Palin, The Press, and Her "No Mas" Moment

Palin's mid-term surrender initiated lots of intriguing storylines, but, for me, the most fascinating one has been the visible split within the conservative movement over who's to blame for her early exit from the national stage. And specifically, how much culpability do the hated mainstream media deserve for the way Palin has been covered? For the way she's been smeared and attacked?

Seems to me 99 out of 100 times, conservatives would find common cause on an unfolding story like this and agree that the media, to a huge degree, are guilty of some kind of unimaginable double standard, that the press had stacked the deck against the Republican and treated that pol unfairly. That's been the go-to playbook for more than four decades now.

But then a funny thing happened -- scores of conservative commentators broke ranks with the "liberal media" brigade and decided Palin's political problems were of her own making.

In other words, the beloved liberal media meme completely fractured under the weight of the Palin story. The front-line, knee-jerk troops were ready and eager to lob the ever-ready accusations, but it turned out that lots of Noise Machine generals weren't buying it, and instead of blaming the liberal media for Palin's disastrous weekend showing, they blamed ... Palin.

How can it be the so-called liberal media's fault that Palin gets bad press when conservatives were out front giving Palin bad press? How can right-wingers argue that liberals are obsessed with taking Palin down, when it's conservatives who are elbowing each other to reach the front of the get-Palin crowd?

Read the entire Media Matters column here.