WaPo's Shales: Palin's Great, But Stop the Anti-Media 'Demagoguery'

Like most liberal-media reviewers, Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales was forced by events to concede Sarah Palin wowed the crowd last night. It was "the night that John McCain’s brilliantly screwy choice for a running mate changed from laughingstock to national star." But Shales also lamented the "demagoguery" of mocking the liberal media, especially the idea that President Reagan was attacked by the media, when he enjoyed "a virtual love affair with the press." A long MRC rebuttal is here. To Shales:  

It's unfortunate considering the strong showing of Palin that the Republicans have again decided to run against "the media" as well as against the Democrats, and to portray themselves as poor, abused victims of media aggression. Giuliani, who has made a second career of courting the press, referred sneeringly to "the left-wing media."

Mike Huckabee spoke of "the elite media." And a poorly made film about Ronald Reagan, shown to the delegates on Tuesday night, included the outright lie that "the media hated" Reagan, when just the opposite is closer to the truth. Reagan's time in the White House was a virtual love affair with the press, whom he charmed as infectiously as he charmed the whole country.

Jeffrey Toobin, one of the most valuable of CNN’s army of guest commentators, said last night that he found it "ironic and rather unbecoming" that John McCain, who has enjoyed "adoring" treatment from the news media, should choose to be part of this kind of demagoguery.

Actually, Shales misquoted the film. The narrator said "The media despised him." One can argue that not everyone hated him -- journalists tend to look back fondly on him. But to charge it was a "virtual love affair" is at dramatic odds with the facts, hard set in print and video archives. It was quite clear the elite media thought his policies were wrong-headed and dangerous and wanted to remove him from the White House.

The idea that is "unbecoming" for McCain to attack the media as it simply "does its job" is to underscore how the media can be unbecoming. They see themselves as the tribunes of the people, that attacking them is unbecoming. But it's not unbecoming when reporters "doing their job" sort through the underwear drawers of a vice-presidential candidate's teenage daughter.

Shales was busy pouring his acid pen out on Rudy Giuliani:  

Commentators on more than one channel said the crowd in St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center wanted "red meat," and from last night's speakers, obviously including Palin, they got it -- blood red. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who preceded Palin, in fact delivered a boorish attack full of cheap shots. Seemingly, Giuliani is intent on systematically destroying, with each public appearance, the goodwill he had built up after Sept. 11, an event that of course he never fails to mention.

His habit of cackling with laughter at his own remarks, and pausing repeatedly to point to people in the crowd, helped keep his speech raggedy and disjointed; he gave the impression of a naughty boy gleefully sticking his fingers in Mom's cookie dough and congratulating himself for his deed.

And that's not a boorish cheap shot attack?