House of Eratosthenes

Dan Rather didn’t want to talk about Chandra Levy. Charles Gibson wanted to leave the ACORN bust to “the cables.” David Weigel refuses to discuss Sarah Palin’s Facebook updates. But he isn’t above putting out a thesis explaining why exactly it is that he’ll never discuss it.

The problem is that Palin has put the political press in a submissive position, one in which the only information it prints about her comes from prepared statements or from Q&As with friendly interviewers. This isn’t something most politicians get away with, or would be allowed to get away with. But Palin has leveraged her celebrity — her ability to get ratings, the ardor of her fans and the bitterness of her critics — to win a truly unique relationship with the press. She is allowed to shape the public debate without actually engaging in it.

As I said in my reply (#70), it’s kind of a new thing for a Palin criticism to actually make some sense. I gave him credit for that.

But his argument fails for two reasons. First of all, once again, the standard imposed on Palin is an arbitrary one. Supposedly, she isn’t participating in a discourse honestly until she surrenders all control to those who labor exuberantly toward making her look foolish, even if they have to lie to do it. Book burnings, rape kit scandals, Bristol is Trig’s real mother, she calls dinosaurs “Satan’s lizards” — need I go on?

But who else is fulfilling the Weigel standard? Al Gore won’t. President Obama won’t. Hillary Clinton won’t…and those are just the three big offenders. Kerry, Edwards, Frank, Pelosi, Dean — they get a question that isn’t to their liking and we get the Nixon boilerplate of “I’m not gonna dignify that with a response.” I’m not defending this practice. I think we just might have a political system more to our liking, and better for our health, if the people shaping our policy had what it takes to respond to unfriendly questions. Or at least were willing to rise to the challenge. That would be good. But it isn’t happening — perhaps nowadays you can’t survive doing this, no matter how smart you think you are — and Palin didn’t create that situation.

I don’t mean by this that the Weigel standard is unfair. I mean to say that it is rather silly.

And this brings me to the second problem: Who exactly is this woman who is updating her Facebook page? She isn’t the Governor of Alaska. She doesn’t have an actual career as an author, per se. She isn’t the architect of some shady health care scheme that’s about to wreck our economy — she’s criticizing one, sure, just the same way Weigel has some criticisms for her.

Really, Facebook seems like exactly the perfect and proper forum. She’s an experienced and knowledgeable private citizen, who’s selling books to pay legal bills and then she’s going to go home. For a little while or maybe for a long while, who knows. But it seems like a good fit.

The people who are really doing things — refer back to Problem #1 — might consider opening Facebook pages as well, for all the trouble they’re taking to answer less accommodating questions. I mean, really what do we get out of them? “The time for talking is over,” “For too long we have (blank),” “Mistakes we have made,” “Let me be clear,” “Um, Er, Uh” and then the event is closed. If the dictionary says our President isn’t using the word “tax” in the right way — the dictionary! — we just get another snide lecturing that we aren’t supposed to be looking things up there.

It seems every time a Palin critic thinks he has something to say, it all comes down to a rather glaring lack of sense of perspective on his part. Let’s see if I can sum up this feeble mindset in a single sentence:

Silly you, private citizens don’t get to put up statements and then just leave ’em hanging there, avoiding any challenge or criticism; that’s something our leaders get to do while they’re wrecking our economy.

Update: The Weigel Moratorium has been ~~relaxed~~ struck down. More silliness…this time it’s hair-splitting. The point has sailed right over the columnist’s head that state-run health care plans are inimical to any cherishing of the value of the gift of human life. They always have been, they always will be, and it’s just nonsense to keep debating it. Costs have to be controlled. There’s only one way to control them.

I wonder if this is a rather chilling omen about what will really happen? “There’s no such thing as death panels” pundit takes center stage, grabs the mike, and at high noon says “I’m not going to do X.” By 12:30 he’s doing X.

Takes a special kind of person not to be worried about that, Mr. Weigel. How concerned do you think we should be?

[…] David Wiegel. We recall him as the guy who put together a special column just to announce he would not talk about Palin’s Facebook updates — no matter what! What followed was very little more than a manifesto that demonstrates David Wiegel does not like […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 02/07/2010 @ 08:18

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Why I Won’t Talk About That No Matter What!Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Why I Won’t Talk About That No Matter What!
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009