In March, Palin said Sen. Hillary Clinton was whining in her presidential campaign related to her accusations of sexist media coverage of her. Palin said she thought Clinton got more criticism than other politicians but said Clinton and her supporters should accept that as reality and not complain or bring attention to it. Doing otherwise, she said, “doesn’t do us any good – women in politics, women in general wanting to progress this country.”

Here are excerpts of what she said:

I think fair or unfair, and I do think it is a more concentrated criticism that Hillary gets on so many fronts… But fair or unfair, I think she does herself a disservice to even mention it really. I mean, you gotta plow through that. You have to know what you’re getting into… When I hear a statement like that coming from a woman candidate with any kind of perceived whine about the excess criticism or maybe a sharper microscope put on her, I think, man, that doesn’t do us any good – women in politics, women in general wanting to progress this country. Again, fair or unfair, it is there. I think that’s reality. And I think it’s a given. I think people can just accept that she is going to be under that sharper microscope. So be it. Work harder. Prove yourself to an even greater degree – that you’re capable, that you’re going to be the best candidate…

View the video here:

In her speech after she was announced as the nominee for Vice-President, Palin appeared to change her mind and said she needed to honor “Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and, of course, Sen. Hillary Clinton, who showed such determination and grace in her presidential campaign.”

Then six days after she was picked and the media had uncovered misleading statements and other problems in Palin’s record, the McCain-Palin campaign did on a mass level what Palin criticized Clinton’s campaign for doing on a small level.

It started with McCain’s senior campaign strategist Steven Schmidt decrying stories that McCain’s had not properly vetted Palin. Reporters discovered that McCain’s vetting official had not met with Palin until 2 days before she was picked, that McCain’s vetting team arrived in Alaska less than a day before she was picked and that McCain had only met Palin once and talked to her on the phone one other time.

Schmidt said the story was manufactured by men in the media in order to prevent a woman from becoming vice-president:

“This vetting controversy is a faux media scandal designed to destroy the first female Republican nominee for vice-president of the United States who has never been a part of the old boys’ network that has come to dominate the news establishment in this country.”

From there, the McCain-Palin campaign deployed dozens of women and men to TV outlets and press conferences to level the sexism accusations.

Fox News:

An A-list of women in politics backing John McCain went on the offensive Wednesday, accusing the media and the Obama campaign of blatant sexism in their treatment of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a move intended to clear the brush ahead of her public debut at the Republican National Convention.

McCain’s running mate, who greeted the Arizona senator as he arrived in St. Paul, is scheduled to headline the convention Wednesday night.

It will be a chance for her to address, or simply ignore, reports surrounding her unmarried teenage daughter’s pregnancy, ethical questions regarding her actions as Alaska’s governor and a swirl of blog and tabloid allegations.

Five conservative women censured the media Wednesday at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, saying they were outraged and insulted by Palin’s treatment and comparing it to the way Hillary Clinton was treated during the Democratic primary.

“The Republican Party will not stand by while Sarah Palin is subjected to sexist attacks,” said top McCain adviser Carly Fiorina, defending Palin as qualified and declaring women would not “stand for it” when she is subjected to such attacks. “As women, I think all of us are sensitized and outraged when we see sexist treatment.”

...

Fiorina backed off a bit when asked which allegations specifically were sexist.

She said the allegation that Palin’s husband belonged to a fringe group and a report that suggested she was a Nazi sympathizer for wearing a Pat Buchanan button were “problematic” — not necessarily sexist.

...

The campaign is sending out surrogates to defend her on TV, holding press conferences to do the same and just released a new ad touting her experience while diminishing Obama’s.

The Associated Press:

John McCain’s campaign could be panicking or politicking with its claim that sexism lies beneath any questions about Sarah Palin’s past.

They say they’re not panicked — that the Alaska governor’s spot on the GOP ticket is secure — so that leaves room for just one conclusion for now: McCain’s political team is playing the gender card to appeal to women, and bashing the media to solidify support among conservatives.

Hours before Palin’s high-stakes address to the nation, McCain was trying to inoculate his untested and embattled running mate against criticism.

“This is part of a very clever strategy to lead the Democrats into a trap that will end up with them dumping on Gov. Palin and paying a heavy price,” said GOP consultant Rich Galen.

The chorus began at dawn Wednesday when senior adviser Steve Schmidt released a statement declaring that the campaign would no longer answer questions about its background check of Palin…

Palin is seeking to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. The media views its job as scrutinizing her background, helping voters determine her readiness to serve and raising questions about the decision-making process of the man who chose her — a man, John McCain, who tells voters he has the experience and judgment to serve as president.

...

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani toted his feminist talking points around to no fewer than five morning TV interviews.

“The scrutiny you are giving her is so darn unfair. It is really indecent,” he told MSNBC’s morning crew. “She is being asked questions like, can you, as a mother … be vice president? Whoever asked a man?”

And so he went, from one TV camera to the next.

