Palin speaks out..

Obviously the primary central figure to my topic is Sara Palin.  If you have read any of my other posts or even read any newspaper you will have seen that Sara Palin is all over the news.  At one point her face was pictured in every newspaper on WSU campus, as well as other types of media.  However as we all know Palin was both positively and negatively displayed by the media.  At the beginning of the campaign Palin was displayed as a ploy by the Republican Party to gain the majority women’s vote.  However as the campaign progressed the biases in the media started to become visible.  This was mainly seen in the television news stations, which obviously chose their sides as to which campaign they supported.  The stations that were on the democratic side targeted Palin by slandering her name and questioning her stance on the abortion issue.  Some stations wrote story’s that exposed her family and mainly her daughters child and possible second child.  However the most public slandering of palin came after the vice presidential debate, where Palin was ridiculed by most types of news for her speech edicate when she used names to describe types of people as “Joe Six-Pack” and “Dave the plumber.”  Last week I saw two skits on the popular television show Saturday Night Live   where she was made fun of in a fake debate with Biden.

            Although most people only remember the negative press that Palin received during the election there was also a lot of positives that came with the negatives. Last week at the Republican Governors Association conference Palin addressed the media for the first time after losing the election.  According to many pollsters Palin made very smart moves during her first speech addressing the media about many of the accusation’s of her clashing with McCain among other issues.    

Palin's post campaign speech.

The article I chose was in USA Today and it was an article about Sara Palin and her actions with the media post election.   This article however did not mention anything about her book that she is supposedly going to write, or any of the other rumors about her commentary abut the past election.  Mainly the article speaks about her comments made in her first speech since losing the election.  Palin praised Sen. John McCain and wished Obama well in her few opening statements.  She also stated about president elect Obama “if he governs with the skill and the grace and the greatness of which he is capable, we’re going to be just fine, and as he prepares to fill the office of Washington and Lincoln, know that this is a shining moment in American history.”  She later spoke about her opinion on what direction her party should take.  In the article Palin states that her defeated party must return to core GOP values, such as limited government and personal freedom.  Which is a sign of her returning to her very conservative views that she had once maintained before she began running for the white house with John McCain.   She later emphasized this again by saying “the Washington values displayed by our national leaders simply don’t reflect the values of the Republican Party.”   I feel that these first speeches by Palin show what is to come in the future of her political career.  It seemed to me that she is trying to show how much she intends to move back to her pre campaign views of conservatism.   

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2008-11-13-palin_n.htm?loc=interstitialskip

The video I chose was sent to me by my sister that is twelve years old and is still living in Alaska.  She is a hard-core democrat and was pretty excited to see this.  The video was filmed in Alaska, however the video was primarily of women that live in Anchorage Showing support for Obama by making the Obama logo outside of the state building.  The video also showed pictures women as well as men showing their support all over the state.  Some pictures were of people camping in cabins, on top of mountains, on beaches.  There was even one picture of some women holding Obama signs after the Alaska Day parade in my hometown of Sitka.  This seemed awkward to me because I assumed that Alaska would be in full support of Sara Palin.  However after talking to my mom she said that there has been a lot of support shown for Obama all over the state and it was all over the news.  I thought it was interesting that there almost seemed to be an uprising of democrats this year in a state that has a republican senator running for vice president next to John McCain.  Republicans have primarily dominated Alaska for the last half-century as well.    the video clip can be found at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lffB7B8jKE