The messenger vs. the message

Or, maybe, 'Sen. Palin vs. Harry Potter'?

Small-town girl v big-city boy

It is all rather extraordinary, not least in the shadow of Clark County.

I really having trouble forming a view of the people and/or the policies involved, not that my UK opinion matters a jot to US voters, but such reporting standards have to create a backlash.

Trying my utmost to be objective, almost any 'fact' that gets unearthed seems to be trivial, given totally undue prominence considering the relative status of the object of focus... and is hard to look at as anything than spiteful hissy fits from a small, if vocal minority who don't think others are smart enough to vote the 'right' way.

It may be there are other, more balanced 'analyses' of the other protagonists but I honestly can't say I have noticed. This Sarah Palin obsession seems unrelenting. The Guardian and even The Telegraph has staff bloggers that run an endless drip of 'anti-Palin stories. Trouble is, most seem to be either based on heresay or are plain wrong, and these sad, weak diatribes pale in comparison to the often YouTube-loaded rebuttals that in many cases can skewer Messrs. Obama and Biden by highlighting that whatever Mrs. Plain is accused of, they are on record of actually doing.

Despite some deep concerns on aspects of her policies and beliefs (such is the volume of red flagged effort across almost all 'we know better' media that might be true it's hard not to), as a human being I have to confess she comes across as someone I would instinctively side with simply by who is ranged against her and the sheer clunkiness of these so called 'smarter than the average PR' commentator's dollops of bitchiness vs. the Governor's self-evident US-style 'sass' & 'class'.

I can imagine how that plays with a more average voter outside of Washington, New York, Hollywood or indeed London, Paris or Berlin.

Yet again the arrogance of the (plus the paid-for 'our' in the UK thanks to the unique way our national broadcaster funded) media elite establishment seems extraordinary.

But I have a theory, and it is that they are all indeed very smart, and are in fact seeking to reap all they sow in this way by design. Punt out obvious, nasty drip-fed digs playing the person rather than the ball in media no one reads or watches in the USA, but let the power of the internet bear the rebuttals across the pond.

It is hard to divorce the medium from the messenger, so when a foreign liberal media cabal say do one thing, I'm figuring the more conservative folk in the heartlands may just kick back.

A bit like how I just felt being told as top of story that Gordon Brown was a saint because the multi-billion earning author chum of his wife says so and has dropped some chump change on his bankrupt party. And especially via a dig a Mr. Cameron's (of whom I am no fan) Party's policy seeking to promote family units on the basis which the author deems nasty as she was a 'single mum'. Thanks to the BBC's relentless, celeb-obsessed, 'word of the Gord' coverage, I mainly heard a direct snub to some modest, middling family values and struggling ambitions ill-served in a decade by the incumbent Govt (we are £500 poorer, apparently), from another out of touch luvvie FOG (Friend of Gordon) who is empathising with her sisters. Which, by the nature of the coverage at least, is a tad different to most rich Conservative donors that will be cited in balance.

All these guys can do what they like, with however much they want but... and this is the key point... the way it gets served up is not playing as well with this one-person voting constituency as well as those who spin may have intended.

Indy - JK Rowling donates £1m to Labour - 'Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: "I am delighted that JK Rowling, who is one of the world's greatest ever authors, has made such a generous donation.' I know she is popular, and deservedly so IMHO, but... Bless.