A new idea has been sweeping through the media. The idea is to ignore Sarah Palin. The Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank explained how this idea developed:
But today is the first day of the rest of my life. And so, I hereby pledge that, beginning on Feb. 1, 2011, I will not mention Sarah Palin — in print, online or on television — for one month. Furthermore, I call on others in the news media to join me in this pledge of a Palin-free February. With enough support, I believe we may even be able to extend the moratorium beyond one month, but we are up against a powerful compulsion, and we must take this struggle day by day.
I came to this inner strength by trusting in a power greater than myself: my former Washington Post colleague Howie Kurtz, now with the Daily Beast. A week ago, on his CNN show, “Reliable Sources,” I was complaining about the over-coverage of Palin when I found myself saying that “the best thing would be — it’s impossible, of course — that we in the media should declare some sort of a Sarah Palin moratorium.”
Milbank describes why the media is obsessed with her.
The media obsession with Palin began naturally and innocently enough, when the Alaska governor emerged as an electrifying presence on the Republican presidential ticket more than two years ago. But then something unhealthy happened: Though Palin was no longer a candidate, or even a public official, we in the press discovered that the mere mention of her name could vault our stories onto the most-viewed list. Palin, feeding this co-dependency and indulging the news business’s endless desire for conflict, tweeted provocative nuggets that would help us keep her in the public eye — so much so that this former vice presidential candidate gets far more coverage than the actual vice president.
We need help.
I saw one pundit describe her once as a “tuning fork.” She makes her followers vibrate on a certain frequency. Her frequency also vibrates among her critics. Seriously, is there anyone who doesn’t have a strong opinion on Sarah Palin?
Talking Points Memo‘s Josh Marshall has a different take. The media covers Palin because she is important and that calls to ignore her are self-defeating.
Frequently a reader will write in to say, “Why are you giving her so much attention? You’re just pumping her up. If you and the other places would stop giving her so much oxygen, she and her whole circus would just wither away.”
I don’t know which circle of the hell of myopia you need to be residing in to think like this. But it’s very deep in there, I assure you. Much as I love this thing our team has created, I assure you that Palin’s popularity, notoriety, footprint on the public stage is quite independent of TPM. Indeed, TPM and a dozen other similar or not so similar publications you can find on the web. Palin is such a big deal because she’s got a chunk of the political nation that is very, very into her. She resonates deeply with her core supporters. She’s one of those people who cuts an electric figure on the public stage because she slices right through the society and generates one intense response from one side and a completely opposite but equally intense response from the other. And she says, let’s be honest, a lot of really crazy stuff.
This is actually a real blind spot for liberals in general — the idea that things that are crazy or tawdry or just outrageous are really best ignored. Don’t give them more attention. You’re just giving them what they want. Or maybe it’s not so practical and utilitarian. Maybe, they say, it’s just beneath us. Focus on the important stuff.
On so many levels this represents an alienation from the popular political culture which is not only troubling in itself but actually damages progressive and center-left politics in general no end. It’s almost the fatal flaw. Democrats often console themselves that even when they don’t win elections, usually their individual policies are more popular than those of Republicans. Too bad you can’t elect a policy. It’s true for instance that Health Care Reform — which still has more opponents than supporters — is pretty popular when you ask people about its individual components. But why is that? It’s not random, because that pattern crops up again and again. It’s another one of the examples where liberals — or a certain strain of liberalism — focuses way too much on the libretto of our political life and far too little on the score. It’s like you’re at a Wagner opera reading the libretto with your ear plugs in and think you’ve got the whole thing covered.
I do agree with Marshall that progressives focus way too much on policy and not enough on politics (and Republicans do the opposite). To really win, progressives need to learn how to talk to people’s emotions because, let’s face it, that’s how most people make decisions.
But I leave this question up to you. Should we participate in Palin-free month? Is Palin a beast of our own creation or is it wrong to ignore her? Leave your answer in comments.