CBS: “Where are the feminists?”

ABC: “Give the woman a chance …”

Fox News: “I’m at the point of (being) really angry.”

And that’s the point. McCain wants conservative voters, many of whom were lukewarm toward his candidacy, whipped into high dudgeon in defense of Palin, angry at the media and the unnamed liberal elites who are denounced by most every convention speaker.

Washington Post:

Blackburn, by contrast, gave a wonkish account of what Palin had done as governor, saying she had overseen “twenty-four thousand employees and a ten billion dollar budget. How many men who put their name on the line to run for office have done that?” (In fact, nearly every current or former governor who has run for president in the modern era — such as Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee — has overseen operations of that size or much larger.)

Palin’s allies were less pleased with the questions they got from the assembled crowd, though they continued to defend their candidate. When asked whether it was sexist for both Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and McCain campaign manager Rick Davis to suggest Palin would be able to handle foreign policy matters by leaning heavily on McCain’s staff, Republican National Committee Victory 2008 chair Carly Fiorina did not answer the question. Instead, she continued to decry the attacks against the governor and questioned why Obama hasn’t been questioned more about how he “has relied heavily on his campaign staff for foreign policy advice.”

When Fiorina was asked if she would have chosen a successor at Hewlett-Packard who had run a company just a tenth of the size of H-P, the former CEO replied that her successor had run a smaller company before taking the helm of the high-tech giant, adding, “The size of the company, just like the size of the state, is less important than the nature of the decisions that need to be made.”

And while the women at the press conference mentioned Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) plenty of times — “Women of every political party owe a debt of gratitude to Hillary Clinton,” Fiorina said — Blackburn made no apologies for the fact that she did not defend the former Democratic presidential candidate from sexist attacks during the primary campaign.

“Had we been more vocal, you all would have chosen not to report it,” she said.

CBS News:

Over the last five days, you may have noticed that Sarah Palin’s record has been subjected to some scrutiny. The only obviously sexist remarks I’ve noticed have come from leading far-right personalities, including Pat Buchanan calling Palin “hot,” and Rush Limbaugh touting her as a “babe.”

But yesterday was the first day Republicans began a coordinated effort to push back against the criticism, arguing, rather shamelessly, that anyone who questions Palin’s qualifications for national office is necessarily engaging in sexism. Carly Fiornia got the ball rolling, telling reporters:

“Because of Hillary Clinton’s historic run for the Presidency and the treatment she received, American women are more highly tuned than ever to recognize and decry sexism in all its forms. They will not tolerate sexist treatment of Governor Palin.”

She didn’t cite any examples. Simultaneously, McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer blasted Palin-related criticism as “chauvinism,” a point that Lindsey Graham was all too happy to echo.

... if you question the credibility and qualifications of a woman candidate, you must be some kind of misogynist. One assumes that if Democrats had taken a similar attitude — any and all criticism of Barack Obama necessarily constitutes racism — the reaction would have been apoplectic.

With a tiny political record loaded with problems, yet charismatic and great at speech-giving, Palin has avoided speaking to reporters for 7 days straight. Biden, McCain, and Obama have undergone extensive questioning from members of the media, yet Palin has avoided it completely. McCain’s spokesperson used Republican attacks against the media as an excuse for why Palin avoided the press.

ABC News:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was named to the Republican ticket one week ago, and she has yet to answer questions from reporters.

Yes, some of the comments from the punditocracy about her have been untoward, even sexist, but given the importance of the job she accepted Wednesday night in her nomination speech, it’s entirely reasonable for voters to expect Palin to answer questions from journalists about her positions and her record.

If Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., or Joe Biden, D-Del., refused to answer questions from the press, the RNC and the McCain campaign would never stop carping about it — and rightly so.

In fact, they have done so in the past when Obama has gone several days without talking to the media.

So what are we to expect from Gov. Palin?

Time magazine’s Jay Carney tried to get McCain spox Nicolle Wallace to answer this question the other night.

Carney: We know now that Sarah Palin can give one hell of a speech, she’s a natural, and that’s no mean feat. We don’t know yet, and we won’t know until you guys allow her to take questions, you know, can she answer tough questions about domestic policy, foreign policy -

Wallace: Wait, wait. Questions from who? From him, from you? Who cares? No offense, but -

Carney: I think the American people care -

Wallace: I think the American people want to see her, but who cares if she can talk to Time Magazine? She can talk to the American people. They want to see “How am I going to save my home?”

Carney: The American people need to know, just like they need to know about Joe Biden and Barack Obama -

Wallace: That she can talk to you?

Carney: Not just to me — that she knows things about domestic and foreign policy that presidents and vice presidents need to know.

Wallace: Right. But, but here’s the thing… the media did something to this family that I’ve never seen before. In my life. And I think she took the stage last night and, you know, she made her own points. She put this discussion and this race and this convention in her own terms. And she didn’t do it by talking, all due respect, to people like you. She took the stage and talked to the American people about things they care about, how they’re going to save their homes.

