In the new issue of Vanity Fair, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer is quoted making the following observation: “What they teach you on the first day of press-secretary school is to worry about blowing something up by giving attention to it. … ‘Don’t blow something up.’” He goes on to explain that those rules no longer apply. With the Internet, the story will blow up anyway. You have to respond.
Sarah Palin, apparently, agrees. Sarah Palin’s Facebook page is now promoting this video, which I was alerted to because of her Twitter feed.
This is exactly the sort of low-information, high-emotion, tracker gotcha carnival act moment that plays really well in the political entertainment media–cable, internet and talk radio. If Palin was a Democrat, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity could fill their Tuesday shows ranting about nothing else. As it happens, I’ll place my money on MSNBC for the most replays, and will bet on well more than 100,000 YouTube views by tomorrow at noon.
On Facebook, Palin shows just how to rebut this sort of thing, in the new media world that Pfeiffer describes. She deflects it. “The LSM has now decided to use this brief encounter for another one of their spin operations,” she writes. LSM means Lamestream media, in other words reporters like me, who, at least in my case, found out about the video from Palin. Then she makes the requisite Nancy Pelosi dig, or at least what sounds to this Lamestream reporter like a Nancy Pelosi dig.
They claim I – wait for it – “appear to roll my eyes” when the lady tells me she’s a teacher. Yes, it’s come to this: the media is now trying to turn my eyebrow movements into story lines. (Maybe that’s why Botox is all the rage – if you can’t move your eyebrows, your “eye rolling” can’t be misinterpreted!)
As I have said before, don’t hate the player. Hate the game.
And one other thing: Aqua Buddha.
More on Time.com:
See a special report: After Alaska: Sarah Palin’s Year of Living Large
