"Beat Sweeteners"

Toby Herndon, the London Telegraph's chief America watcher, wrote a pretty spot-on assessment of the American press and it's relationship to power today:

A press like there is here in Washington, where reporters stand for the president and feel puffed up with pride when he calls on them to ask a question (very often a pretentious, look-at-me three-parter that has little to do with getting a decent answer).

How nice it would be if, like the US, the press would dutifully write “beat sweeteners” to ingratiate themselves, where stories are not written for fear of the journalist falling out of favour, where the political and media elites attend the same cocktail parties and envelope themselves in the same stultifyingly comfortable consensus about what is happening and what should be reported on.

No sooner had I found myself nodding in agreement to this piece then did I find this monstrosity of a "beat sweetener" on Sarah Palin in Newsweek. Go ahead, start reading and see how long you last.

Don't We Have Enough Postmodernism in American Politics Already?

From the legendary exploits of one Charles Nesbitt Wilson; some-time Congressman, full-time bon vivant:

It is speculated that Wilson first entered politics as a teenager by running a campaign against his next-door neighbor, city council incumbent Charles Hazard. When Wilson was 13, his 14-year old dog entered Hazard's yard. Hazard retaliated by mixing crushed glass into the dog's food, causing fatal internal bleeding. Being a farmer's son, Wilson was able to get a driving permit at age 13, which enabled him to drive 96 voters, mainly black citizens from poor neighborhoods, to the polls. As they left the car, it is speculated that he told each of them that he didn't want to influence their vote, but that the incumbent Hazard had purposely killed his dog. After Hazard was defeated by a margin of 16 votes, Wilson went to his house to tell him he shouldn't poison any more dogs. Wilson cited this as "the day [he] fell in love with America."

It's actually a very touching story, one the demonstrates perfectly the ability of the weakest among us to triumph over the strongest in a democracy ... with the help of a little hustle, of course.

Somehow, I don't think this will turn out nearly as charmingly.

Art Imitating Life ... or Something

Charles Homans looks at MIA's pretty lousy political stances (namely, her support of the Tamil Tigers), before concluding:

I think this is a more damning indictment of politics than it is of M.I.A. -- whose music is, all things considered, pretty great, if not quite up to the precedents of London Calling or It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Stitching an aesthetic out of politics is at the end of the day pretty harmless; assembling a politics out of aesthetics, not so much.

You're gonna want to check out where that link takes you.

Palin's Shelf-life

Just some follow up on the Palin story from last night:

Palin's celebrity is largely based on her potential to one day be President. Her celebrity and earning power declines as this potential diminishes. Under these circumstances, Palin was at her most powerful (and potentially lucrative) the day John McCain introduced her as his running mate. Since then, however, her approval numbers have steadily declined. Given that her entire shtick is to stay true to core values and principles, it's highly unlikely that she will in any way evolve beyond her current pithy provocations and rote conservative talking points.

Basically, Sarah Palin as a consumer product has a shelf-life.

Our guess is that the upper end of her expiration date is between six and eight years. Why that long? Because her fans will forgive her for not getting into the 2012 race for the White House for any number of reasons -- bad electoral year, liberal media blah blah blah, family issues, etc. -- but when she doesn't show up to run in 2016, even her biggest supporters will notice her window has closed.

Every year between now and then her song and dance will get a little older, more predictable and will mean a little less. She may cater to a consumer that values brand loyalty above all else, but she can't play herself off as an anti-establishment figure from inside the establishment year after year before folks start to look for another "rogue."

Of course, if she does run in either 2012 or 2016 and loses, then it's game over.

Sarah Palin will never be President -- no matter how worried Andrew Sullivan might be of the possibility . The more people get to know her, the more they come to realize that. This means that she has a short amount of time to make as much money as possible as quickly as she can. That means as many $100,000 a pop speeches as she can schedule, as many TV opportunities as come her way, book deals, etc.

It's a good place to be in a lot of ways, and there's definitely a possibility that as the media environment continues to segregate into thinner niches that she'll find an audience that won't tire of her. But there's very little inclination she's willing to play by anyone's rules but her own and at some point in time her value as a commodity won't be worth the trouble in catering to the wishes of others. When that happens she'll finally recede into the background like so many other VP runners-up before her.

This is Apparently the Article Everyone will be Talking about Tomorrow

Palin, Inc.

[via JG]

Ambinder on Palin

Agreed.

