Bang The Dumb Slowly Some More

“We gotta stand with our North Korean allies.” – S. Palin

Palin Palm Pilot

This began as an update to yesterday’s story, “Bang The Dumb Slowly,” but outgrew its welcome in the prior post.

Palin Über Alles!

UPDATE 24 November 10 AM PST:

The P.R. flacks’ Day of Orgasms, today …

• HarperCollins settles Gawker suit over leaked Palin excerpts
• Sarah Palin Responds to Bristol’s Loss On ‘Dancing With The Stars’
• Palin Dominates Memeorandum news stories for slow Thanksgiving news cycle
• New Palin Book Offers a Road Map for a Run Against Obama

and, the pièce de résistance:

• Obama: ‘I Don’t Think About Sarah Palin’ (ABC News)
  By AMY WALTER, ABC News Political Director

Collusion? Collaboration? The cynical calculation of one P.R. whore using another to get ratings?

Because it turns out the LAST story is ABC fluff, hyping a Barbara Walters special.

Pensive Sarah

Significantly, it’s the TOP story on Memeorandum right now. And it isn’t even news. It’s stinking publicity. A NON-story put out by ABC News to promote a Barbara Walters special.

By hitching their wagon to Palin’s “star” to pump up THEIR ratings.

Here, the celebrity Palin serpent bites its own tail: having been hyped to the rafters, the hype itself (Palin) becomes the basis of essentially unrelated hype*.

(* ABC’s need to get good ratings for their Baba Wawa special.)

There was nothing else that ABC might find “newsworthy”!?!

Didn’t Baba Wawa ask about Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney or Bobby Jindal? (All much more qualified and credible candidates.)

Screw the people, gots to grab for the bucks!

Well, actually, there was. But hyping the non-Palin Palin story gets ABC the “hits.” This is some of the “unimportant” stuff buried at the bottom:

• WATCH: Obama Stands by South Korea

Do you still think this is  just an “accident” and a coincidental result of Palin’s “celebrity”? This stuff doesn’t happen without a LOT of planning and hard work backstage.

OK, let’s back up, because it’s important.

Barbara Walters is the perfect schism between “political” (e.g. “gravitas”) reporting, and “celebrity” (e.g. “dumbitas”) reporting. She interviews Khaddafi, mad dictator of straw man “threat” Reagan Administration policy. Or Saddam Hussein, or John McCain and Cindy McCain at their home (whichever one the political flaks have picked as most all-American, mavericky).

Then, on the same special, she interviews George Clooney or Barbra Streisand, or some celebrity who’s got an upcoming movie or record album coming out.

Somehow this story never caught on like the John Edwards
story did, from the same publication, The National Enquirer

Funny, how celebrity “news” always seems to happen with a movie coming out. Unless you’re a Charlie Sheen or a Lindsey Lohan or a Robert Mitchum (Mitchum had some front page pot dustups back in the ’50s, when that was you know, a “Jazz” musicians — e.g. “Negro” — drug), whose bad publicity can be turned into interest in their movie, celebrities only have interesting revelations and profound confessions with a movie coming out.

Here, Baba Wawa is perfectly split down the middle. The “gravitas” reporter asks about what just happened in Korea. (North Korea shelling South Koreans on an island near no no-man’s-land.) And that’s important to ask the President of the United States. It is meet and proper. It is minimal professionalism.

But then, Baba Wawa, the “dumbitas” reporter asks about Sarah Palin. This is the old National Enquirer “Create A Feud” tactic of slithering into “Well, Barbra Streisand said that you were a pussified snake who ought to be run out of town on a rail, whatever a rail is. What do you say to that?”

from a People Magazine “feud” article

Obama, President of the United States says, quite reas0nably, “I don’t think about her.”

And suddenly the headline is “PRESIDENT SAYS HE DOESN’T THINK ABOUT PALIN.”

HEADLINE: WHAT THE PRESIDENT DOESN’T THINK ABOUT

All right. You tell me, because I can’t for the life of me figure out whether this is a news story or a publicity release:

President Obama to Barbara Walters: ‘I Don’t Think About Sarah Palin’
Obama Focused on Being ‘Best Possible President’ — Exclusive ABC News Interview

By AMY WALTER, ABC News Political Director
WASHINGTON, Nov. 24, 2010

In an exclusive interview with Barbara Walters from the White House, President Barack Obama says he’s not giving much thought to the 2012 election, but is focusing instead on being “the best possible president.” And, he said, he certainly isn’t focused on a potential challenge from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

“Obviously Sarah Palin has a strong base of support in the Republican Party and I respect those skills,” Obama said. “But I spend most of my time right now on how I can be the best possible president. And my attitude has always been, from the day I started this job that if I do a good job and if I’m delivering for the American people the politics will take care of itself.

“If I falter and the American people are dissatisfied, then I’ll have problems,” he said.

The interview, which also included first lady Michelle Obama, covered a wide range of topics including the recent events in North Korea, the latest controversies over TSA screenings in airports, the “shellacking” his party took in the 2010 midterms, the economy, and, of course, Thanksgiving traditions.

