Haha! LOLZ! Of course not!
The Daily Caller just said that to get “clicks.” It’s called “link-bait” and whether or not there actually is a Obama-Palin-Milbank drug tape out there (that would most likely be in the hands of George Soros, who would most likely have won it from Rupert Murdoch in a game of xiangqi) is immaterial.
The same goes for the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank, whose Friday column, “I’m declaring February a Palin-free month. Join me!,” was even more sly:
I hereby pledge that, beginning on Feb. 1, 2011, I will not mention Sarah Palin — in print, online or on television — for one month. Furthermore, I call on others in the news media to join me in this pledge of a Palin-free February. With enough support, I believe we may even be able to extend the moratorium beyond one month, but we are up against a powerful compulsion, and we must take this struggle day by day.
Milbank called on other columnists to join him in his moratorium, notably fellow Washington Post columnists Kathleen Parker and Eugene Robinson and New York Times columnists Ross Douthat, Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd. For his part, Douthat had already written a column advising that The media and Palin “go their separate ways.”
Milbank told The Daily Caller that he predicted his attempt at a Palin-free month will be a “spectacular failure.”
“People need to hit rock bottom before they seek out recovery and most of my colleagues are not there yet,” said Milbank. “I am preparing for February, however.”
So why even try? The Media have already attempted similar blackouts of Paris Hilton. In 2007, the AP experimented with a week-long ban on all Paris Hilton-related coverage. The result, said AP, was interesting. None of the company’s suckling news outlets asked for Paris coverage. The AP, however, did garner plenty of attention itself for its own lack of attention.
As the AP story notes, Lloyd Grove of the Daily Beast (previously gossip columnist at the New York Daily News) attempted a similar blackout a few years earlier. Grove called his blackout a “heartfelt attempt on my part to get publicity for myself.”
Grove — who may be the most honest journalist willing to be quoted by another journalist about his old quotes concerning journalistic dishonesty for a story regarding a current journalist’s integrity — told TheDC that he still stands by his Hilton blackout as “just a craven bid for publicity.” He said a similar Palin blackout was “silly, obviously,” because “like it or not, she’s a force in American politics.”
“She might have all the intellectual heft of Paris Hilton,” said Grove, “but she still has much more political heft.”
By virtue of her political support, said Grove, Palin is still a relevant figure in both American politics and media. Ignoring Palin is simply “not very doable.” Grove seemed to shrug at Milbank’s idea.
“What Dana does is up to him,” said Grove. “But this is not a case of as Dana Milbank goes, so goes the rest the lamestream media.”
“It’s not very hopeful that anyone can stay on the wagon on this one,” he said.
Perhaps The Public should be weary of The Media’s addiction-addled talk. The WaPo’s Jonathan Capehart, himself a self-admitted “Pali-aholic,” responded to his fellow columnist’s plea in a post entitled, “Sorry, Dana Milbank — I won’t quit Sarah Palin.”
In order to get by, Milbank told TheDC, “I am at a Michele Bachmann event now. She will be my methadone.”
So the developing meta-Palin narrative — for those who talk about hating that they must talk about hating Palin — is that the former Alaskan Gov./Vice-Presidential candidate/Fox News contributor/Discovery Channel star is now an impossibly addictive “drug.”
This may be half-true. Amateur addicts are quite adept at manipulating others. One of their key weapons in avoiding treatment is redefining the argument (This helps me sleep, I need this to stay-wired-for/come-down-from work, no one’s complained about it except my ex-girlfriend and estranged family, etc.). The addiction, then, may not be Palin, but media writers’ own debilitating narcissism, which needs its fix, no matter where the hit comes from. Politico, for its part, tries denying its own issues by divining answers from questions like “Why the mainstream Media loves Sarah Palin,” which is like the coke-peddling addict Sigmund Freud asking his patients, “Why are you so messed up, mother-lover?”
However, professional addicts, like the craven Grove, as well as those drinking while writing optimal search engine headlines about politicians involved in a Brooklyn drug party, are well aware of their addictions and readily admit to them. After all, only those forced to admit a problem must get help. Those eagerly proffering the problem tend to confuse interventionists. They’re called functioning addicts and they usually call it like they see it.
“Dana’s probably trying to get attention for his Glenn Beck book, I have no idea,” remarked Grove to TheDC. “I don’t know whether it’s out on paperback yet or not.” (It’s not)
Grove, however, did know one thing, specifically about a media addicted to itself.
“None of us knows anything.”
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