Mark Halperin has a feature in Time magazine every week called "The Big Questions."

For a process-obsessed campaign reporter, this means a weekly who's up, who's down scorecard, in an easy to follow Q-&-A format.

This week's questions:

Is Sarah Palin in or out?

What could hold her back?

When does she have to decide?

Part of his answer to question one: "Palin remains more interesting to listen to than any other candidate."  Coming from a guy who once said, "I'm ready to cancel my vacation to go cover Rick Perry," maybe this isn't surprising. It is worth pointing out that Sarah Palin isn't, you know, a candidate for anything.

After praising her "maverick appeal" and "pox-on-both-parties, anti-Establishment message," Halperin notes that "as always, the media can't get enough of her."

Well, he's right about that.

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote a rather apoplectic column about presidential candidate Michele Bachmann this week, lamenting the fact that other GOP candidates aren't calling her out for being completely ill-prepared for the job:

Bachmann does not deserve to be in the presidential race. Legislatively, she has done little, she knows next to nothing and what she thinks she knows is wrong.

He also called her "an ignoramus" and "a bigot when it comes to gays."

Straight news coverage obviously isn't going to put things like that. But what's remarkable is how reporters seem to give Bachmann credit for being sort of, kind of, well-informed--at least relative to another political figure.

Here's Time magazine's recent take:

It is easy to dismiss Bachmann as a shorter Sarah Palin with a Minnesota accent. But there are important differences. Whereas Palin can stumble over simple questions, Bachmann is far surer on her feet. When Fox News host Chris Wallace recently recounted some of Bachmann's most outrageous statements and asked point-blank whether she is a "flake," the congresswoman didn't blink and delivered a firm recitation of her credentials. During a 2010 interview on MSNBC's Hardball, Bachmann stuck so resolutely to her talking points that the exasperated host, Chris Matthews, asked whether she was "hypnotized." She smiled and repeated them again.

"They'll throw nothing but heat at her, and she stays in the batter's box and doesn't flinch," marvels an adviser to a rival Republican candidate. Her fans say that's because Bachmann, who has two law degrees, offers more substance than Palin and can speak intelligently--and without Palin's mangled syntax--about policy issues. "She's smart. She's well informed," says Ralph Reed. It's true that Bachmann has a scant House record and a penchant for factual misstatements, including her bizarre claim that NATO air strikes killed up to 30,000 Libyans. But few other politicians so effectively combine policy, ideology--and pure star power.

Talk about exasperating.

The ability to recite talking points instead of answering questions can be called a lot of things-- being "sure on your feet" isn't one of them.

Bachmann has a "penchant for factual misstatements"--one example is given, sandwiched between tributes to her intelligence. Compare that to this assessment from early this year, courtesy of a PolitiFact editor:

"We have checked her 13 times, and [found] seven of her claims to be false and six have been found to be ridiculously false," PolitiFact editor Bill Adair told Minnesota Public Radio.

He added that no other politician had been factchecked as often as Bachmann without saying something that was found to be true.

"I don't know anyone else that we have checked more than a couple times that has never earned anything above a false," Adair said. "She is unusual in that regard that she has never gotten a rating higher than false."

That's pretty astounding--and doesn't really come through in the coverage of her campaign.

On top of all of this, of course, is the notion--rampant in the coverage of her campaign--that Bachmann should be compared to Sarah Palin. There's something strange--and deeply sexist--about this. But without a doubt, being compared to the most famously inarticulate national political figure of our era does a tremendous favor to Bachmann.

Richard Cohen is wondering when other Republican presidential candidate will criticize her record; the same question should be asked of the press corps.

Will the outrages ever stop?

Newsweek's "I Can Win" cover story about Sarah Palin is awful.

But Palin fans will have a hard time trying to figure out how to square this puff piece with the notion that the mainstream media is out to get Palin.

