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Outside the Beltway

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Take The Palin Pledge

For perhaps the first time ever, I find myself in total and complete agreement with Dana Milbank. Take the pledge: Give Palin a rest.

Dodd Harris
43

Comments

Dana Milbank calls for February to be a Palin-free month:

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.

I don’t really see any reason to wait, frankly. Palin Obsession has, indeed, become a major problem in the media and the blogosphere. After she stepped down as Governor of Alaska, I thought she’d best serve her long term interests by retiring from the spotlight for a while and doing some of the quiet, behind-the-scenes politicking that builds crucial support for whatever aspirations she may have. Instead, she’s been a veritable media whirlwind, a constant topic of discussion, and a participant even in stories that have nothing to do with her.

We get it. There are some people — fans and detractors alike — who just can’t STFU about her. The rest of us could use a break. So, for perhaps the first time ever, I find myself in total and complete agreement with Dana Milbank. Take the pledge: Give Palin a rest.

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43 responses to “Take The Palin Pledge”

  1. Tony Avatar
    Tony

    Apropos of nothing whatsoever, I can’t look at that photo without hearing Fred Willard going “I don’t think so!” in a funny voice.

  2. Steve Plunk Avatar
    Steve Plunk

    I’m in complete agreement along with quite a few of the regulars.

  3. steve Avatar
    steve

    I am going to agree with Dodd. Enough celebrity politics.

    Steve

  4. An Interested Party Avatar
    An Interested Party

    “Take the pledge: Give Palin a rest.”

    Ahh, but will she play along with this…

  5. Brett Avatar
    Brett

    Hell, I’ve been deliberately avoiding her for months. Whenever you’ve brought her up in posts here at OTB, I simply scrolled past them in my Google Feed.

  6. michael reynolds Avatar
    michael reynolds

    Give her a rest. I like that. It’s like saying give Snooki a rest.

    Palin hauls herself onto the stage as often as she can as ludicrously as she can.

    If you and Dana Milbank choose to rephrase that to read, “Please Ignore Sarah Palin Entirely,” I think I could sign on. The implied victimhood is a bit of a sticking point.

  7. mpw280 Avatar
    mpw280

    OTB will be hurting for content. mpw

  8. anjin-san Avatar
    anjin-san

    > The implied victimhood is a bit of a sticking point.

    Yes. And it would be nice to have a concurrent break from Obama is a Muslim/Communist/Kenyan/Closet Jihadist and so on and so on.

  9. RW Rogers Avatar
    RW Rogers

    What Michael said above works for me. Anyone want to give odds on Milbank keeping his pledge, or if he does, his job? 😉

    Good luck, Dodd, especially if you are still on Twitter!

  10. G.A.Phillips Avatar
    G.A.Phillips

    Yes. And it would be nice to have a concurrent break from Obama and his supporters crying about how they are victims of Bush….

  11. Doddfou Avatar
    Doddfou

    Good luck, Dodd, especially if you are still on Twitter!

    I promise you, this will be no hardship for me. I just searched all my OTB posts back to when I joined the crew in May, 2007 and only found seven that even mention Palin (which is a slow three days for my colleague Doug 😛 ). Of those, only five (including this one) are actually about her.

    The oldest of those begins with the words “I’ve made no secret of my general disdain for Sarah Palin.” In short, not blogging about Palin won’t change things for me much than Keith Olbermann being off the air does.

  12. anjin-san Avatar
    anjin-san

    One thing that is worth noting is that even if you feel strongly that OTB’s Palin coverage recently went over the top, it certainly was no more so that the recent “all TSA, all the time” period here. It’s not as if a certain saturation level on OTB for a single topic is unprecedented.

  13. Alex Knapp Avatar
    Alex Knapp

    Must…. not…. notice…. irony……

  14. farrell Avatar
    farrell

    Good-if all of you left wing hacks stop “talking” i.e. attempting to destroy her which you have in an unprecedented campaign of bile for two years then her comments will be viewed undistorted for the first time.Try a full year not just February please

  15. anjin-san Avatar
    anjin-san

    > an unprecedented campaign of bile

    I guess you missed the Clinton years 🙂

    BTW farrell this won’t work if the palinetts are working double overtime while we are out for a cup of coffee.

  16. RW Rogers Avatar
    RW Rogers

    Good-if all of you left wing hacks stop “talking”

    Reality check on Aisle 9, please!

  17. sam Avatar
    sam

    Sure, but…

    “See, all we have to do is insert this sequence into that fungus’s DNA, and we’ll have an infinite supply of fungoil.” “Uh, well, what if, you know, uh, something goes wrong?” “Like what?” “Well, suppose the sequence causes the fungus to palininate?” “Palininate?” “Hmmm. I hadn’t thought of that. If we’re not careful, the stuff could run amuck and show up all over the place whimpering it was a victim of, hell, just about anything. Well, we’ll have to tighten up the protocol. No TV cameras, no microphones, no Fox News reporters within 5 miles of the lab, access to Facebook and Twitter canceled for all personnel. Palinination cannot take place under those conditions.”

  18. Jay Tea Avatar
    Jay Tea

    Somebody better put Doug on suicide watch…

    J.

  19. john personna Avatar
    john personna

    You may recall that I recommended Palin not do the Fox interview, and just lay low.

    It’s funny now that this media meme builds. Half seem to be friends of Palin who want to help her, knowing she won’t help herself. The other half seem to be critics of Palin who just want to cut her off.

    Either way, this is not complementary of Palin, at all.

  20. Pete Avatar
    Pete

    More Biden; less Palin. Hell, why don’t we dredge up old Earl Butz for a spirited discussion?