Watch the video here:

Note: In her speech, Palin did not talk to the American people about how they’re going to save their homes.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a McCain advisor, told the Washington Post Sept. 2nd he wouldn’t want to live in a country where the press was not given regular access to ask questions of candidates:

“We’re asking the American people to pick the next president and vice president, and we do not expect the American people to do so — ‘Trust me’ — blindly,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) told us yesterday. “She will have to do what’s expected of people in this business. . . . In countries where that does not happen, I do not want to live.”

Sept. 5th on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, campaign strategist Rick Davis said Palin would only talk to the press when it’s “in our best interest”:

SCARBOROUGH: Yesterday Nicolle Wallace suggested that she was sitting right there and told Jay Carney of Time magazine ‘Sarah Palin doesn’t have to talk to you, she doesn’t’ have to talk to the press.’ ... Can we expect Sarah Palin on Meet the Press and other one on one interviews throughout the course of this campaign?

DAVIS: We’re going to do whatever we think is the best to win. We have 60 days left and if we think it’s a good idea to go out there and do those shows, we’ll do them.

SCARBOROUGH: Can you avoid it? Meet the Press?

DAVIS: We can afford anything we want to do. ... We’re going to do what we think is in our best interest. If that means access to the press, we’ll give it to you.

View the video:

Davis said Biden didn’t speak to the media the first week after he was nominated, but Biden and Obama did an interview with 60 Minutes during the Democratic convention. Watch it here.

Davis said there were no strings attached on media access, yet these recent events contradict that.

McCain cancelled an appearance on CNN’s Larry King because a reporter the previous day asked McCain spokesperson for an example of any decision Palin made as commander-in-chief of the Alaska national guard:

The Wall Street Journal reported May 15th that after Newsweek published a cover story examining the hardball tactics conservatives might use in the general election, McCains strategist “fired off a three-page email to the editor of Newsweek slamming the newsmagazine for what he said was a “biased” cover story” and “threatened to throw the magazine’s reporters off the campaign bus and airplane.”

Also, McCain senior aide Mark Salter told reporters that “only the good reporters” would get access to interviews on McCain’s campaign plan. “You’ll have to earn it,” he said.

The Associated Press reported:

Sarah Palin met her first world leaders Tuesday. It was a tightly controlled crash course on foreign policy for the Republican vice presidential candidate, the mayor-turned-governor who has been outside North America just once.

....

John McCain’s presidential campaign has shielded the first-term Alaska governor for weeks from spontaneous questions from voters and reporters, and went to striking lengths Tuesday to maintain that distance as Palin made her diplomatic debut.

The GOP campaign, applying more restrictive rules on access than even President Bush uses in the White House, banned reporters from the start of the meetings, so as not to risk a question being asked of Palin.

McCain aides relented after news organizations objected and CNN, which was supplying TV footage to a variety of networks, decided to pull its TV crew from Palin’s meeting with (Afghan President) Karzai.

....

Before Palin’s first meeting of the day, with Karzai, campaign aides had told reporters in the press pool that followed her they could not go into meetings where photographers and a video camera crew would be let in for pictures.

Bush and members of Congress routinely allow reporters to attend photo opportunities along with photographers, and the reporters sometimes are able to ask questions at the beginning of private meetings before they are ushered out.

At least two news organizations, including AP, objected to the exclusion of reporters and were told that the decision to have a “photo spray” only was not subject to discussion. After aides backed away from that, campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said the reporter ban was a “miscommunication.”

Politico has more on the Wall Street Journal reporter and CNN producer who were initially not allowed in the room with Palin and Karzi:

The reporter, Elizabeth Holmes, and producer, Peter Hamby, were to have represented all the print reporters and television producers, respectively, following Palin’s campaign and their written summaries of the so-called “pool sprays” would be fed to other journalists following Palin.

The campaign eventually reversed its decision to limit the pool, but only after CNN threatened to withhold its camera crew from filming the pool sprays, during which journalists can snap photos and film footage and – if they’re lucky – shout a question or two.

The campaign’s original reasoning in barring Holmes and Hamby had been that Palin wasn’t going to take questions or make any statements at the sprays, so they were only appropriate for photographers and cameramen.

Here is Hamby’s pool report from the Karzai meeting:

....

Palin, her legs crossed and at one point patting her heart, was leaning in eagerly and smiling. Karzai, wearing his traditional clothes but without his trademark karakul hat, was also grinning while discussing the child. His remarks were unintelligible as the noise from the clicking cameras drowned them out.

This was the only exchange that was heard:

“What is his name?,” Palin asked. bq. “Mirwais,” Karzai responded. “Mirwais, which means, ‘The Light of the House.’” bq. “Oh nice,” Palin responded. bq. “He is the only one we have,” remarked Karzai.

At this point, the pool was hustled out the room and down to the hotel lobby. Pool was in the room for a grand total of 29 seconds.