The premise is that Palin could run for president--and win. Because, well, that's what she says.  That's sort of the theme for the whole article, as it is full of quotes and observations from Palin family members and associates who are trying to 'set the record straight' about her political career. Like how she was actually a quite moderate governor with a commendable record. But on the national stage, something changed as soon as she stepped into the 2008 campaign:

Palin's eagerness for the fray lifted a dispirited Republican base and instigated an outsize response from liberal critics.

That's about the closest the article comes to Palin criticism--noting comments from overreacting liberals. But the press was guilty of getting down in the sewer and going after her family:

The press's fascination with this picturesque brood quickly turned so darkly speculative that candidate Barack Obama threatened to fire anyone in his campaign found participating in the conjectures.

This was one of Palin's first disingenuous attacks on the media. There was never much, if any, coverage of these theories that her baby wasn't really hers. But there was chatter on the Internet, which Palin turned into an attack on the press.

But the best part might be when reporter Peter Boyer tried to substantiate the claim from Palin advisers that she's actually really up to speed on the issues.

Palin has also become conversant on the subject of quantitative easing, the inflationary effects of which she illustrated with a personal anecdote. "I was ticked off at Todd yesterday" she said. "He walks into a gas station as we’re driving over from Minnesota. He buys a Slim Jim--we’re always eating that jerky stuff--for $2.69. I said, 'Todd, those used to be 99 cents, just recently!' And he says, 'Man, the dollar's worth nothing anymore.' A jug of milk and a loaf of bread and a dozen eggs--every time I walk into that grocery store, a couple of pennies more."

Newsweek is suggesting that Palin's jerky tale offers a serious insight into the Fed's policy of quantitative easing, which involves buying Treasury securities to bring down long-term interest rates and stimulate the economy. Republicans and conservatives insist this will cause disastrous inflation, but there's no evidence that this is happening; David Leonhardt's New York Times piece a few months ago (3/30/11) actually showed that core inflation is remarkably low right now, especially compared to the 1980s. (Over the last 12 months, core inflation was 1.5 percent.)

So, contrary to what Newsweek would have you believe, Palin's monitoring of Slim Jim prices do not provide particularly useful insight into the inflationary impact of Federal Reserve policy--or any evidence of Palin's supposed mastery of policy wonkery.

"Senators, congressmen and even President Obama have misquoted the Founding Fathers in recent years," writes Washington Post reporter David A. Fahrenthold in a June 7 piece suggesting that there is a bipartisan trend of misquotation and misrepresentation of historical events. After citing Sarah Palin's recent botched account of Paul Revere's revolutionary ride, Fahrenthold implies that historical distortion comes from a variety of political quarters:

But in Washington, nobody should feel too smug, as Palin is hardly the only politician with a habit of helpfully twisting the historical record, accidentally or not, and sometimes with politically handy consequences.

If Fahrenthold means to give the impression that there is no partisan pattern to the way politicians distort history, that's not what his assembled facts indicate.

The Washington Post reporter cites eight Republicans for  "twisting the historical record": Six--Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.); Rep. Louie Gohmert (Texas);  Rep. Virginia Foxx (N.C.);  Rep. Marlin A. Stutzman (Ind.); Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah) and Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.)--are cited for misquoting founders, while two, Palin and Rep. Michelle Bachman (Minn.), are cited for distorting Revolutionary War history.

And Democrats?  Fahrenthold cites only Barack Obama, for dropping the words "by their creator" from a speech he gave quoting the Declaration of Independence. (Fahrenthold reports that the White House insists that the president has accurately quoted the passage "countless times." If he really thinks Obama left out that phrase because he doesn't like its religious content, I've got a scoop for him involving birth certificates.)

So Fahrenthold's report is little more than false equivalence--an attempt to attribute a fault that resides largely in one political party and movement to both sides of the political aisle. This is particularly clear when taken in context with a long-term conservative campaign to force history to conform to their views on subjects ranging from religion to the economy.

The Sarah Palin hostage drama continues.

In case you haven't heard, Palin is taking a bus tour up the East Coast, visiting various sites of historic interest. Which naturally means that every media outlet is forced to follow along, covering  this series of non-events as if they are of tremendous importance, asking the pertinent questions: Is she running for president? Has she launched a crafty non-campaign that appears much like a campaign, without really being a campaign?

