When Howard Kurtz was at WaPo, I wasn’t a big fan.
I took Kurtz to task for being As Deep Inside The Beltway As It Gets for his slobbering love note to Chuckie T., notwithstanding that Kurtz did blow the whistle — after the game was over — on the Obamamania in the media during the 2008 election.
But I’ve made the observation before that Kurtz, who now writes at The Daily Beast,
“seems to me to be much more relaxed in his writing and worth reading since he left WaPo.”
Kurtz’s post today about Sarah Palin confirms my impressions, Palin’s 2012 Media Game. Kurtz gives a pretty fair assessment of how Palin manages to get her message out unfiltered, and how Palin could turn her perceived faults into campaign strengths:
As Palin writes in a broad-brush passage in her book: “Most of those who write for the mainstream media and teach at universities and law schools don’t share the religious faith of their fellow Americans. They seem to regard people who believe in God and regularly attend their church or synagogue as alien beings, people who are ‘largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command,’ as The Washington Post once famously put it.” (That was in a 1993 article that produced a much-needed apology.)
Why keep picking at this scab? There is a method to this madness, as her conservative base loathes the media and cheers every punch she throws….
That message, naturally, rankles the journalistic elite, which nonetheless serves as a megaphone for Palin’s musings.
Is this the new, free-range Howard Kurtz?
Or is it my perception which has changed, now that Kurtz no longer writes from inside the mainstream media cage?
Update: Don Surber likes the new Kurtz, sorta, too: “Howard Kurtz is a smart man. He knows why she is avoiding the press; for the same reason I avoid rattlesnakes.”
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