Confusion in the Media Meme

Over at the Belmont Club the other night, Richard Fernandez asked Who is Barack Obama? In the comment section he referenced the reporter in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, who said when truth vies with legend "print the legend." And then Richard Observed:

But there is another, less common meaning to the word “legend.” It refers to a cover story under which a real person travels. It doesn’t necessarily connote espionage, but rather to a collection of plausible or alleged biographical facts which conceal another story.

I offered my own take, reprinted (no doubt for the first time ever) here:

Part of the attraction of Gov. Palin is the counter narrative of her life to Sen. Obama’s legend (in Richard use of the term). Her story is extreme but extremely inside the American tradition and his is extreme but extremely on the margins — as a self exile. He is a man without a “Country” but with a “World” of his own.

What I find troubling about O is he don’t have “normal” friends to add ballast for all his past weird associations. In fact, he don’t even have weird associates who are weird in a different way, to sort of cancel each other out. They are all weird in the same stinking way. Even Dude in The Big Lebowski had associates who were weird in a variety of ways, not the same stinking way. OK, I’m referencing movies. Time to go to bed.

It was late. But it does seem to be working out that way. Her story (and her family story) is stepping all over Sen. Obama's story -- or self spun legend -- almost to the point that he is now running against her. Is she as qualified to be President as he is? Or, put another way, is he as qualified as she is? Or put the Drudge way, "I've got more experience than her." On Anderson Cooper 360 the Senator said:

“My understanding is that Gov. Palin’s town, Wassilla, has I think 50 employees. We've got 2500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe 12 million dollars a year – we have a budget of about three times that just for the month,” Obama responded.

So if the Presidential campaign were only three months longer, she'd be qualified by the end of it.

But then she did negotiate a multi-billion dollar natural gas pipeline deal with Cananda and renegotiated the royalty deal with the Oil Companies on the North Slope. She cut the budget in Alaska. He helped it grow, big time, in DC.

I think the media needs to tear down her authentic legend and polish up the spun-up legend of Senator Obama. It is "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" time.