I've heard some crazy things about Sarah Palin. It's hard to not hear things about that woman. Just from waiting to check out at the grocery story I learned that she has a pregnant teenage daughter, a small baby with Downs Syndrome, and that she was once in a Miss Alaska pageant. How much is true and how much is just exaggerated dug up dirt is arguable, but regardless, I've heard much about her, not much about what her politics are.
This article completely caught me off guard. I suppose it's just a given now that if someone is running for a political position, especially one's as important as those like president and vice-president, that people are going to dig into their past and use whatever they can as ammunition against them. I never thought I would read an article about something as trivial as was presented about Palin in this article.
The focus of this piece was about how years ago Palin voted against shortening the operating hours of bars. The house of operation were believed to be in direct correlation with the high count of drunk driving accidents and spousal abuse. Palin has gotten as far as she has in the political world by getting the support of Christian evangelicals and drawing on that base. The controversy presented by this article was that such a conservative Christian woman voted against shortening the hours that bars were open. Granted, that's an interesting thing to note, but the whole focus of the piece was to draw on that simply to put more of Palin's past on display for the public.
The story itself was interesting in that the authors got sources that were close the ordeal, from the minister who testified at the city council hearing, to the author of the bar hour reduction plan who Palin fired upon becoming mayor, to city council members of the time, and even to a representative of Palin, but the story itself didn't say much. I was rather disappointed with this article. It was well written, there where no factual holes that I saw, they spoke to both sides of the story, but it wasn't something that I think readers should or need to read.
It's important to learn as much about candidates as possible in order to make the right choices for each respective person, and it's important to know as much as you can to make educated choices, but this article was based on content that doesn't seem to be newsworthy. It makes me wonder if reporters or the Chicago Tribune have nothing better to do than just find random facts about Palin simply to write about her.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-palin-alcoholoct05,0,7731371.story
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5 comments:
This is ridiculous. These people are going to run our country, and yet all they care about during election years is finding out embarrassing little facts that really have nothing to do with the campaign.
So what if Sarah Palin's daughter is pregnant? So what if she opposed bar crackdowns? What does that have to do with her being the Republican vice-presidential nominee?
These politicians need to realize that dragging the other candidates' names through the mud is not helping them; in fact, it makes THEM look even worse.
Unfortunately, this article is a microcosm of what the Chicago Tribune is quickly becoming: A conduit for tabloid-oriented trash. Out of all the topics to explore, they saw fit to dig up this city ordinance nonsense! Like I said, this represents the decline of a once formidable newspaper. Just wait until Sam Zell really digs his heels in!
hello fellow electoral politics blogger!
i agree with and disagree with your assessment. sure, this article really isn't revolving around the pressing issues of today, but sarah palin is definitely a different situation.
americans have always placed a particular importance on the social values of sarah palin, and the social values of sarah palin, especially in the eyes of staunch conservatives, is one of her biggest strengths. i would give kudos to this author for looking around and finding something that goes against this image that sarah palin is running on.
of course, a city ordinance in a small town isn't exactly what you want to be talking about, but sarah palin only has two years of experience as a governor, so you'll have to work with what you can.
Wow. Honestly? Not only is this an issue from over ten years ago, but it is completely irrelevant. Who cares what happens in Wasilla, Alaska? And who cares about what happens in BARS in Wasilla, Alaska? This is just sad and a very poor abuse of what journalism is meant to be. Reporters should cover relevant, significant topics, not this immaterial minutiae. A majority of the American public loves reading about things like this, but such topics should remain in grocery store tabloids. No reputable newspaper should publish an article of such low content standards.
I have to say that I agree with you 100%. After reading that article, all I had to say was, "WHO CARES?" It doesn't matter whether you like Palin or not, I think we can all agree that there was absolutely no point to that article. Instead of focusing on something that occurred over 10 years ago, newspapers should be writing stories about the candidates' stances on important issues and their plans if they get elected. The country and the entire world for that matter are very different places from what they were in 1996. This article in no way relates to the concerns and needs of the American people in the present-day. I honestly believe that the choice to publish this story was irresponsible on both the parts of the TWO writers (I can't believe two writers were wasted on this article) and the editors. Seriously!
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