This is for everyone who believes in the media's view of a certain politician; please, please read
I answered this to one of my online friends, but I think everyone ought to read it.
The trouble is that I knew about Sarah Palin since long before the left-wing blogosphere knew she existed. (Incredibly, Obama's own site did NOT list her among likely VP pics even AFTER she was picked!) And I know that the person I had read about bore absolutely no resemblance to the monster you people have been fed by your media. Sarah Palin was no book-burner; she was no racist (her husband is a full member of an Eskimo tribe); she was an experienced politician - twenty years' full-time career, always in responsible posts, mayor first, governor later, closely concerned with Alaska's oil business; she had toppled a corrupt male crowd who had tried to shut her out; she had thrown the lobbyists of BP, Shell Oil, Esso and so on, who had virtually owned the previous Republican administration, out of her office (this argues formidable campaigning skills - in the US, it is very difficult to turn an incumbent out, let alone a whole leadership); she had worked with the local Democrats, and her 80% approval rating after two years of government (at a time when politicians are at their lowest, between the honeymoon period and the next electoral campaign) showed that most local Democrats were as much on her side as most Republicans. And remember again those Republican enemies she has turned out. They were old and experienced politicians. If there had been anything bad to be found out about her, they would have found it out. They found nothing. And those who know her, the citizens who elected her and who know how she has been acting, give her the unheard-of percentage of a steady 80%-plus approval rating. They know what she has been doing. You do not.
What happened was this. Most of the media, after years of cutbacks and dumbing down, had no stringers or permanent representatives of any value in Juneau or Anchorage, and they went for news to the bloggers. And among the left-wing bloggers there had been a kind of feeding frenzy that I, for one, know all too well. These people hate and are proud of hating; invent lies, and revel in the lies they are inventing. You cannot tell me that the likes of aerynalexander do not hate; you cannot tell me that they do not invent lies, when I have seen at work doing just that; you cannot tell me that they are not proud of hating, when they told me the opposite to my face; you cannot tell me that they do not conspire to support each other's lies, when I have seen them do just that. Those of you who have been my friends long enough have seen it happen, in the FA wars years ago. And the result is that there is a monstrous entity that walks the earth in the posts of thousands of Harry Potter fans and Fandom_Wank readers whom I have never met, will never meet, and frankly, do not even care to meet: a fictional fpb who bears absolutely no resemblance to the person you have come to know over the years. This is the same kind of embodied, invented nightmare as the fake Sarah Palin that reaches you through the filter of most TV stations and the New Jerk Times.
The diagnostic element is that the hatred of the bloggers has affected you. You simply do not want to be told that this person is different from what the media have made you imagine her; that she is no book-burner, barely anything like a creationist, that she does not impose her views on others, and that her foreign policy is perfectly ordinary Republican fare. Everything she says is distorted or lied about, and you have been taught to get angry if the lies and distortions are pointed out. You found it terrible that the WSJ should not agree with Chris Matthews or Oprah Winfrey about a person you never met and of whom you know only what you hear from them.
I say this is diagnostic because it is the reaction of the whole opposition. I have already as good as lost a very dear friend over a similar "I don't want to be confused with the facts" reaction. And I say it because I know this vicious kind of creative, inventing hatred on my own body. So, in every sense, I know more than you do. Please, my dear friend, listen to me.
The trouble is that I knew about Sarah Palin since long before the left-wing blogosphere knew she existed. (Incredibly, Obama's own site did NOT list her among likely VP pics even AFTER she was picked!) And I know that the person I had read about bore absolutely no resemblance to the monster you people have been fed by your media. Sarah Palin was no book-burner; she was no racist (her husband is a full member of an Eskimo tribe); she was an experienced politician - twenty years' full-time career, always in responsible posts, mayor first, governor later, closely concerned with Alaska's oil business; she had toppled a corrupt male crowd who had tried to shut her out; she had thrown the lobbyists of BP, Shell Oil, Esso and so on, who had virtually owned the previous Republican administration, out of her office (this argues formidable campaigning skills - in the US, it is very difficult to turn an incumbent out, let alone a whole leadership); she had worked with the local Democrats, and her 80% approval rating after two years of government (at a time when politicians are at their lowest, between the honeymoon period and the next electoral campaign) showed that most local Democrats were as much on her side as most Republicans. And remember again those Republican enemies she has turned out. They were old and experienced politicians. If there had been anything bad to be found out about her, they would have found it out. They found nothing. And those who know her, the citizens who elected her and who know how she has been acting, give her the unheard-of percentage of a steady 80%-plus approval rating. They know what she has been doing. You do not.
What happened was this. Most of the media, after years of cutbacks and dumbing down, had no stringers or permanent representatives of any value in Juneau or Anchorage, and they went for news to the bloggers. And among the left-wing bloggers there had been a kind of feeding frenzy that I, for one, know all too well. These people hate and are proud of hating; invent lies, and revel in the lies they are inventing. You cannot tell me that the likes of aerynalexander do not hate; you cannot tell me that they do not invent lies, when I have seen at work doing just that; you cannot tell me that they are not proud of hating, when they told me the opposite to my face; you cannot tell me that they do not conspire to support each other's lies, when I have seen them do just that. Those of you who have been my friends long enough have seen it happen, in the FA wars years ago. And the result is that there is a monstrous entity that walks the earth in the posts of thousands of Harry Potter fans and Fandom_Wank readers whom I have never met, will never meet, and frankly, do not even care to meet: a fictional fpb who bears absolutely no resemblance to the person you have come to know over the years. This is the same kind of embodied, invented nightmare as the fake Sarah Palin that reaches you through the filter of most TV stations and the New Jerk Times.
The diagnostic element is that the hatred of the bloggers has affected you. You simply do not want to be told that this person is different from what the media have made you imagine her; that she is no book-burner, barely anything like a creationist, that she does not impose her views on others, and that her foreign policy is perfectly ordinary Republican fare. Everything she says is distorted or lied about, and you have been taught to get angry if the lies and distortions are pointed out. You found it terrible that the WSJ should not agree with Chris Matthews or Oprah Winfrey about a person you never met and of whom you know only what you hear from them.
I say this is diagnostic because it is the reaction of the whole opposition. I have already as good as lost a very dear friend over a similar "I don't want to be confused with the facts" reaction. And I say it because I know this vicious kind of creative, inventing hatred on my own body. So, in every sense, I know more than you do. Please, my dear friend, listen to me.