The Media’s Manufactured Palin ‘Scandal’

Historian Daniel J. Boorstin coined the term “pseudo-event” for an event designed solely to attract the media and not for any other real value. The current brouhaha over Bristol Palin is an ideal example of just such a pseudo-event. Here in the Twin Cities, the Palin news is being met with little concern. Instead, the reaction has been one of support for Ms. Palin and her family.

Of course, if all one did is follow the media line, one would thing the exact opposite.

The Chicago Tribune breathlessly proclaims that the news has Republicans “off balance”. The New York Times proclaims that Gov. Palin must not have been properly vetted. Liberal bloggers are already gleefully calling for Palin to resign—apparently some think that a woman should know her place and that raising a family and having a career is impossible.

This pick has the Democratic Party scrambling. If they continue this line of attack it will backfire on them. Do they really want to make an issue out of a 17-year-old girl?

This whole affair is a pseudo-event. It was crafted by the liberal left to try to drive a wedge between evangelicals and McCain. It will fail precisely because the media is arrogant to think that evangelical and values voters are as intolerant as they parody them to be. It is without substance, and it is gutter politics. Even Sen. Obama, much to his credit, has said this should be off-limits.

Gov. Palin is being attacked because she is a principled conservative and a woman. It just burns the left that the first female Vice President—and someday perhaps the first female President—would be someone who doesn’t share their views. The rank sexism of the attacks against Gov. Palin and her family show just how far the media will go to discredit her.

This pseudo-event will fail. It will create a backlash, and here in the Twin Cities it already has. If the Democrats and their media organs think they can win by attacking a young girl at her most vulnerable, they could not be more wrong.