Free Sarah Palin!

Damn. What got into Campbell Brown?

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G.D.

Gene "G.D." Demby is the founder and editor of PostBourgie. In his day job, he blogs and reports on race and ethnicity for NPR's Code Switch team.

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shani-o

I have no idea, but whatever it is, I think it’s making her hair extra-shiny, too.

This is what I was getting at when I wrote about sexism within the McCain campaign. What Campbell can’t say, of course, is that the reason why they’re protecting her from the press is because she’s not a real candidate.
rakia

This veers a little to close to the Keith Olbermann side of things for my taste. I don’t like my anchors editorializing. Let me do that in my own living room, thank you very much.

That said, I think Campbell is a little wrong. The reason the McCain camp is keeping Palin from reporters has nothing to do with sexism; it’s lack of experience and putting-foot-in-mouthedness. Remember, she’s still got two weeks worth of cramming to do before her debate with Biden. And she needs to have a better showing that she did with Charles Gibson.

Also, for me, I get the impression that Campbell is trying to be a little bit sneaky here. It’s like she doesn’t want to lose her journalistic credibility by backing Obama outright, so she takes a roundabout road to criticizing McCain with sexism accusations. If she’s going to call the McCain camp out for “hiding” Palin — and I think it’s okay to do so — then let the reason be a journalistic, rights-of-the-media one.
shani-o

But Rakia, a male candidate with Palin’s “credentials” never would have made the ticket, so I think it’s safe to say that by default, this is about sexism.

Also, I’m not so sure Campbell is an Obama supporter. I think she’s willing to give McCain a chance, but more than anything, she and the rest of the media are pissed at the campaign’s opacity. If there’s one thing that will make a mild-mannered reporter get all up in a candidate’s grill, it’s an unreasonable lack of access.

Though there is a bit of underhandedness with her using sexism as the reason Palin’s been in hiding, especially since the campaign has been pulling the sexism card from the beginning.
rakia

I think it’s perfectly reasonable for Campbell to get pissy about the lack of access journalists have had to Palin. But to blame it on sexism is very iffy to me. If McCain had chosen a male running mate with the same low level of experience, I think they’d still keep him away from the press. I don’t think sexism is the reason.
quadmoniker

I don’t know if McCain’s camp is being sexist on purpose, but that’s what it looks like from the outside. From the moment when she was introduced as his running mate and went to shake his hand and he, instead, grabbed her for a hug, to the blistering that the campaign has done on her behalf, I think the McCain’s treatment of Palin has been more sexist than anything anyone else has done. The whole idea that people could be picking on her, as if she weren’t being treated like any other candidate, and that she is learning foreign policy and governance at the knee of this older white man, all of it is sexist.
Seanathan

I think it’s a ploy (and a damn good one) on Campbell’s part to put them shielding Palin as sexism. What can the McCain campaign say in their defense?
rakia

All I’m saying is that I don’t believe the McCain camp thinks Palin is too weak or too girly to stand up for herself. I do believe the McCain camp is worried that the press will eat Palin alive because she doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. None of that has to do with gender, even though McCain might frame it that way to get sympathy among his base.

Now if we’re talking about the larger issue of sexism within the McCain camp, then yes, I agree with everyone that it’s there. (Palin was selected, after all, because she’s female.) But, for me, Campbell is wrong when she says the primary reason Palin is being kept from the media is because McCain et al are somehow keeping her safe from the big, bad meanies that are the American press. Again, Palin could be a dude and McCain would be just as worried to put her in front of a press corp.
quadmoniker

I don’t know. Of course their reluctance comes from the fact that she’s consummately unqualified and ready to make an idiot of herself. But, on the latter point, so was Dan Quayle, and if memory serves, he talked to the press. When Rick Davis says for Palin, without letting Palin say it on her behalf, that she’s not going to talk to the press until they show respect and “deference,” I think it shows that they are treating her differently because she is a woman.
rakia

See, I think the McCain folks are *saying* that they won’t allow Palin to speak to the press until they show respect and “deference.” I think McCain is trying to get the media to look sexist so that it looks like he has a legitimate reason to keep her under wraps.

It’s like we’re pointing our finger and him and he’s just pointing back.

Re: Dan Quayle, I think Quayle’s goofs are all the more reason to keep Palin quiet. McCain would rather Palin say nothing that say something that shows her ineptitude (i.e. Gibson’s Bush doctrine comment). McCain learned something from watching Bush 41 let Quayle speak; don’t do that.
Big Word

It’s just another manufactured media melee the Republicans are so good at generating. The Republicns know that all they have to do is play the non-conformist role to impress their constituency. I think most of their people look at stuff as an example of arrogance.