"Little More Than a Google Internet Search"
Online research can often be tricky for my students, but I would expect more from experienced political operatives. But according to today's Los Angeles Times in "With Palin revelations, McCain's gamble is clearer" remarkably little checking for breadth and credibility of sources took place within the McCain campaign when they chose VP candidate Sarah Palin.
One Republican strategist with close ties to the campaign described the candidate's closest supporters as "keeping their fingers crossed" in hopes that additional information does not force McCain to revisit the decision. According to this Republican, who would discuss internal campaign strategizing only on condition of anonymity, the McCain team used little more than a Google Internet search as part of a rushed effort to review Palin's potential pitfalls. Just over a week ago, Palin was not on McCain's short list of potential running mates, the Republican said.
Palin has been learning the hard way about Internet "spoilers" who invest large amounts of time studying video, photographs, and documents in meticulous detail to try to prove that events depicted represent a cover-up or staged representation. Palin was forced to publicly acknowledge that her unmarried teenage daughter was pregnant after rumors circulated in the blogosphere that Palin's fifth pregnancy was merely a ruse to obscure her daughters, which reached all the way to an Andrew Sullivan posting, although this mega-blogger later spoiled his own spoiler-dom by providing photos that seemed to indicate that the Republican Alaska governor's version of the story was true. Wonkette has observed a flood of Photoshopped Juno/Juneau parody posters about the McCain campaign, including this one, which they posted.
(Heavenspot Creative Director Chevon Hicks created the image above as a parody/homage to Shepard Fairey's iconic Obama image. He is encouraging people to propagate the image through Facebook.)
Update: It's hard to keep up with the Palin parodies, but comedian Sara Benincasa is using her YouTube channel to be the conduit of the potential Vice President's vlog on subjects such as "CATS!" and "PURSE!"
Labels: blogging, elections, Google, hoaxes, parody, search engines, social networking
posted by Liz Losh at 12:59 PM
2 Comments:
Wow, if that is all the Democratic party can say about McCain's running mate then I guess he is smarter than I thought. Barak could have used some spontaneous wit , in choosing a running mate.
McCain has a "scandalous" woman and Obama has a boring stuffed shirt. This Election will tell us how much america misses the Bill Clinton soap operas.
Gloria Steinam's characterization of Palin, "Wrong Woman, Wrong
Message," is succinct and correct. Women must resist having their image seized and manipulated to serve the means to power, and we must certainly never vote against our own and our country's self-interest. We must acknowledge Palin's difficulties in her personal life, but actually, her opponent, Joe Biden, has a personal biography that deserves more admiration than does hers. He has also sponsored successful legislation to protect women from violence; she would force pregnancy upon incest and rape victims.
Today, 9/11, she will offer up her son as a sacrificial victim to war and mouth her belief that the sacrifice is part of "God's plan." It's somebody's plan, but I see no evidence that it's God's; it's Bush's and McCain's. Not only does McCain's foreign policy require more of our children to fight the wars he wants to prolong and initiate, he has consistently failed to support legislation for soldiers, both those in the field and veterans. But Palin will continue to vigorously moth the lines she is given to read in spite of the direct impact his policies have on her own son.
The public and media have been ordered by the McCain campaign to show "deference" to Palin's image, and the somber air marking today's anniversary will insure that many are bullied into it. And even though we have been sternly ordered by her campaign not to consider her family in our evalution of her, today, apparently, will be a holiday from all that.
It's not one that women should participate in: there's plenty to commemorate, but nothing to admire about today. Today is the symbol of the failures of the last eight years, and it is also the omen of the future should McCain's cynical manipulation of this woman--and her family--succeed in getting him elected.
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