The questions about Palin’s daughter were unfair; she was essentially asking if Sarah Palin is a bad mother. The other questions were fair, but the tone was argumentative, suspicious, and exasperated. Examples, in the link that Lance Turbo posted. . .
4:30 – drops the ‘some people have argued’ pretense, says: “. . . what I’m saying is, that you [Republicans] set a different standard. . .”
4:40 – again personally adopts the argument: “I’m just trying to get someone from the campaign to answer me. . .”
– Throughout the interview, she refers to Republicans as “you guys.” (If someone can provide video of her referring to Democrats the same way while pressing them to rebut an argument, I’ll accept the phrase as just part of her professional speech patterns; it is a possibility.)
It’s just not the tone of professional, non-partisan news anchor. If you really don’t see it then there’s nothing I can say to convince you, but do you think that a Jim Lehrer or Bernard Shaw would have their incredulousness written all over their faces during an interview?
Granted, the guest wasn’t addressing most questions directly, which probably affected the tone of the interview. (Of course, why have that kind of guest on if you want direct, un-canned responses? That’s all they’re allowed to give, and the networks know it.)
Holy mother, is Michele Bachmann scary in that clip. She has the dead-eyed smile of a Phelps family member. Best not to watch a video featuring her and CryptKeeper Carville right before going to bed.
Yeah, that’s my totally brilliant political commentary.
You lost me here. She’s not allowed to get frustrated when he doesn’t answer a direct question because he’s working for a political campaign? Fuck off. Campbell Brown asked a direct question about a double standard when it comes to experience and he tried to dodge it. She called him on it, and he kept evading.
She can press for a direct answer. That’s not what I’m complaining about – it’s the way in which she did it, and the attitude she expressed towards the Republicans’ arguments, not just this spokesman’s evasiveness.
The parenthetical of mine that you quoted isn’t meant to argue that she can’t show frustration with this kind of guest, just that this kind of guest is fucking lousy. I hate when networks have on party spokesmen or “strategists.” They’re permitted to be neither honest nor original. What’s the point?
If John McCain has said that Barack Obama isn’t experienced enough to become president, that he is going to choose a vice president that can take the job on day one, and chooses the thin resumed Sarah Palin to be that person, he’d better be prepared to explain why it isn’t a double standard.
Because at the least, the answers they have are going to be the answers the campaign told them to have. Apparently the McCain campaign isn’t ready to answer the experience question yet or they haven’t prepped their staff enough to answer questions.
I agree with you that the media coverage of Palin’s daughter has been pretty despicable. Like it wouldn’t be difficult enough to be a pregnant 17-year-old without it being splashed all over the headlines.
However, these two things are not comparable. Cheney having a gay daughter is not a reflection on his skills or the decisions he made as a parent, whereas Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy could potentially be as a result of her parenting.
But I doubt it.
I think it’s weirder how they’re announcing that this girl is going to marry the baby’s father. It feels very forced and creepy and makes me think worse of Palin than the whole pregnant daughter thing. I feel really bad for these kids and I hope they manage to somehow avoid what seems like a shotgun wedding, at least until they’re a little older than seventeen.
Sure, but there’s a world of difference between “Is that not a different standard?” and “I’m saying that you are setting a different standard,” especially when the latter line of question is conducted with facial expressions and body language that make the anchor’s opinion about the argument obvious.
I first took note of Campbell Brown during the primaries when she treated Hillary in the same fashion as she just did with Tucker while swooning over Obama. SNL did a skit on that as I recall.
You know, I’ve had the night to think about this, and I’m beginning to see the bias.
In favor of McCain.
His campaign has been making the claim that Obama is not qualified to be president. Campbell Brown repeats their talking point for them! Then she asks how Sarah Palin is better qualified than Obama. That should have been a softball question. If Palin had any experience to talk about, that spokesman would have knocked it out of the park.
Ah, well in that case, I commend Brown’s courageous and maverick decision to fight the system, and show those politicos that we the people will not stand for avoidance and bullet points any more. She’s a lot like McCain in that way, I guess . . .
