We really don't need any help understanding that Michele Bachmann is crazy

By Richard K. Barry

Wow, I agree with Michelle Malkin about something. The world may be coming to an end.

Well, it's actually Malkin's complaint that Newsweek used a "crazy eyes" picture of Michele Bachmann in a cover shot this week. And boy did they ever.

It's just such an easy thing to do and so unfair.

I once worked for a politician who refused to take part in pie-throwing contests (as the target) because he knew that the moment one hit his face the picture would be on the cover of multiple newspapers and maybe even end up on a piece of campaign literature for an opponent.

Politicians I've worked with also avoided wearing silly hats for the same kinds of reasons or even acting overly foolish in any context. It's sad, but that's the nature of the business.

But beyond that, lets face it, if you have a public profile, there will be countless pictures taken of you and some of them are going to be bad - really bad.

Much as I dislike Michele Bachmann, Newsweek botched this one. No politician deserves to have a picture appear on the front of a major news magazine that looks like they're auditioning for the part of an extra in a Vincent Price movie.

Tsk, tsk.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

The return of Sarah Palin

By Michael J.W. Stickings

She's back! Or maybe not. But Newsweek certainly treats her like she is, or else why waste the time and space on a long, uncritical, and darn near reverential piece like this one? And it's a cover story, as if there's nothing else in the world more important going on.

I won't quote any of it, nor even recommend it. If you follow U.S. politics at all, and are at all familiar with Palin, you'll know already exactly what's in it. (Palin calls it the "lamestream media." Well, if it's lame, it's because it publishes shit like this. Palin has no reason to complain.)

I would just note that she's still hinting at a presidential run. And Newsweek, standing in for pretty much the entirety of the Beltway media (and there have been many other similarly reverential pieces, including this one at The Atlantic last month), not only lets her get away with it but works to advance her cause.

And what is that cause? Self-glorification. Profiteering. Maximizing her brand.

She's not serious about politics and certainly not serious about a presidential run. But she has to tantalize both her supporters and the media, as well as much of the political establishment, with the prospect of a run in order to keep her name out there, to keep all of us talking about her, to be able to push that egotistical cause as far as possible.

But she's a quitter when it matters. She quit being governor of Alaska and she quit her bus tour, and there's no way she has what it takes, in many ways, to keep going through the long slog of a presidential campaign. And while she continues to tantalize, the also continues to give herself any number of outs, any number of excuses (like the popular one, family, as if she's ever let her family get in the way of her cause).

It's all quite ridiculous. But it seems the media haven't learned a thing.

(And no, Sarah, you can't win. It's as simple as that.)