How Does It Feel?



Sarah Palin's Cross Country Tour Bus

 Back in 2007, when Two Sisters From The Right first began to blog, the race for the presidential election of 2008 was beginning to heat up.  Names were being bandied about in both parties.  People did wonder if that young senator from Illinois who had spoken at the previous Democratic convention would decide to run for president.  The GOP side was in a similar situation, no one really knew who would win the nomination, and as they are now, they were very divided.  The only factor that was not in the picture then was The Tea Party - America's patriots who finally found their voice on April 15, 2009.

But before The Tea Party was even a gleam in anyone's eye, Two Sisters From The Right had decided to publish a poster on our website that said, "Draft Sarah Palin."  Neither one of us recalls how we had first heard her name, but we began to read about her and liked what we learned.  Imagine our surprise when John McCain announced that he had chosen her to be his running mate?  Americans did not know Sarah Palin, but after her speech at the Republican Convention of 2008 her name became a household word, and her ability to stir up GOP supporters, and bring in the crowds was astounding.

With the emergence of Sarah Palin as a political figure there was another noticeable event.  The mainstream media immediately hated her.  They tried to leave no stone unturned to discredit her and to destroy her character and her reputation. It wasn't enough that every leftist journalist was attacking her at every turn, but then they began their assault on her children as well.  Her husband was not unscathed.  It was the most scurrilous form of journalism we had ever seen towards a woman who until a few weeks before was a virtual unknown.

Even after the election was over, Sarah Palin retained the ability to bring in the crowds.  When she endorsed the Tea Party movement, she became even more liked, more in demand.  She was plain spoken and said what was on her mind.  The comedians, and television talking heads had a field day at her expense, but she carried on.

Now every one waits to see if Sarah Palin will decide to run for president.  Her somewhat ambiguous and "mysterious" bus tour across America has everyone in suspense.  Network executives and newspaper editors send their people out to get the daily Palin story, and Sarah Palin is having her way by keeping them in the dark.

They have accused her of treating them like paparazzi and even of endangering their safety having to follow her around, and not having an itinerary to guide them.  Ah, revenge is so sweet!  We're sure she's having a ball. 

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air tells the reporters who claim they are in danger:  "Stop chasing her.  If it truly presents a danger to journalists to drive behind the bus and attempt to keep up, then don’t bother doing it.  Palin probably won’t provide much breaking news on this bus tour anyway.  The only reason the media’s “chasing” her is because she’s good for their ratings and page views."

So true.  Michelle Malkin, writing for the National Review wrote an excellent article on Sarah Palin's relationship with the "lamestream media."  Two Sisters From The Right are not writing this as an endorsement of Sarah Palin for president.  We really have not made up our minds who the candidate we choose to support will be.  In fact we might just have to split the blog in half, as we don't always agree on every issue.  We admire Sarah Palin's determination, and after what we imagine must be the agony that the MSM put her through, it's our turn to ask them as they blindly follow this tour, "How does it feel?"  The shoe is now on the other foot.

We are also true fans of Michelle Malkin's style and prose.  We hope you enjoy reading the article as much as we did.
Two Sisters

Chasing Sarah: The Boys Behind the Bus

by Michelle Malkin

Palin is rubbing the media mob’s sense of entitlement right back in its face.

In the 1970s, The Boys on the Bus exposed how a clubby pack of male political reporters ruled the road to the White House and shaped the news. Four decades later, an outsider gal from Alaska has commandeered the 2012 media bus — and left Beltway journalism insiders eating her dust. We’ve come a long way, baby.

Amid frenzied speculation over her potential presidential-campaign plans, former GOP Alaska governor Sarah Palin launched an all-American road trip with her family this Memorial Day weekend. Establishment media types didn’t get reserved seats or advance notice of her itinerary. Palin rubbed the Washington media mob’s institutional sense of entitlement right back in its face. “I don’t think I owe anything to the mainstream media. I want them to have to do a little bit of work on a tour like this,” she jabbed.

Robbed of the reflexive genuflection customarily paid by publicity-seeking candidates to the political press, scribes, cameramen, and producers on the campaign trail began howling louder than the Rolling Thunder Harleys that Palin rode along with on Sunday in Washington, D.C. One miffed CBS News producer, Ryan Corsaro, pouted that the O. J. Simpson–style media caravan giving chase to Palin had created hazardous working conditions for all the intrepid news correspondents.

“I just hope to God that one of these young producers with a camera whose bosses are making them follow Sarah Palin as a potential Republican candidate don’t get in a car crash, because this is dangerous,” Corsaro said. Puh-lease. As if traveling America’s highways to historic tourist spots were akin to driving in an armored tank on Baghdad’s road of death.

In Philadelphia, a pair of news helicopters braved treacherous conditions to monitor the enemy on the ground. Soon, editors tracking the story from their cubbies will be filing workers’ comp claims asserting exposure to secondhand exhaust fumes from Palin’s bus. And I’m counting the minutes until some cub reporter double-parks somewhere in hot pursuit of Team Sarah and demands that she pay his ticket. I mean, how dare Palin “make them follow” her!

As my friend and blogging colleague Doug Powers put it: “Reporters whining about Palin are like kids who can’t reach the cookie jar because she keeps moving it.”

For more than two years, Palin-bashing journalists (on the establishment left and the right) have mocked the conservative supernova while milking her for headlines, circulation, viewership, and Web traffic.

They lambaste her as trivial, while obsessing over her shoes, glasses, and hair — and turning one of her misspelled words on Twitter into Watergate.

They label her a grievance-monger for calling out media double standards and then kvetch, moan, and wallow in a pool of self-pity when she doesn’t spoon-feed them coveted political scoops.

They call her dumb and then run around in circles trying to figure out her “mystery” tour and blame her for “faking them out.”

They blast her for incompetence, but grudgingly acknowledge that she is a master of social media who has changed the rules of the presidential campaign game.

The Atlantic’s Garance Franke-Ruta griped that “reality TV star Palin” was “treating pol reporters like paparazzi — needing and hating, inviting and making chase.” Perhaps Franke-Ruta needs a reminder of what a truly parasitic press-pol relationship looks like. I have stacks of Obama 2008 profiles exulting over his glistening pecs and soaring oratorical skills, followed by countless spurned-lover laments from reporters disappointed about the control freaks who stage-manage his every press appearance.

What makes Sarah stand out in the national GOP field is that she is beholden to no one and controls her own destiny. She doesn’t need media kingmakers to make her. They need her. She doesn’t need newspaper or TV producers to drive her story. She drives them. Crazy.

The unhinged reaction of the Palin-hating convoy reveals what its attendants fear most: a politician who doesn’t fear them.



— Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies. © 2011 Creators Syndicate