On Sunday (5/29/11), CNN host Howard Kurtz wondered:

Is the press in danger of being bamboozled by somebody who, in the end, is probably not going to run?

To me, being bamboozled would imply that you're being tricked. Corporate media are doing something they've done plenty of times before: giving Sarah Palin far, far more attention than she deserves.

Salon's Justin Elliott had a great round-up of the faux-bewilderment of the press corps. He cites these anecdotes:

According to the AP:

By some counts, more than 200 journalists trooped alongside Palin in Philadelphia....

And from the Times:

The CNN Express bus, filled with producers, camera operators and on-air talent, sat in Gettysburg for hours Monday, not even sure she was coming.

Hopefully Palin will release the journalist/hostages soon, so that they can go out and do the sort of reporting they would prefer to do.

From comedian Joan Rivers' Twitter feed (read from the bottom up if you can):

Fox says, for the record, that Rivers wasn't canceled due to the joke;  the show was overbooked, and she'll be rescheduled. As someone who has been booked--and then canceled--by Fox a couple of times, I'm skeptical of Fox's story here.

This is an actual CNN.com headline:

Palin Re-Tweet Raises Questions

And the actual lead paragraph:

Normally, it's what Sarah Palin tweets that makes news. This time it’s what she has re-tweeted.

The "substance" is that Palin retweeted a comment promoting Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal.

The piece ends:

A Palin spokesperson was not immediately available for comment but Rebecca Mansour, a Palin aide, subsequently expressed skepticism on Twitter that the media would take notice of Palin re-tweeting "something that stands [with] gays."

The media not taking notice of something that Sarah Palin said? Don't bet on it.

This reminds of NBC reporter Kelly O'Donnell's New Year's Resolution for Palin on this weekend's Chris Matthews Show:

MATTHEWS: And how about a resolution for Sarah Palin? Kelly?

O'DONNELL: Well, I think when people talk about her not knowing enough on big issues...

MATTHEWS:Yeah.

O'DONNELL: ...instead of reaching all the way to look like she's worldly and so knowledgeable on big issues, demonstrate competence on smaller issues as they come up, things where she does not already have a wheelhouse, not energy where she was good in Alaska...

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

O'DONNELL: ...but new issues. Not reach too much, build a base of people who think she knows what she's talking about.

How about a New Year's resolution for all corporate media pundits and reporters: Don't spend any time talking about what the half-term former governor of Alaska says.

At a press conference in 2009, Barack Obama said, "America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world toward peace and prosperity." He also proclaimed that America has core values that make it exceptional.

Based on those comments, right-wing pundits and politicians reached a conclusion: Barack Obama does not believe in "American exceptionalism." And since they say this all the time, reporters feel obligated to cover it as if it were an actual, serious argument.

Hence Susan Page's front-page article in USA Today (12/21/10):

Over White House objections, they're accusing him of not embracing the concept of American exceptionalism, saying he is pursuing an agenda on healthcare, the economy and foreign affairs that is at odds with fundamentals that distinguish the United States.

Obama "has clarified and personified secular socialization and a European view," says former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who is weighing a presidential bid in 2012. Obama, he says, made "disastrous" comments on the subject during his first trip overseas as president in an exchange that has become a cause célèbre among conservatives.

Page notes that this all comes down to one answer to one question at a 2009 press conference:

At a news conference in Strasbourg, France, in April 2009, a British reporter had asked the new president whether he subscribed to the idea that the United States is uniquely qualified to lead the world. "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism," Obama had replied.

That comment--which White House officials say critics have twisted and pulled out of context--led Gingrich, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and other prominent Republicans to question whether Obama believes that the USA has, by virtue of its heritage, a distinct and extraordinary role in world affairs.

He said, she said: Obama's defenders say they're misinterpreting the quote, Palin and company say they're not. If there was any "context" to this quote, USA Today didn't seem inclined to include it here--only the preface about the British and the Greeks.

