THE HYPE:
The Sarah Palin media phenomena is a no-brainer. The electoral buzz words are endless: small-town, PTA member, hockey mom of five kids, the oldest a son deployed to Iraq on September 11th, the youngest with a newborn with special needs, who went from the school board to the city council to mayor of her hometown and finally the corruption and wasteful-spending cutting, maverick, reform governor of Alaska with hard-working, champion-snow-machine-racing, union-member, high-school sweetheart husband of twenty years supporting her. This narrative was constructed by the McCain campaign when the Senator introduced Palin to the crowd in Dayton: a woman announced in the “anniversary week of woman’s suffrage,” who “doesn’t let anyone tell her to sit down.” The announcement was also made amid the resurrection of animosity from a fiercely contested Democratic primary. It had recently come to light that Senator Hillary Clinton was never vetted by the Obama campaign for the VP slot of the Democratic ticket. Palin alluded to Hillary’s “eighteen million cracks in that highest, hardest glass ceiling,” and called upon American women to “shatter that glass ceiling once and for all.” Suddenly Americans were glued to their computers, googling Governor Palin. The narrative has since ballooned to new volumes, shifted, and spiraled out of control. Sarah Palin described to the American public how she “told Congress, ’Thanks, but no thanks!’ on that bridge to nowhere,” sold the governor’s plane on eBay, navigated her way through teleprompter malfunction at the Republican National Convention, all stories later clarified as misleading. The media has also been fascinated with how little access it had to Palin in the past month, and the series of solo-interview gaffes ran the commentary circuit. Revelations on the $150,000 the Republican National Committee spent on clothing for Palin has revived the cries of (pardon the pun) “style over substance” and “sexism” that have dominated Palin commentary.
CONTINUITY:
“When I see someone spending all this money building her up to look like a fashion plate, and they don’t spend five minutes sitting her down with a copy of the Constitution, with a simple reading of what the Vice President’s supposed to do, I do worry they got their priorities wrong.”
-MSNBC's Chris Matthews
The overwhelming consensus of commentators, taking a tour through the Politico Arena, is that Sarah Palin’s wardrobe will not be a decisive electoral issue. In fact, many anchors covered the story by explicitly or implicitly applying the “we shouldn’t even be talking about this,” label. Bill O’Reilly mentioned the case on his October 22nd program to highlight senseless attacks on Governor Palin, claiming NBC’s Andrea Mitchell had “thought Palin’s clothes are too expensive.” The evocation of NBC or MSNBC has become somewhat coded in conservative commentary as “the liberal media,” so this reference alone is meant to diminish the story as a partisan attack. Why does it matter what the governor’s wearing?
A variation on this angle typically highlights the overwhelming image of Sarah Palin that has come to almost represent the candidate more than any substantive policy proposal. It almost aligns with the same questions about Joe the Plumber: is this realistic? The argument is that for a candidate that many believe is more style than substance, challenges to her image are detrimental. The statement by Chris Matthews represents these concerns most effectively. Sarah Palin has had difficulties convincing Americans she has solid policy chops, but has made grounds with the conservative base as someone who can relate to the concerns of every day Americans. Does $150,000 of clothing in two months of campaigning conflict with this presentation?
SEXISM:
“Women get scrutinized on appearance far more than men. And look, I speak from experience here. When I wear a bad outfit on the air, I get viewer e-mail complaining about it. A lot of e-mail. Seriously. When Wolf Blitzer wears a not-so-great tie, how much e-mail do you think he gets? My point is, for women, unfortunately appearance is part of the job. If Wolf [Blitzer] or Anderson [Cooper] shows up on the air without makeup, do you think you would even notice? I show up on the air without makeup, trust me, you’ll notice. This doesn’t just apply to TV, all women in the public eye deal with this issue. And it’s for this reason that I think the RNC should help Palin pay for clothes, hair, and makeup…Just don’t ignore the fact that there is a double standard here.”
-CNN's Campbell Brown
Sarah Palin has faced a relatively different experience in media exposure than other candidates, including a focus on gender different even from the experiences of Hillary Clinton. From the fake images of Palin’s head on an American flag bikini-clad body holding a gun, Jon Stewart tonguing pictures of Palin on the Daily Show, and references to Caribou Barbie and pageant jokes on Saturday Night Life, to the National Review’s Rick Lowry “sitting up a little straighter” on the couch, and Minneapolis radio host Chris Baker bragging that he could see Palin’s “panty line” and suggesting the candidate “shoulda had a little cleavage going,” during the Vice Presidential debate, Palin’s appearance has come in and out of play at various junctures of the campaign. Some commentators have decried the GOP story as a continuation of a sexist trend in coverage, radio host Rush Limbaugh going as far as to state that the GOP purchasing the clothes for Palin reflects continuity in that the clothing is being paid for instead of donated to the candidate. Others have noted extravagant clothing of male candidates that did not receive the same scrutiny.
It is fair to note specific commentators such as Limbaugh have had a less than consistent track record of scrutiny of and concern about sexism with regards to Democratic women, feminism, and Hillary Clinton, and the costs of clothing are higher than any other story and were paid for by the RNC. However, does the attention the story received have something to do with Palin’s gender? How does this impact a candidate already viewed as struggling on policy?
THE BEAT:
There a little bit of truth to every angle. Yes, this is not a major policy issue. Yes, $150,000 in clothing conflicts with the hockey mom narrative. Yes, the story is more salacious with Palin's gender and appearance. The last question however, provides the most slippery of slopes for the McCain campaign. In so heavily emphasizing Palin’s gender in her introduction to the country, the McCain campaign primed voters to think of “woman” as one of her credentials. It has been demonstrated that women seeking executive office have a difficulty in achieving the post due to the views of political leadership as a "male" role. When the media shifts focus to things that diminish Palin's leadership credentials, emphasize her femininity, and suggest she lacks substance, it's devastating to Republicans who already have concerns about McCain's age. This effect is both demonstrated and exacerbated by recent endorsements from Republican figures such as Colin Powell and the Anchorage Daily News, which recieved a great deal of attention due to anxiety about Palin. It is equally devastating to lose the pundits focus in the last days of the campaign--in a segment where Republicans could have pundits repeating campaign points, they instead received a discussion of Palin's pumps.
UP NEXT--An examination of increased racial tensions, intro political psychology, and media responsibility.
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