I’m starting to wonder. There have been folks on the right who’ve been insisting since John McCain chose Sarah Palin that liberals are afraid of her and feel a particular need to destroy her; I’ve tended to think that was overstated. Certainly, I think a lot of folks on the left found her particularly galling—for daring to go “off the reservation” and be a successful woman in politics on non-leftist terms (with her strong pro-life position being the main part of that), and for Sen. McCain having had the nerve to pick a woman as his running mate when Barack Obama hadn’t—but I figured it was much more that she represented someone who could actually put the McCain campaign over the top, and therefore was a threat to be destroyed ASAP, by whatever means necessary.Now, though, I’m beginning to think that the voices insisting that liberals hate/fear her specifically may have more of a point than I thought. What has me considering this is a recent post on the media blog for Condé Nast Portfolio on whom the New York Times should hire to replace Bill Kristol if rumors prove true that they’re inclined not to keep him on their op-ed pages. The blogger in question, Jeff Bercovici, is clearly an unapologetic liberal, which is no surprise; what is a surprise is the theme that seems to underlie his suggested alternatives. Of the four names he puts forward, two are Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy—the folks who got caught dissing Gov. Palin on a mike they didn’t know was open. A third is Kathleen Parker, whom he makes a point of labeling as a Palin-hater. Why highlight that unless it’s part of the point, and to be adduced as evidence that she has “the independence of thought that Kristol so glaringly lacks”?Which in turn makes me think that that supposed “lack of independence” on Kristol’s part may be code for “he likes Sarah Palin”; which, if so, is ludicrous, since Kristol was booming Gov. Palin for the slot back when it required incredible independence of thought to even entertain the idea. Which makes me wonder if there isn’t a subtext for replacing Kristol: the Grey Lady is willing to have a conservative columnist or two around if it has to—but one who supports Sarah Palin is just too much. If they’re going to have a conservative columnist, it must at least be a properly elitist Palin-hating conservative.Do I take this as proven? Obviously not. But I’m wondering if there might be something to it . . . and if so, what its significance might be.
Couldn’t it also be that Kristol was involved too deeply in the campaign? Didn’t several McCain staffers complain that Palin was listening to Kristol’s advice rather than theirs. It is one thing to have a conservative viewpoint, but to be that directly invested in a single candidate may be pushing things a bit far.
I would think that a newspaper wants to at least create the illusion that their conservative and liberal columnists will be honest about the weaknesses in their respective viewpoints when intellectual integrity demands it.
As a liberal, I have always thought that Kathleen Parker was full of malarkey, but her willingess to take on Palin will force me to take her opinions seriously in a way I never have.
“Willingness to take on Palin”? I’m not sure how to take that statement seriously, honestly. No, Kristol wasn’t involved in the campaign; yes, there were staffers complaining that Gov. Palin valued his opinions, as expressed in his columns, over theirs–but given the poor job they did, I’d take that as evidence of her good judgment.
And let’s face it, Sarah Palin isn’t evidence of weakness in Bill Kristol’s thinking, but rather the contrary.
I’m not sure how to take that statement seriously, honestly.
I was offering Parker as an example of what I referred to in the prior paragraph: a columnist who will be honest about things that reflect poorly on their viewpoint.
Which isn’t in the least descriptive of the actual situation, or the actual people involved.
And you know this . . . how?
Because I read Parker’s columns? She wasn’t reacting to Gov. Palin as someone who “reflected poorly on her viewpoint”–indeed, Gov. Palin doesn’t; rather, she was reacting against John McCain as someone on a different side of an internecine conservative conflict. This was a pretty common reaction among conservative pundits who had one horse or another in the GOP veepstakes–partisans of Romney, Pawlenty, and others had a hard time letting go, and some of them never could. I think a lot of it (perhaps for some liberal pundits as well) is that they felt Sen. McCain made them look bad–they set out the criteria by which he would choose a running mate and the list of people he would consider, and then he went and did something different.
Are you sure you read all of them? Perhaps you overlooked the one in which she said “it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem” and “clearly out of her league.” Perhaps you overlooked it when she said “’Palling around with terrorists,’ as Sarah Palin said of Obama, gets to an underlying xenophobic, anti-Muslim sentiment. Using surrogates who strategically use Obama’s middle name, Hussein, feeds the same dark heart. “
To maintain that these criticisms reflect Parker’s feelings about McCain without reflecting her opinion of Palin as well is quite a stretch
That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying, rather, is that her reaction to the pick rendered her incapable of evaluating the person picked in any objective fashion.
Once again, I cannot help but wonder whether you have read all of Parker’s columns about Palin. Her reaction to Palin at the convention was nothing short of enthusiastic.
Palin delivered.
What she showed was strength, conviction, determination, confidence, a willingness to rumble and fearlessness. No caribou caught in the headlights, she.
Whatever conclusions the punditry might draw from Palin’s remarks, we can be fairly certain that Middle America felt nothing but redemption and salvation.
Do you really want to argue that this is the writing of a person rendered incapable of evaluating Palin in any objective fashion?