But the paper did publish a sidebar article that included Obama's entire answer to this question about exceptionalism.

Now in a sane media world, we would acknowledge that Obama said this:

The United States remains the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability. And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.

With that out of the way, we'd spend our time trying to figure out precisely how and why Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin willfully misinterpret his words. But we don't have that media system. We have the one where the sputterings from Sarah Palin are taken seriously as one side in a "debate."

Time's Mark Halperin (12/27/10) joins his punditry colleagues in cheering Barack Obama's wealthy-friendly tax plan as a great way for the president to end a rough year:

But by ending the year with a bipartisan-compromise tax deal, Obama showed he is capable of delivering the kind of change that was supposed to be the hallmark of his Administration.

Indeed-- I bet a lot of people watching Obama during the 2008 campaign were thinking, "I hope he doesn't mean it when he says he'll get rid of those tax breaks for the wealthy."

More Halperinian analysis:

To avoid seeing the economy stall again, the president needs to demonstrate that he has a strategy for centrist governance when Republicans take control of the House of Representatives in January. Political nihilists on the right and left may find the notion of swallowing something that their opponents want antithetical to their mind-set. But Obama's ability to compromise will prove crucial. Here's a simple rule for him: If a proposal is denounced by both Nancy Pelosi and Sarah Palin, it will probably find support in the center of the electorate.

Here's a simple test for that simple rule: What kinds of policy ideas would result from applying the Palin/Pelosi principle? (Torturing puppies would apparently be a sure-fire electoral winner--since Pelosi and Palin would presumably both denounce this.) Of course, defining the "center" in this way is absurd; repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell is broadly popular, for instance, but it outrages Palinesque Republicans. So it's not centrist, according to the Halperin rule. Unfortunately, a lot of Beltway journalists see the world this way.

Think Progress (6/7/10) claims Sarah Palin's criticism of the press regarding Helen Thomas is wrong, but I can't even figure out what she's trying to say. Here's Palin's Twitter statement:

Helen Thomas press pals condone racism? Heaven forbid "esteemed" press corps represent society's enlightened elite; Rest of us choose truth.

"Enlightened elite" would seem to be sarcasm--Palin does not actually think the "elite" is "enlightened"--but so would "Heaven forbid," suggesting that she thinks the press corps actually should represent this non-enlightened elite. I honestly can't puzzle out her intended message.

As for Thomas' statement itself, the message was all too clear: It was a call for ethnic cleansing, and she was right to apologize for it. It's a sad way to end an admirable career. I would note, though, along with Glenn Greenwald, that the acceptability of calls for ethnic cleansing in the U.S. corporate media depends on which ethnicity is to be cleansed.

Witless commentary and breathtaking hypocrisy are no strangers to Fox News, but Bill O'Reilly was in rare form on June 1. Discussing Joe McGinniss, the journalist who moved next door to Sarah Palin's family home in Alaska in order to write about her, O'Reilly declared the move "immoral" and maybe even unconstitutional: "He's intruding upon them, all right? Their pursuit of happiness, which is guaranteed by the Constitution, basically has dropped 100 percent because he's there."  (The "pursuit of happiness" phrase actually appears in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.)

About now, listeners who have followed O'Reilly's sordid career are probably recalling the Fox host's practice of having his camera crews ambush news subjects at their homes, on vacation, even when they are with their children--in other words, "intruding on them, all right?" Of course, by O'Reilly's lights, only intrusions targeting those he cares about raise moral or "constitutional" questions. That is the beauty of an utter lack of self-awareness.

O'Reilly's guest, dyspeptic former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg, who often engages O'Reilly in a sort of stupid competition, was a voice of reason on this segment. On the Constitution, Goldberg said McGinniss had the right to live anywhere he wanted. But Goldberg didn't totally disappoint. While disagreeing that they were "immoral," Goldberg did say these sorts of intrusions were "wrong" and "creepy"--referring, of course, to McGinniss' intrusions, not O'Reilly's.