  21. Smooth Jazz Avatar
    Smooth Jazz

    Good luck with that one. After Liberal blogs like this one, and anke biters in the press bash her for every utterance day after day for weeks and months, how ironic that the a beltway echo chamber huckster like Milbank now wants a time out. Remember, it was lefties like DailyKOS, Daily News Columnist Michael “Palin Has Blood on Her Hands” Daly, CNN, IL Senator Dick Durbin, Jane Fonda and assorted other Lib gadflys that blamed her for the Tucson tragedy the day it happened – forcing her to respond and guaranteeing weeks of back and forth.

    Admittedly, I think the country has reach critical mass with Palin fatigue as a result of the multiple books & book tours, her television show, her daughter on dancing with the stars, her FOX news gigs, endorsing candidates in the 2010 midterms, etc. Even her biggest supporters have to admit that overexposure is not a good thing. I think the key to whether Libs and all the anti Palin ankle biters can ignore her will be her poll numbers. If she lays low, and they start to stabilize or inch up, echo chamber & Lib blogs like OTB wil start to freak out, and try to blame her for everything again – guaranteeing more coverage of her as her defenders join the fray.

    She is scheduled to give a speech to a business group in New York next month. It will difficult for such an event featuring Palin not to be covered as the ankle biters lunge for anything to attack her. She should do her best to lay low and not feed the beast.

  22. Doug Mataconis Avatar
    Doug Mataconis

    I have a better idea.

    Let Sarah Palin pledge that for a month she will not Tweet, Facebook, or appear with her twin cheerleaders Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susterin to give us her latest pronouncement from the Fortress of Soiitude

  23. PJ Avatar
    PJ

    “Let Sarah Palin pledge that for a month she will not Tweet, Facebook, or appear with her twin cheerleaders Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susterin to give us her latest pronouncement from the Fortress of Soiitude”

    Excellent idea.

  24. Dodd Avatar
    Dodd

    After Liberal blogs like this one…

    Now you’re getting nasty.

  25. Janis Gore Avatar
    Janis Gore

    Of course, the headline at Big Government is that the Washington Post is organizing a news boycott of Ms. Palin.

  26. JohnD Avatar
    JohnD

    So Sarah Palin is going to be declared a ‘unperson’ for a month?

    How Orwellian

  27. Doug Mataconis Avatar
    Doug Mataconis

    John

    Unless she does something newsworthy like announce she is running for President, what’s the point in the media covering her every Tweet, Facebook posting, and mind numbing interview with Sean Hannity?

  28. Smooth Jazz Avatar
    Smooth Jazz

    I’m not getting nasty – I’m just laying out the facts for you. If you can’t deal with it, that’s your problem. When I visited this blog in prior years, it appeared to play it right down the middle. But I’ve noticed a noticeable shift left within the past few years. Someone clearly has made a decision to lurch this platform leftward, and the comments from the middle of the road and right of centers members, the few of them that are left, have said so. This comment from what appears to be a middle of the road poster from the “Public Trust In Fox News Down 16 Points In Past Year” thread is indicative of what I am saying. Of course, that thread relies on a DailyKOS/PPP poll, an obviously biased and left wing pollster, a common occurrence here at OTB:

    Michael says:
    Friday, January 21, 2011 at 10:25
    A dimo polling firm puts out a obiovios nonsense and you believe it? NPR is more trusted? Yeah right? The blog is going from silly to sillier.

    Just look at the majority of your most prominent, vocal and visible commenters — anjin, sam, mantis, john, wr, etc etc etc — are clearly left wing who would fit just an comfortably at DailyKOS, Tbogg and Huffington Post. Lurching left is not necessarily a bad thing, but is something that has been fairly obvious at this blog for some time. GL with it.

  29. Dodd Avatar
    Dodd

    I do take umbrage at being called a liberal.

    If you can’t deal with hearing someone on the right say something you don’t like, that’s your problem. To coin a phrase.

    Also, the politics of this blog’s regular commenters, particularly its crop of blogroaches, do not define the blog. Quite the opposite. Closer attention to what they say about what they read would make that quite clear.

  30. wr Avatar
    wr

    Blogroaches? Is that any way to treat the people who click through for you? For shame, you big lefty!

  31. andrew Avatar
    andrew

    “Unless she does something newsworthy like announce she is running for President, what’s the point in the media covering her every Tweet, Facebook posting, and mind numbing interview with Sean Hannity?”

    LOL. The Left wing media can’t help themselves. If she makes a typo they’ll be all over it. If her dog bites the neighbor they won’t be able to help themselves (As far as I know she doesn’t have a dog, but if you think that would faze the media you haven’t been paying attention).

  32. Jay Tea Avatar
    Jay Tea

    Unless she does something newsworthy like announce she is running for President, what’s the point in the media covering her every Tweet, Facebook posting, and mind numbing interview with Sean Hannity?

    I dunno, Doug. I haven’t written an article about her in quite a while. Maybe one that tangentially talked about her in relation to the Giffords shooting, but a whole article about her? I can count those on one hand.

    I’d suggest asking that question of someone who writes about her on an almost daily basis. If only I could think of such a blogger whom I could point you towards. There’s this one guy, but his name escapes me at the moment…

    J.

  33. charles austin Avatar
    charles austin

    Seriously Doug, why shouldn’t Sarah Palin tweet whatever she wants? You have no obligation to respond, only an obsession to do so.

  34. G.A.Phillips Avatar
    G.A.Phillips

    I love me some Palin….lol

  35. anjin-san Avatar
    anjin-san

    > Give her a rest. I like that. It’s like saying give Snooki a rest.

    Snooki, Khloe, Kendra and Sarah will have a show together soon.

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