On assignment for the Toronto Sun [via Huffington Post], Danielle Crittenden felt covering Sarah Palin at a fund-raising dinner in what she considered a Canadian backwater would be a walk in the park. After all, she would be in blue-collar Hamilton, Ontario, far from the beltway or the glam of TV and how this “celebrity” from Alaska handled the locals would be telling.
More telling was Crittenden’s pre-formed opinion of the outcome and her inclusion of detail that made her seem boorish, subjective and inventive.
She began where all anti-Palin reporters begin – with a consideration of her fee. She moved on to report that Palin was over-protected, the attendees over-dressed and Palin’s “rules” over the top:
No jeans. No cameras or recording devices during the speech. (It was permitted to photograph her as she drifted through the lobby.) No questions from the media during the question and answer portion of the evening.
To this point, there is no news in this story only a “me too” exercise. But, hold, Sarah makes a grand entrance – as people have expected. But here is a languishing liberal journalist’s reaction to it and of course this is not reporting, it is reaction – and a detailed description of her own actions worthy of a novella:
I’ve attended dozens of these dinners over the years. I’ve seen Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher speak. I’ve never witnessed anything like this kind of solo rock start entry.
The charity had clearly negotiated maximum value for its money. Palin entered at seven, but was not scheduled to speak until nine. My dad and I sadly assessed the “Alaskan crab bruschetta” pre-set in front of us. I poured us each a glass of Ontario’s finest, and opened up the “Scrabble” app on my iPhone.
It’s clear she had not fallen in with the spirit of the event. She was not even interviewing her dinner partners about their reactions. She was just playing Scrabble on her iPhone. Does the Sun pay for this?
She continued on in the standard vein about Palin’s seeming distance from the crowd and then shifted into psychoanalysis:
Clearly, Palin feared any unscripted or unmanaged engagement–and not for what the unscreened person might do or say, more out of her own insecurity about what she might do or say.
She moved on to recount some sour grape story of another Sun reporter having been reduced from a 30 minute interview to a 5 minute interview when the Sun had sponsored the event. Of course there was no thought to reach for a reason for this.
Finally, she proffered the outline for the proper political or dinner speech – short, sweet, to the point with plenty of thanks to the hosts, etc. But from Palin she heard only a 45 minute foray into multiple, unrelated subjects with no memorable lines…nonsense…”political theater, not political leadership.” What a poetic assessment of a speech. What fine balance of phrase. But well-crafted rhetoric cannot hide the fact that essentially, she missed the point of the exercise.
What Crittenden barely mentioned was the fact that the audience seemed genuinely pleased and that they, the ones who had paid $200 per plate, had got their money’s worth. One might seriously conclude then, that Palin actually knew her audience and played to it.
The report should have been about what happened not about what Miss Crittenden felt about what happened. And clearly, reading Palin’s emotional state was also not in her range. Journalism is taking some strange turns these days. And the takeaway from this article: The image of Miss Crittenden playing Scrabble on her iPhone.
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HotAir – Joe Klein: Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are guilty of borderline sedition
HotAir – Palin: We like it, Mr. President!
TheAgedP – Kathleen Parker To Launch Arugula Party To Drown Out Palin’s Demagoguery
Sistertoldjah – Sarah Palin’s Boston Tea Party
ON MY WATCH - the writings of SamHenry 
Moonbat Patrol
April 20, 2010
Good article, found this on Hotair, hey you don’t love me anymore, no Moonbat Patrol in your favs??
samhenry
April 20, 2010
You were down as Kynikos you nit. What’s love got to do with it? LOL Good to see you.