Evidence Gibson Was Prejudiced Against Palin: Comparison of Palin and Obama Interviews

I compared Charles Gibson’s interview of Palin with his interview of Obama and there is much evidence that Gibson was prejudiced against Palin. He interviewed Obama right after he became the presumptive presidential nominee and he interviewed Palin shortly after she became the vice presidential nominee. So the situation of the interviews is similar. And because the situation of the interviews is similar Gibson’s extreme prejudice against Palin is very obvious.

For example, Gibson asked Obama a lot of questions focused on the positive aspects of Obama being a champion and breaking a glass ceiling for African Americans. Yet he didn’t ask Palin about her potential of breaking the infamous glass ceiling and the benefits that would create for women who are a much larger percentage of the U.S. population than African Americans.

Furthermore, Gibson often questioned Palin’s ability to lead, but he never questioned Obama’s ability to lead. This is outrageous because Palin has more political executive experience than Obama and far more political accomplishments. Another reason why it was prejudiced for Gibson to question Palin’s ability to lead and not Obama’s ability to lead is that Palin is seeking the much less powerful job of VP.

Also Gibson maintained an almost constant sour face when interviewing Palin and his tone of voice seemed to imply that he was disappointed in her. I haven’t watched the entire Obama interview but the part I watched showed Gibson with a pleased expression on his face and the transcript shows that there was frequent laughter during his interview with Obama.

Even the camera angle was designed to be prejudiced against Palin. She is filmed from the side and slightly with her back to the camera. Although there are close ups of her face the long shot shows her back to the camera. It seems filming her with her back to the camera was meant to make her appear less likeable. In contrast, the film crew placed the long shot camera facing Obama so at all times when he is speaking the camera looks him in the face rather than looking at his back.

And Obama was asked much easier questions mostly about feelings about winning, breaking the glass ceiling and 2008 campaign decisions. In contrast, Palin was asked numerous specific policy and military strategy questions that required extensive knowledge about treaties, U.S. anti-terrorism strategy and world history. And Gibson misquoted Palin falsely stating that she said our troops were in an alleged holy war when what she said was that she prayed that we were doing God’s will. The following is a breakdown of the types of questions asked of the nominees:

Obama interview:
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=5000184

How does it feel to break a glass ceiling?
How does it feel to win?
How does your family feel about your “winning” breaking a glass ceiling?
Who will be your VP?
Should you choose Hillary Clinton as VP?
Will you accept public finance?
What issues is your campaign about?
Will you visit Iraq?
Will you debate McCain at a town hall?
What did you think of your competitor’s [Clinton] speech?

Palin interview:
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/11/raw-data-palins-interview-with-abc-news/

Do you have enough qualifications for the job you’re seeking? Specifically have you visited foreign countries and met foreign leaders?
Aren’t you conceited to be seeking this high level job?
Questions about foreign policy
-territorial integrity of Georgia
-allowing Georgia and Ukraine to be members of NATO
-NATO treaty
-Iranian nuclear threat
-what to do if Israel attacks Iran
-Al Qaeda motivations
-the Bush Doctrine
-attacking terrorists harbored by Pakistan
-Is America fighting a holy war? [misquoted Palin]

There’s no doubt the Charles Gibson interviews showed extreme prejudice against Palin and extreme favoritism towards Obama. His manner towards Palin was much more negative. He asked her much more difficult questions and the questions were more adversarial. He constantly questioned her ability to lead but never questioned Obama’s ability to lead, all the more amazing considering that Palin was the only one with executive experience and the presidency is the highest level executive job in politics. The camera angles always focused on Obama’s face when he was talking making him the center of attention yet during Palin’s interview the angle often focused on her back apparently for the purpose of lessening the impact of her presence.

The questions, camera angle, and manner of the interviewer were designed in a way that favored Obama. Because Palin is a historic woman candidate and has been attacked with sexism it is reasonable to believe that ABC News is trying to harm her candidacy due to sexism. Of particular note is that Gibson asked Obama four questions about breaking the AA political glass ceiling but asked Palin zero questions about her breaking the women’s political glass ceiling. ABC’s prejudice against Palin was wrong and is blocking women’s progress towards equality. Palin is brave and strong and she, along with her supporters, will battle sexism and other forms of harmful prejudice in order to improve our world. This is a wake up call for ABC and the sexist news media to help them achieve their potential to be fair to candidates because fairness in the media is essential to a democracy.

