I’ll Take “Gotcha Questions” for $200, Alex — Andrew Breitbart on the Leftists’ War Against Conservative Women (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on July 4, 2011
The Left’s war on conservative women continues…
Conservative publisher — and the leftists’ “Most Hated Conservative Man” next to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh — Andrew Breitbart was interviewed on this topic Saturday on “Fox & Friends.”
Spot-on observations from Breitbart on “gotcha” questions asked of conservative women — transcript snippets below provided by NewsBusters, Breitbart: Media Ask Palin and Bachmann Gotcha Questions to Make Them Look Stupid on YouTube:
No, well, you wouldn’t hear this against Barbara Boxer or Loretta Sanchez. The thing is that Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann represent an existential threat to the Democratic Party the way that 20 years ago Clarence Thomas as a black man represented to liberals and the Democrat Party. The Democratic Party likes to think of itself as the party of minorities, and when in the Republican Party so many women and attractive women and accomplished women rise to the top, it’s going to take the media to destroy them because at the end of the day, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, you go by the polls, represent what the American people represent on the issues.
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Well, what you just saw with President Obama they call in tennis an unforced error. What they try and do with Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann is to force errors, to ask gotcha questions. Life for them is a permanent game of Jeopardy where the George Stephanopouloses of the world, he of the Clinton war room, are there to try to make them look stupid on YouTube.
Indeed. We saw this in 2008 with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson’s interviews of Palin where it was clear that she was being quizzed like a game show contestant by an arrogant moderator doing his or her best to make the former Alaska governor look foolish.
Now Bachmann is being subjected to the same treatment.
The left-wing won’t let up on Congresswoman Michele Bachmann — even normally fair and balanced interviewers like Chris Wallace have been snider to her than they have been to any male politician of either party. Where have been any “are you a flake?” questions in regards to the gaffes, mistakes, missteps made by male politicians who are Republicans, RINOs, Democrats, or Independents?
Rep. Bachmann’s no-nonsense response was outstanding, and she was able to reveal her remarkable background as a politician, lawyer in tax law, wife, mother (five children), and foster mother (23 children), while firmly smacking Wallace down a notch or two.
“Are You a Flake?”, Chris Wallace Interviews Michele Bachmann, June 26, 2011
To his credit, Wallace did apologize for his rudeness to Rep. Bachmann — at this point, Bachmann has not accepted his apology.
Chris Wallace Says Sorry to Michele Bachmann
No questions have been posed by Wallace or any other major journalist, liberal or conservative, to my knowledge, to Barack Obama about him being “a flake” with this bizarre statement he made when running for president:
Jim Geraghty at National Review Online has a fabulous response to Wallace’s “flake” question — Flakes, Jolt… Sounds Like Breakfast to Me:
‘Are You a Flake?’ ‘That Depends… Are You?’
Perhaps, in the interest of fairness, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace could begin every forthcoming interview with, “Are you a flake?” Bonus points would go to the candidate who answered, deadpan, “yes.”
Double bonus if the candidate was Republican Senate candidate and longtime pork-fighting Rep. Jeff Flake.
Sam Stein of Huffington Post summarizes the exchange: “While Fox News Chris Wallace didn’t press the Minnesota Republican on any specific statement — whether it be that President Barack Obama was creating a gangster government, that anti-American sentiment existed in Congress, or that NATO air strikes had killed up to 30,000 civilians in Libya — he did touch on the broader point. “Are you a flake?” he asked. Bachmann seemed offended by the line of inquiry. “I think that would be insulting to say something like that because I’m a serious person,” she explained. She then went on to tout all the ways in which she was, indeed, serious.
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But “are you a flake?” isn’t really a tough question; it’s more of an insult in the guise of a question. (Unless, of course, every figure on the political scene gets that question.) At the very least, it’s an accusation, and net effect that is a variation of that “don’t think of an elephant” line from Inception. The more a person vehemently denies that they’re a flake, the more others wonder if there’s something to the accusation. No one believes that Barack Obama has an uncontrollable shoplifting habit; if he were to be accused of it relentlessly, at some point, some segment of the population would begin to suspect that he has a shoplifting habit. (Watch; inevitably, this accusation will now be popping up in e-mails forwarded to you by your nutty friends, and I’ll be accused of spreading another scandalous, shameless lie about the president.)
But as Jonah pointed out, Joe Biden has uttered so many otherworldly comments over the course of his career that if he replied to a question on Meet the Press, “Get these squirrels off of me!” and everyone would either shrug or nod and smile. For some candidates, statements that seem off-kilter or inaccurate or just plain wacky (“57 states!”) get shrugged off as garden-variety slips of the tongue; for other figures in politics, their gaffes define them. Most conservatives just don’t buy the notion that the defined-by-gaffes phenomenon is random. Otherwise, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy would be forever defined by the “Stockpile Stewardess Program.”
Is Bachmann flaky? Compared to whom?
One recent example of a “gotcha” question asked of Sarah Palin (we never know WHAT precisely was asked of her in a crowded shop or venue, since that was conveniently edited out) about Paul Revere last month. Liberal media, especially MSNBC, went on a feeding frenzy, mocking her and saying she was ignorant of history and her response was wrong.
Many historians and historical accountings, however, have proven that Palin’s off-the-cuff response on Revere warning the British was absolutely correct. No retractions from the left-wing media, no corrections, no apologies.
It was the left-wing media and liberals who believed them about Palin’s Revere response who were ignorant. But that hasn’t slowed down the non-stop media assault on conservative women.
Video encore of Palin’s response…
Sarah Palin: Paul Revere Warned the British
About the author
To Joanie/Janet T: You did it again. And that’s it, buttercup.
I’ve deleted your latest snotty Bachmann/Palin comment – we’ve talked about your attacks and anti-Palin posts before. I thought you got the message last week when you posted nasty posts against conservatives and Palin and I didn’t post them. But, no. You’ve been warned one time too many, ignored this blog’s rules every chance you could – so, feel free to write comments to your heart’s delight, but from now on, you’re banned from this site. I won’t even read them, since you stopped having any thoughtful offerings a long time back and time is too short for me to continue to waste on your constant, bitter, nasty, groundless attacks against me, against conservatives in general, against Sarah Palin and other conservative women, against anyone who isn’t an Obama-adoring, spend-more-money statist, anyone who isn’t a brainwashed Media Matters/MSNBC sheep. You’ve become a tiresome pest. Sorry to have to do this, but you have shown absolutely no respect for me and what I stand for, for what this country stands for. You have deliberately violated the posted rules more times than I can count. Frankly, others would have booted you long before now.
Daily Kos will love you, however.
Adios.
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