraceful.

 

America's 'mainstream' press is a travesty. Watch it for entertainment or to amuse yourself, but if you're actually trying to gain some understanding of how your government works or what the issues of importance are, you're wasting your time. Watch BBC or PBS if you actually want to be enlightened or to learn something.

[Lobowolf]

I think the best thing to do is to read/watch biased information on both sides; I do, though, think it's a problem when people who aren't shrewd about politics or the media take information from one source and assume it's neutral...whether that one source is left- or right- leaning.

[cherdano]

However, is Palin is incompetent and Biden is competent than reporting about Palin's incompetence and not reporting about Biden's incompetence is not unfair.

I disagree that Biden's being a "known quantity" should be a determination made by the news media, and thus subject him to less scrutiny; I think the media's job is to scrutinize the candidates fairly equally, and let the readers/viewers determine the extent to which they want to allow for Biden's resume.

Let me try to explain it once more: Palin having no idea that "Bush doctrine" refers to foreign policy is big news. Palin misspeaking the name of the commander in Afghanistan is news but not big news. Biden mixing up radio vs TV in Eisenhower's national addresses is news but not big news.

Media reports big about big news, and reports about news.

 

This has nothing to do with bias.

[hrothgar]

However, is Palin is incompetent and Biden is competent than reporting about Palin's incompetence and not reporting about Biden's incompetence is not unfair.

I disagree that Biden's being a "known quantity" should be a determination made by the news media, and thus subject him to less scrutiny; I think the media's job is to scrutinize the candidates fairly equally, and let the readers/viewers determine the extent to which they want to allow for Biden's resume.

I think that you're confusing apples and oranges:

 

1. Random ***** happens. If / when there is an event of interest the media should cover it.

 

2. One would hope that the news media would perform independent investigations. Palin was thrust onto the public stage. McCain chose her to be one fairly weak heartbeat away from the Presidency. It's entirely appropriate for the media to invest significant time and effort performing a background investigation.

 

McCain, Obama, and Biden went through much the same process. The only difference is that the amount of time that was available to perfom the vetting. The media had decades to explore McCain and Biden. Years to delve into Obama's background. In Palin's case, it had to be compressed into a matter of weeks.