WaPo v. WaTi: Which Had the Right Spin on Palin Interview
Having missed the Sarah Palin-Charlie Gibson interview of last night, I awoke this morning eager to gobble up analysis of this much-anticipated event. In my morning reading, I found two sources with distinct spin on the news here are some key excerpts from an account in the Washington Post.
*"Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks...The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself."
*"In the interview...she was confronted with questions about the U.S. relationship with Russia and her fitness for office, and she appeared to struggle when asked to define the "Bush doctrine" on foreign policy."
And herewith some excerpts from an account in the Washington Times:
*Headline: "Palin touts readiness in 1st interview"
*"Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Thursday she is ready to be vice president and warned the U.S. needs to be vigilant in the face of Russian aggression, including being ready for war if it means defending NATO allies."
*"Mr. Gibson at one point implied Mrs. Palin was stumbling over the question, telling her he was getting 'lost in a blizzard of words there' when she was fumbling over how far the U.S. could go to pre-empt an attack."
*"[S]he did stress that during her recent trip she also met with wounded U.S. troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany - something Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama failed to do during his recent overseas travels. And at another point, she noted she has been in touch with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili."
Which story does a better job of capturing the utter truth of Palin's coming-out interview? Is the Times too nice, the Post too critical?
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12:05 pm
The Times was too nice, and the Post wasn't harsh enough. I'm endorsing the yet-to-be-posited theory that a very jittery 12-year-old Alabama boy was actually inside Palin's brain, controlling her speech function via the scientific miracle first seen in the Dennis Quaid movie, Innerspace,
12:09 pm
It is uneasy to discern, Erik. From the existential perspective, the truth is as elusive as it, eh, memetic. I thought that on the whole our Hockey Mom did well. The war with Russia would be nice.
12:46 pm
The better question is why WCP is devoting so much time to Palin. The number of blindly critical posts suggests the writers here have a view and don't let facts get in the way. As to the question you posed, the WaPo article starts with the scandal and then gets down to the meat and it really fizzles. She said they would be fighting terrorists. As members of the military who serve a country that is objectively fighting terrorists--in Iraq and elsewhere--it is completely accurate to say that their job and their future will be fighting terrorists. Just ask if that article would have appeared on the front page of WaPo if Obama addressed troops heading off to Iraq and thanked them for their sacrifice in fighting terrorism.
1:13 pm
You might want to note that the 9/11-Iraq connection thing was from a speech she gave, not from the actual interview. Seemed pretty clear from the first paragraph of the story. You yada-yada-yada'd over this with your "..."
Just sayin'
2:18 pm
You aren’t quite sure what you are sayin’, are you, Andrew?
Mike sounds like a PhD, by comparison.