New York Times media reporter David Carr wrote the other day (4/5/10) about Sarah Palin's wide-ranging appeal:

Ms. Palin still gets a session in the media spanking machine every time she does anything, but the disapproval seems to further cement the support of her loyalists. Ms. Palin may or may not be qualified to represent America around the world, but she certainly represents vast swaths of the American public and has a lucrative new career to show for it.

If we don’t see why, then maybe we deserve the "lamestream media" label she likes to give us.

Mark Halperin of Time (3/29/10) expressed a similar hurts-so-good enthusiasm for Palin's attacks on the press:

Quippy and tart, she mocked the "lamestream media," and offered her usual punch of charm and charisma, something the public and the press have hungered for since she mostly limited her exposure to Facebook updates, Twitter tweets and calculated appearances on Fox News, her new employer.

Indeed, by carefully controlling her own visibility--and refusing to be challenged or held accountable by adversaries or the press--she has become even more irresistible as programming and copy.

There are few, if any, political figures who are treated this way by corporate media. She launches regular attacks on them, almost entirely without merit, and their response is, "Huh, she must be on to something there." There is no way one could imagine a figure on the left being treated this way. When Dennis Kucinich chided Koppel in a presidential debate for asking silly questions, ABC's response was to stop covering his campaign (Action Alert, 12/11/03). When Stephen Colbert nailed the press for its pro-Bush reporting, they sneered at him (Extra! Update, 6/06).

As for Sarah Palin's "appeal," her rating in the latest Washington Post poll (3/23-26/10) is 37 percent favorable, vs. 55 percent unfavorable.

Hillary Clinton's latest poll figures (AP-GfK, 3/3-8/10), by contrast, are 66 percent favorable, 31 percent unfavorable.

When's the last time you heard corporate media claiming that Clinton "certainly represents vast swaths of the American public"?

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz spends his Sunday mornings as the host of Reliable Sources, the media criticism show on CNN. Yesterday (12/13/09), one segment concerned the Washington Post's decision to print an op-ed (12/9/09) on "Climategate" by Sarah Palin.

It prompted this exchange with guest John Aravosis of Americablog:

ARAVOSIS: What newspapers aren't supposed to do is present an issue that's already decided as being a he said/she said of, hey, half the people say yes, half the people say no.

KURTZ: So you say it's already decided.

ARAVOSIS: Ninety percent of scientists believe global warming is manmade.

KURTZ: And Sarah Palin has said that manmade activity contributes to global warming.

I'm not sure where Palin said that, but in her Post op-ed she wrote this:

But while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes.

Sarah Palin's highly anticipated visit to Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor saw the famously tough-as-nails host ask the tough questions of the right-wing leader:

O'REILLY: OK. The latest poll has you with a 23 percent favorable, 37 percent don't know. You do the math, OK. And you're up at 60 percent of people who could like you. You are the biggest threat because you are a star, media star, whereas you're the only Republican. There aren't any other Republicans who are media stars but you. Now, that's why they're attacking you so vehemently. Do you know that?

In other words, "You could be really popular some day, and don't know you know how that makes liberals crazy?"

Nothing but the tough questions from that guy.

A bit of NBC Nightly News last night, from reporter Mike Viqueria:

But now Mr. Obama faces more friendly fire. After a key committee passed a plan to pay for reform with a tax on high-cost policies, major unions, normally Obama allies, took out full-page newspaper ads complaining that the tax will hit labor hardest and vowing that, without changes, they say, "We will oppose it." And late last night opposition from a more familiar foe, Sarah Palin posting on her Facebook page and echoing insurance industry claims that the latest plan will mean higher premiums, writing, "Unintended consequences always result from top-down big government plans." After being blindsided by insurance industry attacks, the president hit back.

If you were a reporter trying to determine whose views on healthcare to include in the few seconds of time allotted for your story, would you really include a Facebook posting from the former governor of Alaska? Single-payer activists have to get arrested to try and make the news, but Sarah Palin just needs to type.