It’s easy to see why Palin would want to turn her supporters loose on the television, radio, newspaper and online reporters who were covering her: every time she opens her mouth to one of them she puts herself in an unflattering position. Make it the reporter’s fault and then no matter how feeble the answer, or how harmless the questions (Katie Couric couldn’t stump my pet ferrets, and they eat stuff they find on the floor) you can’t lose the argument.
Trouble is, once you’ve poked that porcupine with a pointy stick, it’s hard to get its quills down again. Tell people, over and over, that the press is the problem, and they begin to internalize and believe it in every instance, seeing bias where there’s only the conflict of facts with their opinions. Joke, as conservative commentators such as Ann Coulter and Melanie Morgan are known to do, about blowing up the New York Times building and hanging the editors of newspapers, and violence against journalists starts to seem not just plausible but justifiable.
A.