They're not that stupid.

Campbell Brown is whining more as a reporter that is not given access than as an "outraged feminist".

Sarah Palin's not being shielded from the press because she's a woman. She's being shielded from the press because she's ignorant and unqualified and the McCain campaign knows it, as evidenced by the fact that the narrative they've attempted to create for her is riddled with demonstrable falsehoods. An equally unready man who somehow made it on to the ticket would be shielded from scrutiny as well. This is just not about sexism and it doesn't help the cause to hurl charges like this around. By pretending the campaign is chauvinistically turning "smart," "tough" Sarah Palin into a weak little female who needs to be protected from the big bad press corps, self-proclaimed feminist Brown is reinforcing the notion that Palin is a credible choice for vice president and that the McCain campaign is overreacting to the peril attached to an unfiltered Sarah Palin. From what we've seen, they're not overreacting; she's not credible and the best they can hope for is to fool as many people as possible by keeping as tight a leash on her as possible for as long as possible.

Ezra,

Do you think this shielding is simply a ploy by the McCain campaign to lower all of our expectations so much that she'll "WOW" everyone at the debate? I can easily see the MSM falling for this, and it seems like we're all taking the bait as well.

I'm not sure it's a smart strategy, but given how late we are in the process, a lot of cooing by the MSM about how well Palin does in the debate - and I expect her to do well - could be just what the slimy McCain Palin campaign is lobbying for.

I just wrote about this myself at http://reignoferror.blogspot.com/2008/09/free-sarah-palin.html but your thoughts are extremely welcome here.

Gee, I always thought that Campbell Brown (married to former Bush spokesguy Dan Senor) was in the tank for McCain.

Do you think this shielding is simply a ploy by the McCain campaign to lower all of our expectations so much that she'll "WOW" everyone at the debate?

Only if you think giving completely substance free and linguistically incoherent answers to soft-ball interview questions is also part of the act. She does the deer in the headlights thing as well as anyone I've ever seen. If that's an act, she's a fucking Oscar winner, and the Democrats are screwed.

That was awesome.

I have to give Brown some credit here. McCain, or rather his campaign, chose Palin to garner some support among women voters that the GOP could never have earned on the issues. (Yes, they think that their supporters are stupid.) Brown's gambit here makes their faux-feminist charade harder to pull off.

This is right:

Sarah Palin's not being shielded from the press because she's a woman. She's being shielded from the press because she's ignorant and unqualified and the McCain campaign knows it...

But this is wrong:

This is just not about sexism and it doesn't help the cause to hurl charges like this around.

It is about sexism, actually. Nominating an ignorant, unqualified woman like Sarah Palin in the cynical hope of winning disgruntled Democratic women is egregiously sexist; it reveals a deeply contemptuous view of women as voters, and it's thoroughly demeaning to all of the better-informed, better-qualified women (yes, even in the Republican party) he could have picked instead.

Tom Hilton said it better than I did.

If you want to argue that nominating Sarah Palin was a sexist ploy, I'm not going to debate that, although I suspect she was always intended as much if not more of a play to the base than to women. But I would still argue that the act in question here, that of shielding her from the press is, in and of itself, not particularly sexist. If McCain had nominated a man that was similarly unqualified yet had a certain charisma and ideological purity that he was persuaded would be electorally useful, his campaign would probably be hiding him from the media as well.

Tom, I second that.
You just described what I've been thinking since that fateful Friday morning announcement.

But I would still argue that the act in question here, that of shielding her from the press is, in and of itself, not particularly sexist.

But it doesn't matter, because either one thing or the other is clearly sexist. If she's really as smart and tough and qualified as the McCain campaign claims she is, then it's sexist to 'protect' her from the press--that's Campbell Brown's point. If she isn't, if she's really as ignorant and unprepared as she appears to be, then it was sexist to pick her in the first place. It doesn't matter which particular act of sexism they're guilty of; it's enough to know, as we do, that the McCain campaign is deeply sexist.

And just to be clear, there is enough documentation of John McCain's misogyny that I'm not going out on much of a limb when I interpret specific acts as displaying sexism. Set aside the horrifying Fiji vacation e-mail (which seems credible to me, but isn't very well sourced); from "how do we beat the bitch" to 'joking' about Chelsea Clinton to calling his wife a cunt to truly disgusting 'jokes' about rape, McCain has given us ample opportunity to know what he's really like. It's clear to me that picking someone as poorly qualified as Sarah Palin demonstrates his real view of what (little) women are capable of.

If only Brown hadn't already destroyed any meager credibility she had during the primary this would be laudable; now, it's just laughable.

Campbell Brown and Gloria Steinem, the originator of "like a fish needs a bicycle" are two of the stupidest women you could find. No man could be in public life and say things or behave as dumb as these two.

I'd still do Campbell Brown in a heartbeat.

I dunno. Palin has been doing a better job than McCain, pretty much everywhere she goes.

I like Palin a whole lot more than I like McCain. Especially now. If McCain is trying to hide Palin, it's because he doesn't like being overshadowed, out-performed, or occasionally contradicted with better policy from the VP pick than from him.

Sarah Palin rocks. McCain's the one they need to be hiding from the press.

Palin's good at reading a speech that someone else hands her, as she should be, given her background in broadcasting. Her interviews have been pretty spotty. Even the Hannity one. Other than that, what is she doing? Smiling and waving at cameras? She's got more energy and charisma than McCain, sure, but McCain has to do all the heavy lifting for that campaign. Palin's not having to do six morning shows in one day in response to a breaking news situation. Obama can at least send Biden out to talk to people without having to schedule cram sessions in advance.