The media feeding frenzy over 24,000 emails pertaining to Sarah Palin's governorship in Alaska is already redounding to her benefit, while further eroding the vestiges of credibility once enjoyed by the shrunken giants of American journalism, including but not limited to the New York Times, Washington Post, and CBS News. The mere fact that Mrs. Palin is a private citizen, and candidate for no office, has not prevented these once influential outlets from devoting substantial time and effort to minutely examining every document for something -- anything! -- to use as a gotcha. The extreme hostility is transparent to all.

The fact that the Times and Post both begged their readers for help in going through to documents says much about the essentially tribal nature of their audiences. The goal of both publications now is obviously the advancement of a political agenda, not the publication of significant news.

The contrast with the studied disinterest in the many lacunae in the documentation of Barack Obama's political career could not be more blatant. Stanley Kurtz, scholar and journalist, spent much time studying archives in Illinois to paint a picture of Obama's early career, but the former state senator made sure to destroy his own files from his service in Springfield (unlike other contemporary Illinois state senators, whose archives Kurtz was able to examine). Not only did mainstream media outlets decline to make an issue of Obama destroying his paper trail, they did not report what Kurtz was able to find.

Then there are the media organs who actively obstruct public access to important evidence of Obama's history:

Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit recalls the Los Angeles Times refusing to make public videotape in its possession of Obama speaking at a dinner honoring radical Palestinian Jew-hater Khalid Rashidi (tape which potentially could have alienated many Jewish Obama supporters and donors in 2008, and in 2012).  

John Romano of Yes But However documents CBS's refusal to make public the entire hot mic recordings of Obama talking to donors, but only tidbits which were quite embarrassing, leaving the public in the dark about what was too hot to release:

Last week Mark Knoller of CBS broke a seemingly big story.  He released partial audio of President Obama talking to donors on a mic that was inadvertently "hot".  The tidbits CBS released were great.  Chief among them was Mr. Obama calling some Federal employees "slugs" and his taking a much nastier tone with the GOP than he does in front of the cameras.  The most famous,  Obama asking his donors if the GOP thinks "we're stupid", was choice.

However, CBS has not released the entire tape to the public or other media outlets.  After several tweets by Yes, But, However! to  Mr. Knoller as to why the full tape hasn't been made public, he responded: "My editors decided against it."   Mr. Knoller offered to further explanation.

As the nation hurtles toward the 2012 election, inevitably a referendum on Obama's term in office, with the public deeply disappointed in the change already brought to fruition in the "fundamental transformation" of our country promised by the president, the  media once again displays its double standards. More specifically, where Sarah Palin is involved, the public now can see with clarity that the mission of the legacy media is search and destroy.

Many claim that Sarah Palin is "damaged goods," that her "brand" has been irretrievably tarnished, and that she would be hopeless as a presidential nominee, should she decide to enter the race.

But the very media outlets that mocked her, and convinced the public that she is stupid, are themselves looking stupid. More to the point, the look like bullies. They also look very disappointed that they haven't been able to come up with much. Look at this CNN report, for instance.

It seems incongruous to put Bill Clinton in the same sentence as Sarah Palin, but the political jujitsu the former president accomplished when struggling with the damning evidence of Oval Office misconduct and perjury in its cover-up has a lesson. The American public loves underdogs and despises bullies.  Polls asking the public about various occupations inevitably find that politicians and media rank near the bottom in terms of credibility and likability. President Clinton and his attack dogs recognized that the impeachment-minded GOP House could be demonized, in effect spray painting him with Teflon^® against their attack.

One can at least wonder if something of the same process might be at work with Mrs. Palin.  She has demonstrated time and again an ability to confound her haters with unorthodox tactics, turning their fury back against them.  The feeding frenzy in Juneau offers her another opportunity to turn the tables on those who seek to destroy her.