It's gotta be pretty bad when the only rational voice at MSNBC is Pat Buchanan.
From Newsbusters:
MSNBC Mocks, Distorts Prayer Request by Palin
newsbusters.org
RACHEL MADDOW: It's been nine days since Senator John McCain plucked his vice presidential pick, Governor Sarah Palin, out of the relative obscurity of the Alaskan wilderness. And while assailing the news media's alleged bias and disrespect, the campaign has since kept Governor Palin in a another brand of wilderness conspicuously away from the fourth estate -- that would be us, in the media, if you're keeping score. McCain campaign manager Rick Davis gave this reason.
RICK DAVIS, MCCAIN CAMPAIGN MANAGER: She will do interviews, but she'll do them on the terms and conditions of which the campaign decides that it's ready to do it. And Chris, all due respect, I mean, you know, the information that the news media has been putting out on Sarah Palin is not what I would call objective journalism. So until at which point in time we feel like the news media is going to treat her with some level of respect and deference, I think it would be foolhardy to put her out into that kind of environment.
MADDOW: "Respect and deference." To my mind, "deference" has about as much of an appropriate role in journalism as "vertigo" has in trapeze. The campaign has now consented to one national TV interview later this week with ABC's Charlie Gibson. Presumably, even with an appropriate respect and deference toward the candidate, Mr. Gibson will still be allowed and able to ask about Governor Palin's record. Here now is MSNBC political analyst, Pat Buchanan. Hi, Pat. Nice to see you.
PAT BUCHANAN: How are you doing, Rachel? Congratulations on your new show.
MADDOW: Thank you very much. I feel lucky to have you here.
BUCHANAN: Well, thank you.
MADDOW: The respect and deference-
BUCHANAN: You may not say that afterwards.
[LAUGHTER]
MADDOW: Let's see. "Respect and deference," that struck me like a slap across the face when I heard Rick Davis say that. The idea that the media ought to be deferential to a candidate for Vice President to me just seems fundamentally wrong in terms of what the role of the media is in democracy.
BUCHANAN: Well, they ought to show this woman a lot more respect certainly than she was shown when the Financial Times, which is not a radical sheet, said today the press threw an apocalyptic fit on this thing, an apoplectic fit, if you will, when she was announced. And I think she was treated horribly. I think the New York Times putting her teenage daughter's pregnancy above the fold, the Washington Post doing the same thing. The letters to the editor in the Washington Post on Saturday when I got home, every single one of them denounced the Post, and my guess is the Post put them in there because they were ashamed of what they did.
MADDOW: But the campaign itself put out a statement about the daughter's pregnancy. The campaign, even in her acceptance speech, she was highlighting the things that she wanted the press to focus on about her kids, talking about her son shipping out to Iraq, for example. So I don't feel like, I mean, she was introduced as a mother of five before we even got her name when John McCain announced her as his VP. So I don't feel like questions about her family, questions about her kids ought to be off limits if they are campaigning on the basis of her kids.
BUCHANAN: Rachel, you know exactly why she had to put that statement out about her 17-year-old daughter being pregnant, because it was the scurvy lies and slanders on Daily Kos which were running through the press corps. And your smile tells me you know it as well as I do. They were forced to do this. Now, they didn't do this to John Edwards. You and I didn't talk about that. We heard those rumors. We knew the National Enquirer stuff. We stayed off it. And the way this woman is being treated-
MADDOW: But wait a second. Wait a second. They didn't have to do that because, listen, there was a lot of blog rumoring about John Edwards that didn't end up getting to the, didn't end up getting talked about until it was in the mainstream press. If there were rumors in the blog world that the campaign was concerned about, they didn't have to respond to them. They could have her do an interview with the mainstream press the way that John Edwards did about that. But instead they decided to proactively address the issue, thereby putting the pregnancy on the table for everybody to talk about. They put this stuff out there. How can it be unfair to discuss it?
BUCHANAN: Rachel, when you see an entire Republican convention standing up and speakers who, many of them moderate Republicans, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, you got Fred Thompson, others getting up there, Huckabee, who's a good, I mean, he's got friends in the media. They're up there going after the media, and that place is wildly cheering with enthusiasm. It's because they felt a lady, a woman that they had nominated who is a terrific candidate was being ripped apart. Now, let me just say tonight, I've seen, you're bringing out this religious stuff.
MADDOW: Sure. Yes.
BUCHANAN: Okay. She went to Assembly of God Church. She's a Pentecostal. I heard what she said. She said, "Let us pray that this war is part of God's plan." What is wrong with that for a woman whose 19-year-old boy is about to be sent off and may never return, that she asks for prayers? Just as Lincoln said-
MADDOW: She's not playing that the war be part of God's plan.
BUCHANAN: Oh, yes, she is.
MADDOW: She's asserting that the war is part of God's plan.
BUCHANAN: No, no. She did not say this war is God's plan. Look at it again-
MADDOW: She's asserting that God has a plan for the war just as God has a plan for the pipeline.
BUCHANAN: No, she didn't. It's just like Lincoln said, look, "Let us pray that we are on God's side." And the fact is, do you know how many Assembly of God folks there are out there? Do you know how many Pentecostals there are out there? Do you know who many pre-millennialists are out there? Tim LaHaye's book sold 40 million copies.
MADDOW: Sure.
BUCHANAN: Now, you go on national television and you go trashing that religion because of what they believe about the End Times-
MADDOW: Nobody's trashing anybody's religion, Pat.
BUCHANAN: Well, you go back over the two shows we've just had.
MADDOW: No, you look at this stuff because we do not know, because Sarah Palin is a total national unknown-
BUCHANAN: Right.
MADDOW: -and she hasn't been made available to reporters. We don't know if she believes in the separation of church and state.
BUCHANAN: All right, I think you ought to ask her-
MADDOW: We believe what we hear from her, which is that God is directing her public policies.
BUCHANAN: Name one thing that suggests that she wants to establish the Assembly of God or her Baptist church, or whatever she's in now as a national church. There is nothing-
MADDOW: I would love to ask her that. I would love to ask her that, but I fear that they wouldn't think I was appropriately deferential to get an interview.
BUCHANAN: You know, this is remarkable, okay. We have the other candidate, Barack Obama, who has been, for 15 years, belonged to a church which is run by a racist anti-white, anti-American pastor, and his wife had those kids baptized by him.
MADDOW: It's bad strategy to talk about trashing religion and then come on in and bring that stuff up.
BUCHANAN: I think we can trash Reverend Wright.
MADDOW: And you have at great length. Pat, it is a pleasure to have you hear. Thanks for coming in.
BUCHANAN: Good to be here. |
