What happened to Charlie Gibson?
The affable, mild mannered, former Good Morning America host we learned to love turned into a dangerous parody of everything that is about today's "gotcha" journalists.
He seemed to be on a mission to embarrass Sarah Palin and he did so with a smug, sometimes arrogant, demeanor I have never seen before from Uncle Charlie.
The UPI noted today that Gibson was out to embarrass Palin on the same night that his colleague George Stephanopolous was treating Barack Obama with kid gloves.
What was Gibson doing and why?
The attention was supposed to be on Sarah Palin. The world wanted to know who SHE was, but instead Charlie Gibson was intent on being the story and showing the world who HE was.
Sarah Palin has been criticized for being over-prepped and searching for answers. I believe that Charlie Gibson was over-prepped and out to prove that he was not a GMA lightweight who was hand picked by the McCain campaign for that very reason.
But he went to far. If Sarah Palin didn't know and answer or didn't give an answer he liked he made incredulous faces, followed up three and four times, and made snarky comments like "I got lost in a blizzard of words there."
And, it turns out, the big supposed Gaffe by Sarah Palin was actually Charlie Gibson's Gaffe. He didn't know the doctrine either. Palin was right to ask, "In what respect, Charlie?" when asked if she agreed with the doctrine. Instead of being polite and explaining what he meant, Gibson felt like he had his gotcha and asked Gibson basically said, "well, you tell me, what do you think it is?"
What an ass! He would not have treated Obama or McCain or Biden that way, for he would have presumed they knew. He went into the interview with the preconceived notion that she didn't know anything and he set out to prove that notion.
The man who penned the term, "The Bush Doctrine" wrote this in the Washington Post
"Yes, Sarah Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Charlie Gibson. And at least she didn't pretend to know -- while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, sighing and "sounding like an impatient teacher," as the Times noted. In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes' reaction to the mother of five who presumes to play on their stage."
Charlie, we don't need your commentary, just ask the questions and be polite so we don't all feel uncomfortable.
4 comments:
How do you get that Charlie know the Bush doctrine? After Gov. Palin said it was "His world view" and discussed how elections give us a chance to get things right (something I don't think the President would include in it), Charlie described it as one of pre-emptive war, that the U.S. could attack before being attacked.
I think Charlie knew what it was. One can understand Gov. Palin not connecting the "doctrine" with a policy I'm confident she knew. But, you shouldn't say Charlie didn't know it.
It wasn't me. The man who came up with the term "Bush Doctrine" wrote in the Washington Post that Gibson got it wrong. Click the link on the post.
Three things:
1) When I click on your Washington Post link, I get a page not found. But, I did find two articles on the subject at the Post. One is here. This other article by Charles Krauthammer may be the one you were referring to.
2) This Wikipedia page might be more helpful as it is (unlike Krauthammer and Froomkin) politically agnostic. It in, they say one of the five or seven or so different Bush Doctrines is preemptive war, which is what Charlie had described. No?
3) At the same time, with so many Bush Doctrine's flying around, one can forgive Gov. Palin's not being able to define it.
Sorry about the Washington Post link. I'll fix it. If you get a chance, watch the video of This Week on ABC. George Will also says there are many facets to the Bush Doctrine, to narrowly focus on one aspect in 2002 is wrong.
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