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silent_jay · 01-18-2011, 02:36 PM

Is 'tone' the new buzzword for the month? I only ask ace because it seems to be your newest one I've heard most often in the past couple of weeks.

Edit: Found this while skimming through Google News

Quote:

It was a case of responding to the response to her response to responses to the tragic shootings in Tucson.

Appearing on talk television, Sarah Palin's "Two-F" media strategy – Facebook and Fox News – was on display, combining an echo chamber with a hall of mirrors that equally delights supporters and dismays political opponents, while placing her out of reach of anything approaching critical or mainstream media outlets.

The choice of Sean Hannity's primetime Fox News show to defend her comments made in a video posted on her Facebook page – that she was the victim of a "blood libel" over responsibility for the Arizona shootings – was no accident: Hannity, a red-meat Republican and Tea Party favourite, served up softball questions for Palin to dispatch with ease.

Criticism from other sections of the Republican party will not be as easy for Palin to dismiss, even if she refuses to acknowledge it.

Newt Gingrich, another likely contender for the 2012 presidential nomination, had barbed advice for Palin on ABC's Good Morning America breakfast show. "I think that she's got to slow down and be more careful and think through what she's saying and how's she's saying it," he said.

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum went further. "She should stop talking now, really," he said.

But Palin didn't get where she is today by being silent, telling Hannity: "I'm not going to sit down. I'm not going to shut up."

The American people, though, may be losing patience with Palin. A Gallup poll commissioned by USA Today after the Tucson controversy found that Palin's rating is at its lowest level since she burst onto the national political scene in September 2008. She is seen in a favourable light by 38% of US voters, while 53% have an unfavourable view.

Another poll, for the Washington Post and ABC, found that 30% of voters approved of Palin's remarks after the Tucson shootings, while 46% disapproved. President Barack Obama, in contrast, had a 78% approval rating for his handling of events.

With the support of Republican powerbrokers such as Hannity and fellow Fox News headliner Glenn Beck, who emailed his support to Palin soon after the shootings, she may yet weather the storm of criticism, most of it coming from Democrats and those unlikely to support her in any circumstances.

What the affair highlights is Palin's continuing media power. She remains the only star of a Republican party which, despite recent election successes, is still struggling to find a heavyweight contender to take on Obama in 2012. For all Palin's faults she remains a significant contender – as even Dick Cheney acknowledged this week in a rare interview.

By avoiding hostile forums, Palin keeps both supporters and critics in suspense, so that every gnomic message on Twitter or Facebook gets repeated and dissected. That approach can backfire, as the "blood libel" incident clearly shows. But it means she easily commands more media attention than any other US politician barring Obama.

Ross Douthat, a conservative columnist for the New York Times, vented his frustration at the war between Palinoiacs and Palinistas, comparing the tussle between Palin and the US media over the Tucson shootings to an unhappy marriage.

"The whole business felt less like an episode in American political history than a scene from a particularly toxic marriage," Douthat wrote. "The press and Palin have been at war with each other almost from the first, but their mutual antipathy looks increasingly like co-dependency: They can't get along, but they can't live without each other either."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...k-fox-strategy