Read the whole column, and compare it to the one Peggy Noonan wrote just before her open-mic incident. Was her reaction to Gov. Palin “enthusiastic”? Not on my read. She did give Gov. Palin more credit than in her later columns, when (as with Noonan) the media onslaught left her free to react more honestly; but the fact that she credits the Governor with fearlessness (something she could hardly deny) doesn’t hide the clear distancing in that column, as seen in (for instance) the division between “Middle America” and “the punditry”–which category includes herself. It doesn’t cover the easy acceptance of all but the most outrageous smears on Gov. Palin and her family. And it doesn’t disguise the fact that the column is rather more about the hopes of Republican women than about its purported subject.
The fact that Kathleen Parker could be politic doesn’t mean she was ever objective.
Are you saying that the problem was that Parker did not give Palin enough credit in her post-convention column? Are you saying her failure to gush over Palin even more than she did demonstrated that she lacked objectivity? What would have satisified you?
BTW, as far as I can tell, your only basis for questioning Noonan and Parker’s objectivity towards Palin is the fact that they do not share your opinion of her. On the other hand, I think that their ability to recognize both her strengths and her shortcomings meets the very dictionary definition of objectivity.
Nope. What I’m saying is, you’re misreading her column. I’m also saying that her view of Gov. Palin is not in fact objective because she does not have a clear or accurate view of either Gov. Palin’s strengths or her shortcomings–rather, she’s accepting the badly-skewed MSM version of both without even questioning it, because it fits her own elitist prejudices.
And in any event, all of this is a little far from the point: namely, that the NYT appears to want to replace Bill Kristol with someone who has a “more independent” conservative viewpoint–which being translated means, marches in lockstep with the Beltway establishment/MSM environment version of a conservative consensus, as represented by folks like George Will, David Brooks and Peggy Noonan. Heaven help the NYT if they have a columnist who isn’t “independent” enough to dutifully toe the Will/Brooks/Noonan line.
I think you’ve got things backwards. A clear and accurate view of Palin’s strengths and weaknesses is not a requisite for objectivity. Objectivity is what’s necessary in order to reach that clear and accurate view.
The first real evidence upon which Parker could demonstrate her objectivity was Palin’s convention speech and Parker’s initial reaction was positive. As more evidence became available, Parker’s evaluation changed.
I suppose it’s possible that this change resulted from her elitist prejudices, but you have presented no evidence whatsoever to support that assertion and I’m willing to bet that you would be hard pressed to do so. I have been reading Parker’s columns for as long as they have been appearing in the Chicago Tribune and she has always impressed my as a dutiful conservative soldier in the culture wars who welcomed the opportunity to defend conservative positions against MSM attacks.
Here is another question for you: prior to her praise of Sarah Palin, did you ever have reason to greatly admire Camille Paglia “for her honesty, the clarity of her perception, and the true independence of her mind, and also for her great gifts as a writer?”
I think you’ve got things backwards. A clear and accurate view of Palin’s strengths and weaknesses is not a requisite for objectivity. Objectivity is what’s necessary in order to reach that clear and accurate view.
And accepting an inaccurate and distorted view because it fits what you’ve already decided to believe is a clear indication of a lack of objectivity.
The first real evidence upon which Parker could demonstrate her objectivity was Palin’s convention speech and Parker’s initial reaction was positive.
Not really, no, as I noted above.
As more evidence became available, Parker’s evaluation changed.
What she was reacting to wasn’t evidence. As Camille Paglia put it, “every flimsy rumor about Sarah Palin was being trumpeted as if it were engraved in stone on Mount Sinai,” and Parker happily went along with that.
What you appear not to grasp is that there are plenty of conservative elitists.
And as for your question on Paglia: yes, I admire her and have for quite a while, in much the same way in which I do Christopher Hitchens. (In Hitchens’ case, one must make allowance for his complete blind spot regarding Christianity–on that subject, he often doesn’t measure up to his usual standards.) As one trained in history, I appreciate her stand against the fashionable academic cant that has done great damage to the teaching of that discipline, among others; I also appreciate her clear-eyed understanding that there’s a dark side to human nature, and that the world is not as simple as our ideologies (left or right, doesn’t matter) would make it. I appreciate the fact that she doesn’t give any more of a fig for leftist orthodoxy than she does for Christian orthodoxy; when I’ve complained about the adolescent atheism of folks like Harris and Dawkins (and, yes, Hitchens), I would have done well to mention her as a contemporary counterexample. (I don’t primarily think of her as an atheist because I’ve mostly read her on other subjects, even though she is.) I haven’t yet gotten to her book on poetry, but it’s on my list (in some small part because Donne is one of my favorites). I think there’s something cracked in her morals–her position on abortion, it seems to me, isn’t far from “might makes right”–but I appreciate the fact that she never tries to obfuscate her position, or pretend that anything is other than what it is.
Why is it you can respect Paglia’s challenge to liberal orthodoxy, but you presume to know that Parker is a biased elitist when she questions your orthodoxy?
It’s precisely because she isn’t challenging the elite orthodoxy w/r/t Sarah Palin that I question her objectivity and accuse her of elitist bias. Her arguments against Gov. Palin were factually dubious and rationally strained, to say the least.
I’ve seen other blog comments about Kristol, with some speculating that it has been his lackluster writing the NYT illuminati are dissing. Don’t know. Hard to see this liberal rag as not having a hidden agenda in every move it makes. CLEARLY, they hate Palin. One more observation: If Palin left the reservation as her own woman, Kathleen Parker has left the asylum grounds. What on earth has happened to her?