http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/opinion/13collins.html?hp

"A former Republican White House official, who now works at the American Enterprise Institute … admitted: "She's bright and she's a blank page."

A perfect expression of how Washington insiders see provincial politicians who haven't yet been subjected to Beltway brainwashing: a "blank page."

Even for the most reform-minded new representative of the strongest character, it usually takes 3 to 4 months maximum to suck them into the imperial Washington worldview. Sarah Palin turned in only 2 weeks, though that's longer than McShame held out against the North Vietnamese.

Corporatist journalism isn't going to defenestrate nobody, except citizens who want their country back. The only journalists at the Republican convention were the kids with videocams, out in the streets, where the new policy of pre-emptive raids against dissent was rolled out. The Slimes and the WaPo barely noticed.

I wonder if Palin knows that the same is true of Alaska, and that oil is poorly focused investment in the state.

Maureen Dowd in today's times posed that Palin represents the hatred of thinking, a revival again of anti-intellectualism in American life (to quote a neo-classic).

The press hates Palin.

Phil values experience, thought, analysis, in the definition and implementation of policy. (I wish he wasn't so habitual about Israel.)

Palin doesn't. She represents the fascism of ignorance pretending to be backbone.

And, you have the audacity to claim that the press is biased. It is relatively, it is a light grey.

Cite three.

Your fave Obama bent over and took AIPAC's big kosher sausage at their convention. Why so much more vitriol for the shiksa?

I think Jim will have to eat his words. The NY Interesting Times has defenestrated Palin.

I see this as a major counterattack in the hot war that is raging between the News Department and Mr. Sulzberger.

But I also see that another major counterattack has been decisively turned back. The short lived glorious ubiquity of comment threads has been ended. I never thought that it could last. Forbidden truths were seeping through the barrier.

It reminds me of the public access "big character" news boards in Communist China. Authoritarian leadership will never tolerate freedom of expression.

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By Eric L. Prentis, August 29 at 10:05 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

The main stream media are bought and paid for by large business corporations whose main goal isn’t truth but profits from other their lines of business.

…………………………………………

Right, Eric. Lets be clear about the ultimate cause. It is the ownership, not all so blatantly corrupt as Murdoch and Fox News, but all on the same team.

Witness the total medea blackout of Kucinich in the presidential campaign, repeated for his speech at the convention according to a comment. (The Times' comment threads are leaking some forbidden information, and I wonder how long they can last.)

Witness the MSM Iron Curtain that descended for a few critical days on the news of how the Georgia War got started. By the time reporters were allowed to say that Georgia had attacked first, it was old news and could be disregarded, allowing the US to touch off the new Cold War.

Following is my comment alluding to this in a thread on reportorial ethics in the Times:

how about this hypothetical situation? you are a foreign correspondent for a major newspaper. on your beat a war has broken out between an ally and a rival of the us. the rival claims that the ally has started the war by unprovoked aggression. your editor tells you that word has come down from the top that the rival's statements are not to be reported. you realize that if you do not follow this suggestion your future will be clouded and your job might be in jepoardy. what do you do?

And following is how it later appeared in the thread, I believe:

37.
August 28th, 2008 9:45 am
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I'm terribly sorry that Mr Sulzberger felt abused, but with all respect I'd like to ask a question. We all deplore totalitarian systems where the government censors the press. But how about a system like the US where the censorship is so invisible that people believe the press is free? Does this not raise totalitarianism to a previously unheard of level?

How could I have been such a fool? I have a gaping blind spot. Since I dont watch TV I have no gut reaction to these people.

Mea Maxima Culpa. But I still refuse to watch TV. Integrity trumps accuracy in this regard.