(I agree that Palin’s daughter’s private life on the news is disgusting, but I also hate hate hate anyone who is being interviewed and thinks that it’s just free commercial time. If you don’t want to answer questions, take out an ad instead, but don’t act all huffy when a reporter hounds you on a question that not only will you not answer, but you won’t even admit to not answering)
And… once again the Republicans show that they can dish it out, but not take it.
Could Campbell have kept her aggravation more to herself? Probably. But Wanker dude wasn’t answering the question. ANSWER the damned question and you might get better treatment.
AFAIK, Campbell Brown has nothing to do with the crawl content-to make it seem like this was all a big plot to make Palin look bad is ridiculous. Some of that crawl dealt with EU news.
For McCain to cancel an interview (with Larry King–the class clown of “journalism”–it doesn’t get softer than him!) shows a disturbing Bill O’Reilly trait I had not previously noticed. Just what we need–a hothead, knee jerk president. (oh, I mean ANOTHER one)…
Ooh, I haven’t heard this one in years. Let me see if I can remember how it goes…
“Only fringe groups like Democrats. Apart from the media, celebrities, academia, city dwellers, teachers, unions, teachers unions, environmentalists, young people, blue-staters, peaceniks, and minorities, all Real Americans like Republicans.”
I’m not going to add to the BS about bias in the media, there most certainly is bias in the media from both sides based on which media source one chooses. And, sometimes, based on our personal insight we may read bias one way or the other from a neutral source.
Not that I’m saying last night’s interview was neutral.
However, to **Starving Artist **and anyone else who may wish to use this interview as a launch pad for media bias I gotta tell ya, you picked the wrong horse in this race.
I believe the experience question was valid and insightfull but the answer was severly lacking.
Tucker Bounds was waffling more than all the IHOPs in the midwest.
He was dancing around more than Richard Simmons in Sweatin to the Oldies.
He was sweatin like a whor… naa, that’s too cliche.
He was spinning like the space station in 2001 A Space Oddesy, with enough force to create his own gravity.
He was dodging more bullets than Osama Bin Ladin before we went to Iraq.
He was avoiding the question like it had herpies and he was all hopped up on Cialis.
I just wish he had answered the damned question. Glenn Beck answered it about a half hour later and he wasn’t even asked it. Beck was able to intelligently use data with sources and cites to at least somewhat rebuke the experience issue without letting himself get caught up in the National Guard quagmire because let’s face it, although a Governer is CIC of the state’s National Guard it is a point and click position, a turn key operation where the Governer makes the authorization to depoly and the Guard takes it from there.
It looks almost like blinking her eyes doesn’t come automatically for her and she has to really think about it. Also, when she’s not talking, her head gets really, really still in order to conserve energy and preserve that creepy smile.
The biggest problem with that interview was that Campbell Brown was wrong. She asked him to name some way in which the Governor commands the National Guard. Tucker started to say, “She has to set the budget to determine how to equip them, and she has to decide to deploy them…”
And Brown interrupted with a smug look on her face and said something like, “The governor doesn’t make those decisions!”. Which flustered Tucker and made him stop and think, at which point she hit him with the question again.
And of course she was wrong, as they admitted later. But their admission she was wrong didn’t come in the form of an apology, but another attack. This is what Campbell said during the convention last night, “And as it turns out, Palin HAS deployed the Guard twice, to fight fires in Alaska. If their own people didn’t even know that, what kind of vetting job did they do?”
This is the point I wanted to make. Having a pregnant teenager is relevant if you have been advocating “abstinence only” sex-ed, yet another anti-science ideology of the right. Seriously, did all the Repubs get beat up by the Science Club in Jr High?
I feel sorry for Bristol and her fiance- I doubt that they’d be shotgunned if Palin wasn’t running for VP.
And is anyone else wondering why some named Starving Artist would be pro-McCain? I doubt Johnny Mac will be handing out NEA grants.
