Sarah Palin Dominates the News

Recently Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit remarked:

You know, I'm beginning to feel like Sarah Palin's taken over my blog.

If you look down at the current topics on the right side of this blog, I'm forced to agree with him. I have a few more posts planned for today...and I realized a majority of them involved Palin. So why is this happening? We'll lets look at the active players in this election and see what they are talking about and doing.

• Sarah Palin
  
  She's been in the news as her two-part interview just finished running on ABC. ABC, at least, knows what they have ratings-wise. With no 24-hour new network, ABC is running and re-running the interview on four (4) different programs. And of course, the interview received more attention than normal when Gibson took on an extreme adversarial attitude and in the process was caught making mistakes.
  
  
• John McCain
  
  Realizing the impact of Palin on the election, McCain's campaign recently announced that they would be traveling together for at least two weeks. This decision of course fueled discussion of (A) how popular Sarah Palin is and (B) if the move was a ruse to keep her away from the national media. Regardless, both the A camp and the B camp were indeed ... talking about Sarah Palin.
  
  
• Barack Obama
  
  Obama has spent much of the last two weeks ... talking about Sarah Palin. He's compared his experience to hers--though I have no idea who advised him this was a good idea. He has disected her speeches. He has defended 'community organizers'. He has belittled mayors of small towns. He has even declared (I think sarcastically) that he admires her moose hunting skills. All this has led people to remind him that he is not in fact running against Palin, he is running against John McCain.
  
  
• Joe Biden
  
  Biden hasn't been that visible in the last two weeks, but one of his most noted moments is a stump speech where he noted that if Obama had picked Hilary Clinton, Palin wouldn't have been seeing the spike in popularity she has seen. So he turned the focus of the discussion to VP choices in general and female VP choices in particular. Who was a recent female VP choice? Maybe .... Sarah Palin?
  
  
• Mainstream Media
  
  The media has gone (excuse the expression) bat-shit crazy in an attempt to bring Sarah Palin down. Armies of reporters are investigating every issue, every historical fact, every family member in an effort to turn up something--anything. As fast as one 'scandal' is seen not to have any traction, a new one is invented. On top of that, the portion of the media that isn't actively trying to get Obama elected is following the story because right now, Sarah Palin equals ratings.
  
  
• Hollywood Stars and Pop Singers
  
  I refuse to call these people 'active players in this election' but I'll include them in the list anyway. Recently we had Matt Damon say that he is scared by the choice of Sarah Palin and that: It’s like a really bad Disney movie. Pamela Anderson declared: I can't stand her. She can suck it. Pink said that: This woman hates women...This woman terrifies me. At least they are all on the same page ... talking about Sarah Palin.
  
  
• Actual Voters
  
  You know the ones I'm talking about. The people of "We the People" fame that are actually going to decide this election? Well, they've been turning out in huge numbers to McCain/Palin rallies. Some media outlets have reported on this phenomenon. Others have focused on the protesters. The fact remains that in any event the story once again is ... Sarah Palin.
  
  
• Bloggers
  
  Given that bloggers for the most part react and comment on stories in the news, it is inevitable that political blogs are currently fixated on Sarah Palin. For all the reasons above, she is the top news story. And bloggers comment on the top news story. Even if to say, "Stop talking about Sarah Palin!" On August 29, for example, 44 of the top 100 Google searches were Palin related. Google searches means page hits and attracting readers is a goal of many blogs, whether stated or not.
  

It is pretty well accepted that Sarah Palin dominating the news cycles is not good for Obama. If he wants to turn his campaign around he has to find a way to change the focus. Only right now there seems to be a perfect storm of events that is making that very difficult. Everyone--people in his camp, McCain's camp, media, interested third parties, bloggers--is talking about Sarah Palin.