On Saturday's Fox News Watch, as the group discussed the media's tepid attention to Vice President Joe Biden's "chains" gaffe, panel member and left-leaning FNC analyst Kirsten Powers asserted that "There is a glaring media standard, no question about it."
After noting that there was a similar double standard in Biden and Sarah Palin's treatment during the 2008 campaign, Powers complained:
(Video can be found here.)
I just think that idea that we just tolerate this because "it's just Joe" is not okay, you know, he should be held to the same standard as everybody else.
A bit later, she called Biden "overrated" and theorized that the media are soft on him because he "schmoozed" them with parties over the decades when he was in the Senate, prompting conservative panel member Jim Pinkerton to note that schmoozing the press did not make them more friendly to former President George H.W. Bush. Pinkerton:
Nobody schmoozed the press more than George H.W. Bush. I was there for that. And they personally liked him. Then they wrote stories, as Cal (Thomas) recalls, slamming him. ... By contrast, Obama hasn't done a press conference in months, and the press are irked about it, but that's as far as they get, irked.
Below is a transcript of relevant portions of the Saturday, August 18, Fox News Watch:
KIRSTEN POWERS: There is a glaring double standard, no question about it. And this went on actually the last time around between him and Sarah Palin. Joe Biden's been doing this stuff since day one, and it's been ignored. In fact, Carl Cannon, after the election, wrote a great article about this going through all the things that Biden had said, and just showing that there was an incredible double standard, and he's a nonpartisan journalist. He wasn't someone who was doing it as a Republican. I just think that idea that we just tolerate this because "it's just Joe" is not okay, you know, he should be held to the same standard as everybody else.
(...)
First of all, I think he is overrated. I would never go so far as to say, you know, question his mental accuity, but I do think he is overrated. He has been presented as this, sort of, foreign policy genius just because he's been in the Senate since he was 30. I think that part of the reason that Biden gets such a pass -- and it's one of the problems in Washington -- is that he has been schmoozing with these reporters and editors for the last 30 years. He has them, you know, everyone loves to go to his parties, and I think that people cut him slack because of that.
JON SCOTT: You in the audience didn't see it, but every single head at this table was nodding in agreement when Kirsten made that remark.
(...)
JIM PINKERTON, Nobody schmoozed the press more than George H.W. Bush. I was there for that. And they personally liked him. Then they wrote stories, as Cal recalls, slamming him.
SCOTT: Suggesting he doesn't know what a grocery scanner is.
PINKERTON: By contrast, Obama hasn't done a press conference in months, and the press are irked about it, but that's as far as they get, irked.