The DNC Has Been Blocking Women's Progress

Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential candidacy is the most important feminist event of the United States in 2008 so far. Yet the DNC has been pressuring HRC to end her work to help America by becoming our president. As of this day there is no nominee. The only way to become a nominee before the convention is to get a majority (50% plus 1) of delegates provided that the delegates that make up the majority are all pledged delegates. This is because pledged delegates are bound to vote for their original candidate, while superdelegates can vote for anyone they want and can change their mind as often as they want, thus since the pledged delegate votes are virtually fixed if a candidate can win a majority of the delegate votes from pledged delegates then they are automatically the nominee. None of the Democratic candidates achieved that, therefore there is no nominee yet.

However, Democratic party elites have been trying to push HRC out of the contest for a long time. At the end of the primaries when HRC called for support from superdelegates the male dominated superdelegates overwhelmingly stated they were going to support a male candidate instead of her even though she won the popular vote.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_vote_count.html
http://www.diversityj.com/ElectionResults2008Primary.html
Regretfully for the DNC they did not speak out against the non-stop and often vicious hate speech against women and girls during the primaries.
http://www.allseasonsgallery.info/hrc/hrc.sexism.html
Also, the DNC is allowing HRC's primary competitor, Obama, to supervise the convention. And I read that they are planning to schedule the nomination voting on the third day of the convention after numerous people have already made speeches. How can speakers know what to say in their speeches if they don't even know who the nominee is? I assume the DNC intends to schedule people to make speeches supporting Obama for two days to pressure the superdelegates to vote for him. That is wrong.

Women are the most oppressed minority in the world in terms of numbers and degree of harm. Women have been subjugated by men for thousands of years. Finally, a woman was able to win the popular vote in the U.S. Democratic primary elections yet her political party has been trying to kick her out of the competition. She got more votes than her primary competitor who is a man and yet they are pressuring her to not compete with him at the nomination convention. Women deserve better than this. Women deserve equality.

The ERA is Beneficial for America

The United States government should make women and men equal under the law by includng the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the constitution. The entire amendment consists of the following three sections:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.
http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/

In talking with others about the ERA I'm sometimes told that we don't need the ERA because women already have equal rights under this or that law. For example, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prevents gender discrimination in education. And the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits gender discrimination by certain (not all) employers and grants both sexes access to public facilities.

However, this patchwork of laws does not cover all areas of life. So it is still legal to treat females (and males) unfairly based solely on their gender. Today in the United States females have much less political, economic and social power than males, thus the ERA will greatly help us achieve equality with men. Roberta W. Francis, Education Chair of the ERA Task Force, says...

It is necessary to have specific language in the Constitution affirming the principle of equal rights on the basis of sex because for more than two centuries, women have had to fight long and hard political battles to win rights that men (at first certain white men, eventually all men) possessed automatically because they were male. The first - and still the only - right that the Constitution specifically affirms equally for women and men is the right to vote.
...
...under current court decisions about sex and race discrimination, a white male claiming race discrimination by a program or action is protected by strict scrutiny, but a black female claiming sex discrimination by the same program or action is protected by only skeptical, not strict, scrutiny.
...
...lawmakers and judges must be encouraged to include equitable consideration of female experiences as they deal with issues of Social Security, taxes, wages, pensions, domestic relations, insurance, violence, and more. Without an Equal Rights Amendment providing motivation, the status quo will change much more slowly.
...
We need the ERA because we need a clearer and stricter federal judicial standard for deciding cases of sex discrimination. Lower-court decisions in the various circuits and states (some with state ERA's and some without) still reflect confusion and inconsistency about how to deal with sex discrimination claims. Sex discrimination should get the same judicial scrutiny as race discrimination.
http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/why.htm

Other countries have laws that specifically affirm legal equality of the sexes. The equal rights legislation in those countries is not ideally implemented but they have it. The United States can increase it's human rights reputation if we have a prime law that guarantees that it is illegal to treat a person as inferior because of their gender.