(P.S. Michelle Obama says it’s OK to eat what you want on Thanksgiving. “Don’t worry about how much you eat. Just enjoy it,” she told Walters. “This is the time. Have pie.”)

The full interview, “A Barbara Walters Special: A Thanksgiving Visit with President and Mrs. Obama,” will air Friday, Nov. 26 at 10 p.m. ET.

• WATCH: Obama Stands by South Korea
• WATCH: Obama Affirms ‘Commitment to Defend South Korea’
• WATCH: Obama on GM: ‘Two Years Ago This Seemed Impossible’
• When asked specifically if he thinks he can beat Sarah Palin in 2012, the president told Walters “I don’t think about Sarah Palin.”

Watch more of Barbara Walters’ interview with the Obamas on “A Barbara Walters Special: A Thanksgiving Visit with President and Mrs. Obama” airing Friday, Nov. 26 at 10 pm ET

The Perils of Palin (an ongoing Serial Drama)

Think of the possibilities. Because what you have here is a donut hole, a LITERAL donut hole: non-information becomes information becomes SIGNIFICANT information.

What we have done is create an EQUIVALENCE between the gravitas of the President and the dumbitas of the Princess of Moosylvania.

I personally empathize with President Obama.

Greta’s Faux greetings in Palin’s kitchen

I try real hard not to think about Sarah Palin, too. But the Barbara Walterses of this world won’t let me not.

Think about Palin, I mean.

Damn. I’m  doing it again. Don’t think about Sarah Palin.

(Synchronicity. The mellifluous NPR host just introduced a gaggle of upcoming topics, including a Sarah Palin story that I immediately stopped typing and switched to rock and roll FM. Something is wrong when NOT thinking about someone becomes newsworthy. Quick, don’t think about a purple zebra with aqua-green stripes.)

This is NOT Sarah Palin’s doing. This is her MARKETERS’ doing. This is a classic public relations campaign to hype a movie or a book, and if it has “political” implications, so much the better.

Mission Accomplished:

With Palin’s book in release, the President of the United States has been conned into a front page disclaimer that shoots the Palin name into obnoxious ubiquity. (Take note, ye Purple zebras with aqua-green stripes.)

PALINMANIA!

Perhaps this began with the “American Idol” bullshit, where news stories regularly followed the fortunes of contestants, etc. because of the wild popularity of the show. And the Murdoch machine realized that it could CREATE celebrities and inject them into the musical popular culture without any of the rights they’d signed away as a pre-condition to competing in the “Idol” contest. And American Idol “stars” began winning Grammys® and American Music Awards.

Joni Mitchell’s “star-maker machinery” made literal. §

And, perhaps someone might have thought the same approach might work with a politician as well as with a pop star.

Hey, I remember Barbara Walters interviewing an American Idol winner, too.

And I have to wonder if she doesn’t think about Sarah Palin, too.**

SCIENTIST: PENGUINS DO NOT THINK ABOUT SARAH PALIN

HAITIAN CHOLERA VICTIMS CLAIM TO NOT THINK ABOUT SARAH PALIN.

GALLUP: NOT THINKING ABOUT SARAH PALIN REACHES ALL-TIME HIGH

POPE: I DO NOT KNOW WHO SARAH PALIN IS

ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION: ARE WASHINGTON POLITICIANS IGNORING SARAH PALIN TO THEIR PERIL?

Charles Krauthammer: The Ugly Conspiracy to claim that people aren’t thinking about Sarah Palin

QUINNIPIAC: OBAMA POLLING BETTER THAN PALIN … “In a hypothetical head to head 2012 matchup ..”

POWER LINE: Left Wing Media Insults Sarah Palin by Ignoring Her

Michelle Malkin: Leftist Palin-haters embarrass selves, hah hah hah!

Jim Hoft (now with Kelsey “Frazier” Grammer‘s KKKonservative media startup and no longer with the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus‘ First Things):

Palin-hate chain leads all the way to White House.

Then again, pop culture is notoriously fickle. Just ask Bobby Sherman.

Oh, and, did I mention that Sarah Palin has a “book” out for Thanksgiving weekend (i.e. “Black Friday”?)

Ms. Palin is scheduled to take the new book on tour during the next several weeks, and if history is a guide, she will generate huge crowds in each of the 16 cities she plans to visit….

Uh, NO thank you.

Next they’ll be giving out Sarah Palin plastic drink cups as part of the marketing tie-in with Dairy Queen.

Courage.

============

§ : from “Free Man in Paris”

I was a free man in Paris

I felt unfettered and alive

There was nobody callin’ me up for favors

And no ones future to decide

You know I’d go back there tomorrow

But for the work I’ve taken on

Stokin’ the star maker machinery behind the popular song

** Disclaimer: None of the “media” citations between “Penguins” and “Bobby Sherman” are actual and are used solely for satirical purposes. If offense was caused, I offer the standard non-apology apology. — HW