Are You Fucking Kidding Me, Sarah Palin?

On the day the woman signs a $1 million per episode reality TV gig, Palin has the audacity to ask supporters for a donation.

This woman is clearly not going to be President. Ever.

Everyone's a Winner!

And on the day the rest of America received health care reform, Sarah Palin got a reality TV show.

It's a helluva country, isn't it?

Did Palin's Tea Party Speech Make Money?

Almost certainly.

Reportedly, 600 people paid $549 to attend the conference, while another 500 paid $349 just to attend the lobster and steak banquet at which Palin spoke. Let's do the math:

600 x 549 = $329,400
+
500 x 349 = $174,500
_______
$503,900

Palin's speech reportedly cost in the neighborhood of $100,000, not including a cost associated with her rider (private jet for travel, hotel accommodations, etc.) that could cost anything from $10,000 to $50,000. Let's stay on the high end of things just to look at the worse case scenario.

Then there's the additional costs of putting on the conference. Let's say that cost is in the neighborhood of $200,000. Maybe this is on the low end of things. That would mean the two-day event runs just over $180 a head for all 1100 participants. That's far more than the cost per guest at a formal wedding -- and dollars to donuts there wasn't an open bar at the Tea Party.

That leaves roughly $150,000 in profit.

Then there's the revenue brought in from sponsorships. A month ago Politico reported:

And a tea party source familiar with the convention’s fundraising and planning efforts questioned whether it was wise to prominently feature Palin at an event purporting to be driven by grass-roots activists.

Plus, the source said the convention’s sponsorship requests exceeded the norm for such an event, adding, “I understand completely asking sponsors to chip in, but 50 grand is just way beyond.”

The Tea Party had multiple sponsorship levels: 4 sponsors at the Silver level, 3 at the Bronze, 3 "co-sponsors" and 5 "participants." Presumably no one bought into the "Gold" level or those were the sponsors that bailed. I can't imagine that any of those sponsors forked over $50,000 for their levels of sponsorship, but they sure as hell didn't do it for free.

Either way, the Tea Party Conference likely made a healthy profit from the festivities. How much gets pumped back into "the movement" remains to be seen.

Obviously, the economy isn't hurting the hosts of the event, who seem to have made out like bandits. Nor is it hurting the participants, who can pay a good buck to travel and attend an expensive gathering that was simulcast on C-SPAN ... so maybe these Tea Party folks shouldn't be so upset about one entity taking their money when they are so willing to give it away to another?

Dispatches from FailFest '10

Via FrumForum:

The explanation for this vapidity goes to the Tea Party activists’ self-conception as ideological heirs to the Founding Fathers. (Several of the delegates even dressed up as 18th-Century yeomen, to the great delight of media photographers.) The “Tea Party” motif isn’t just a clever name: In their grandiose statements, its activists really do present themselves as protagonists in an existential struggle for America’s soul – a mission that somehow transcends the dry bristle of ordinary politics.

“We’re in a crisis, a crisis as profound of the [American] Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, or World War II,” filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon told the crowd on Friday night. “You just have to ask the Kaiser, you have to ask the military junta that ran Japan in World War II, or the Nazis, or the fascists – no power on earth has ever stood against the common working-man part of this country.”

This statement seemed like a lunatic exaggeration – as crazy as anything I’d heard from the Iraq War-era activists who compared George W. Bush to Hitler. Yet everyone around me nodded their head and applauded, basking in the notion that they were the enlightened vanguard who would protect America. For all the jus’-plain-folks posturing of Tea Party activists, it is hard to ignore how massively inflated is their own self-regard.

We Tweeted Palin's keynote. It was a classic diva performance. She appeared to arrive at the last possible moment and left as soon as she was done speaking (which was no more than an hour). Her speech was a litany of Tea Party criticisms without any consideration for veracity.

In short, the Tea Party gang wanted to be pandered to and that's exactly what Palin gave them.

Monday Night Link Orgy

• "Die Hard" and the Architecture of Close Quarters Combat

• Why are so many Climate Change skeptics TV weathermen? [via ND]

• The NFL's final word on the Aaron Rodger's facemask grab

• Sarah Palin and the Jews (with addendum and really strange, um, defense (explanation?) of the phenomenon)

• Eric Rohmer, RIP

• The Vatican did not care for "Avatar"

• More evidence that the Pyramids were built by freemen, not slaves

• Paul Samuelson and the academic origins of the current financial crisis

Smartest Thing Said Today

Here.

