Media Elites Angry Over Sean Hannity's Sarah Palin Interview

SLICE-AND-DICE

Hannity's Highly-Rated Palin Interview Angers Media





*** Anger Over Radio Host's Savage Beating ***


With record ratings resulting from her appearance on the FOX News Channel, Palin Derangement Syndrome has begun to target those who merely interview the Alaskan governor as well as the candidate herself.

Yes, to gain the approval of Sarah Palin's liberal enemies, the interviewer apparently must insult her, question whether she can be trusted around teenage boys, or ask about her private (yet somehow hacked) emails.

Of course, that Sean Hannity was granted this interview, as opposed to Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews or Whoopi Goldberg, was bound to set off this crowd. And we should have seen the personal insults coming a mile away.

But is it really necessary to be quite so nasty? At least they've come up with one or two new ones: at NewJersey.com, Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine derides Hannity as a "steak salesman":

Steak salesman was in rare form with Palin

[...]

Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and the various other radio talkers are pitchmen, not conservatives. Their job is to sell you products, and they're pretty good at it. But only a complete moron - oops, I mean a populist - could take Hannity seriously when he analyzes presidential politics one minute and then gives a pitch for Ruth's Chris Steakhouse the next.

Though I confess it does make me want a steak aged in butter.

Seen in that light, Hannity's interview of Republican vice-presidential contender Sarah Palin Wednesday night was a new low in the descent into populism I lamented in my column the other day.

Palin has been dodging journalists from the day she got the nomination. This is always a bad sign. If you don't think you can handle any question anyone throws at you, then you have no business running for office. Until recently, John McCain's claim to fame was taking on all questions from reporters.

Palin though chose the most compliant of interviewers in Hannity.

Funny enough, if Hannity didn't have advertisers (as is the case with our friends at Air America Radio), he'd be slammed for that as well. That's the way these guys play the game.

Perhaps what's really motivating this slice-and-dice analysis, however, is anger over the huge ratings generated by part one of the interview (part two figures are due soon):

Hannity & Colmes (well, mostly Hannity) welcomed Gov. Sarah Palin last night, and was helped to its second highest ratings in Total Viewers during 2008. In the A25-54 demo, it was the 3rd highest of the year.

Palin was involved in the top-rated H&C as well — it was the night of her speech at the RNC.

In prime time last night, FNC averaged 4,107,000 total viewers and 1,093,000 in the demo.

Obviously, no one expects Palin and Hannity to get a free pass from their opponents in the Obama campaign and his media fellow-travellers. But the depths to which they've been willing to sink in the name of destroying Sarah Palin are breathtaking.


For his part, Hannity took the opportunity to get a sense of Palin's personal nature, asking how she's felt about some of the attacks from the Obama campaign:

HANNITY: When you were first announced as Senator McCain's running mate, the Obama campaign put out a statement and here's what it was. It said, "Today, Senator McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000, with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat from the presidency." Perhaps they forgot you got promoted.

But how did that make you feel?

PALIN: Oh, you know, it's motivating to me, Sean. Because it's, OK, not only personally, well, I have opportunity to prove what the capabilities are here. But I so respected John McCain, his maverick streak in him there really being made manifest in choosing someone who has a track record of that commitment to reform, of being able to share the examples of the reform, the practices that have been implemented and have been good for the people whom I have been serving. I've been working for the people of Wasilla and Alaska. And in my job also in overseeing such a healthy portion of the U.S. domestic production of oil.

Those things that I add to the ticket, certainly our opponents are going to ignore all that and they're going to send their opposition researchers up to Alaska. They've got dozens of them up there now.

He also pressed her to address key points that were glossed over during Palin's previous interview with Charles Gibson:

HANNITY: You said that — in the last part of your interview with Charles Gibson — you said that you thought that Senator Obama, he probably regrets it now, in terms of not picking Senator Clinton.

Why do you feel that way?

PALIN: I think Senator Clinton had shown a lot of determination and stick-to-itiveness in her campaigns and I have to respect that. I don't have to agree with all that she tried to push through and parts of her agenda. In fact, I don't agree with all of it.

But there are some things that Hillary Clinton did that nobody can take away from her. And that is the 18 million cracks that she put there in that highest and hardest glass ceiling in America's political scene. She was able to affect that and I respect that.

Her nearly invisible Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, has claimed she's "sheltering" herself from the media. But almost no one seems to be paying attention to the Delaware senator. What's worse, facing a barrage of personal attacks, or being ignored?

Palin's taking unprecedented heat because it's clear to the left that she's an effective leader. That has them running scared.


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