Don't Care What's True

Last night in comments to this post I said that I didn't care of Palin's charges were true. My point wasn't that I have no interest in truth, just that I have no genuine interest in the Palin freakshow except to the extent that it says something about our media and John McCain. If true, then the McCain campaign people were tremendous dicks, if not true it means Palin is (shocker!) less than honest but despite this the media is going to spend 3 months talking about her even though her actual political future (meaning elected office or any position with actual power) is probably less promising than my own.

The point is the whole thing's a freak show, and that's much more important than any of the "facts" of the freak show, none of which matter at all, true or not...


...as Boehlert says:

So I guess my question is, besides the larger and authentic one (who, besides journalists and GOP partisans, cares about Sarah Palin?) is, has the press ever treated an election loser the way it now treats Sarah Palin? Has the Beltway press ever turned an election loser like Palin into a political rising star, even though there's no evidence to suggest her stature has changed since last November's embarrassing thumping? (i.e. What "magic" is Stephanopoulos talking about?)

There's never a proper left-right analogy, but imagine if John Kerry had put Dennis Kucinich on the Veep ticket and then lost. Kucinich would have increased stature in the Democratic party, and probably be quite popular with "the base," but the press would mostly ignore him other than to occasionally sneer. I'm not equating Palin and Kucinich, just trying to imagine who might occupy a similar space on the left.