Divas of the World Unite!

Wow.

Just. Fucking. Wow.

[via BS]

The Gore/Palin Debates

Fingers crossed!

Marc Ambinder on Palin's WaPo Op-Ed

Good stuff.

Palin's Dad Goes Rogue

Yeah, something tells me we haven't heard the last of this:

Palin, though notoriously ill-travelled outside the United States, did journey far to the first of the four colleges she attended, in Hawaii. She and a friend who went with her lasted only one semester. "Hawaii was a little too perfect," Palin writes. "Perpetual sunshine isn't necessarily conducive to serious academics for eighteen-year-old Alaska girls." Perhaps not. But Palin's father, Chuck Heath, gave a different account to Conroy and Walshe. According to him, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: "They were a minority type thing and it wasn't glamorous, so she came home."

(emphasis added)

Well, now ...

Interesting:

This is the first year that Gridiron officers have dropped the off-the-record rule that had been in place for more than a century. Modest twittering is permitted, though not during the speeches or songs. At a meeting this morning, the officers explained that the change is a bow to media realities – the rule was often broken and Palin's appearance was certain to leak anyway.

Awesome

Enjoy!

The Chief's Person of the Year: Sarah Palin

It occurred to me this morning that there is just no getting around it: this year belonged to Sarah Palin.

I can't think of a single person who can summon a scrum of reporters by doing next to nothing. Sure, Barack Obama's life is probably more scrutinized and analyzed, but he's the President. Palin's just ... well, Sarah Palin.

And yet even with attention that most politicians would sell their mothers for, she's done nothing to further a political career. She quit a cushy job as governor of Alaska, needlessly fought with the father of her grandchild in public, alienated many supporters with a spotty record of making public appearances and threw campaign staffers overboard. None of these thing will endear her to people who could get her elected.

Her memoir and subsequent book tour were huge successes -- but the book was "self-serving and omitted several significant details," demonstrated zero command of policy, and was filled with so much score settling that it will almost certainly come back to haunt her in the future. She continues to fight with a media that she should be manipulating. Her approval numbers have plummeted. This is a person who is not taking advantage of some serious post-election media attention.

So what's next for Palin? Beats the hell out of me. Palin has clearly demonstrated that she's incapable of being a serious candidate for President, so that pretty much leaves her the "political celebrity" niche. But she's not very good at being that either (one needs more than a FaceBook and Twitter account to manage the kind of fan base she controls). Furthermore, her celebrity is intimately tied to the possibility that she could run for President. The instant that ceases to be a realistic scenario, she will stop attracting as much attention.

There are three people who absolutely love Sarah Plain: Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton. Much of the silliness and pettiness that comes with being President hasn't really affected Obama, and I'd posit that much of that has to do with the Sarah Palin sideshow filling much of that vacuum. In case you haven't noticed, Mitt Romney has been conspicuously quiet since last November. That's because it's best not to interrupt your opponent when she's hanging herself. Lastly, the more ridiculous that Palin appears to the public, the more Presidential Hillary Clinton seems and the more likely she is to become the Dems' heir apparent after Obama. If you want to thrown in a fourth, let it be the press. Contrary to what Palin and other conservatives think, the media loves her. She makes their lives easy and profitable.

I don't know how long the nation will have to endure Sarah Palin. It's likely that her star will lose some luster sooner or later, but this was her year. Don't be surprised if she gets the nod from Time -- it's a sure fire way to sell some magazines.

Birthers

Palin's one!

MORE: Best post from the Memeo thread:

Transcript via Allahpundit, who asks: "I wonder if she realized when she said this that it’s going to follow her around." Well if not, she is hardly qualified to manage a fantasy baseball team, much less the government of the United States.

MORE STILL: Dave Weigel:

Another angle here is what it reveals about Palin’s character. She has spoken and written angrily for more than a year about the people she calls “Trig Truthers,” anyone who questions whether Trig Palin is her son. The lesson she’s taken from the experience is not that conspiracy theories are out of bounds. It’s that if they are going to be conspiracy theories about her, there might as well be conspiracy theories about her political enemies.

EVEN MORE: Rod Dreher:

What she seems to be saying is, "They did it to me first, so it's fair game." Given the disgusting way she was treated by the Trig Truther trolls, Palin of all people ought to understand how immoral and insane these birther-truther conspiracies are. Yet she went right to it without a moment's hesitation in that interview.