And one more thing: Sarah Palin is a private citizen right now, and still the vitriol against her continues unabated. Barack Obama is president, and almost every single policy he has promoted so far has great potential to damage this country and the people in it. Funny, I don’t see much unprovoked hatred for him on this blog and elsewhere, although I’m sure some exists, as it does for every president. What I see is deep concern about his agenda, and a desire to stop it from being enacted. I share this deep concern. It has nothing to do with hatred or violence and everything to do with policy disagreements, and the belief that he has a hidden agenda.

It’s interesting that, from the beginning of the Obama campaign right up to the present, many people (you, for example) have been harping on the idea that criticism of Obama will spark violence against him. It’s almost as though you are obsessed with the idea of his martyrdom, and/or wish to stifle criticism.

One more thing: about 99% of my friends are liberals. Most of them absolutely hate and despise Sarah Palin.

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

No one hates saying that more than I do.”

“Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood.”

She simply is not very well-informed and replaces information with confidence in her judgment. That is not hateful.

I looked over your blog and have seen no mention of those on the right the really do “hate” President Obama. Listen to the vitriol of some of the teabaggers, of Limbaugh, Beck and Coulter. That is hatred. And there is much more of it than any eye-rolling, disbelief or dislike that goes in Palin’s directioin.

So, your blog does not seem quite evenhanded on the subject. I think it ought to be fine to criticize our leaders for their actions and abilities. But if you are going to worry so about whether people hate Palin, shouldn’t you also worry about that towards the President? Especially when it can fan the flames of violence?

Matt Taibbi

I came across Matt Taibbi’s blog entry about the press coverage of Sarah Palin, and thought I’d post a link to it. Matt, a true Lefty, agrees with all of you about the viciousness of the press coverage of Palin and has a take on why it has become a feeding frenzy. He thinks it’s because the GOP elites have signal to the mainstream media that they wouldn’t mind her being taking down.

He likens it to the media’s coverage of Howard Dean’s primary campaign against John Kerry on 2004 and how the media destroyed his candidancy after the Iowa caucus. when the power brokers of the party decide to cut someone loose, they signal the hounds to give chase.

Vicious cycle indeed.

I agree that most “liberals” (I much prefer Mark Levin’s term, “statists”, for its accuracy) are well-meaning. Most of my friends, and many of my family members, voted for Obama and have the typical cartoonish view of Bush and Cheney, and most of all of Sarah Palin. But of course they do: they get their news and political commentary from the NY Times, CNN, 60 Minutes, The New Yorker, etc.

You know what blows my mind more than anything? The things these people don’t know; the extent to which the MSM’s obfuscation of major stories on so many subjects directly affects their lives. The effect is profound: even when scraps of stories somehow slip by the MSM filter, they remain just that, scraps of information, disconnected from the larger picture of which they are part.

It is for this reason that so many people like my friends and family members could hear about Jeremiah Wright, yet convince themselves that he did not signify what he clearly did about candidate Obama. Because Bill Ayers didn’t run a church Obama attended, and the connection between him and Obama wasn’t so dramatic, the MSM was able to keep its extent and significance from the larger public view. Thus Wright + Ayers (and Phleger and Khalidi, and many others) was a calculation that never took place in most people’s minds.

In so many instances, people like my friends and family would have to have actively sought information out about Obama (a) that they really didn’t want to hear to begin with, because if they did they would feel compelled, morally and as patriotic Americans, to vote against Obama (or at least to not vote for him), and (b) that would have required them to go poking around the Internet on sites so unfamiliar as to bolster their inclinations described in (a). Who is this Neo-neocon, who are these people at this site Hot Air, that I should believe their characterization of the venerable NY Times and 60 Minutes as unreliable and dishonest?

It’s a vicious cycle, when you get right down to it.

The Uber-Leftists who control the levers of power, however, are of a very different, much darker mindset. As I’m sure you know. They are Sinister indeed.

YES. We should have this sentence on the masthead of every single conservative blog. IN A NUTSHELL, baby!