You really don’t think she’ll be a fair moderator? And the book is about the changing political landscape when it comes to young, african-amerian politicians.
You may want to cash in what’s left of your 401k and go buy a clue, Michelle.

Didn’t both sides agree to this well in advance. Unless the McCain campaign cynically agreed to it, fully expecting to be able to make political hay of it after the debate. Aren’t there real issues?

Oh, look. Another day, another post where Michele just regurgitates whatever idiocy Michelle Malkin is spewing out today.
Seriously, Michele, do you have a single independent thought in your head, or do you just mindlessly parrot whatever some wingnut blogger says without any critical thinking skills on your part? Most of the time, it’s hard to tell.

I wonder if Steven Waldman ever reads this blog. He seems to be someone with high standards for his site and it seems hard to believe he is happy with what he sees posted her by the blogger.

And within 3 comments, some choose to attack the blogger, rather then the subject.
We all have biases. Some of us have jobs that require us to confront those biases and to not let those biases interfere with our jobs.
No. Ifill is not unbiased. Nobody is. What remains to be seen is whether or not she will allow her bias to affect the way she moderates this debate.
Some moderators will admit their bias and bend over backward to be fair. The places I moderate – the most sure way to get a “pass” is to disagree with me because I don’t want to be biased…I go the other way.
The best way to be fair is to face your bias – and embrace it if you believe it’s a good bias. Face it and deal with it so that (if you have the responsibility of being fair) you can take steps toward unbiased behavior.
We shall see if Ifill does that.

But Ifill is not an unknown commodity. She has a reputation as being excrutiatingly fair, but always interesting. That’s what makes Michell’s claptrap, well, claptrap.

As I said, we shall see.
I’m not particularly concerned…if she comes off as biased toward the Democrats, there is a possibility (or maybe even probability) that Independents will react and fall toward the Republican side.
We, in the United States, the common people, like to see things “fair”. And when things are blatantly unfair, we tend to react. If Ifill knows this, she will be fair.
We shall see.

And within 3 comments, some choose to attack the blogger, rather then the subject.
That’s because the subject is stupid, and the blogger is just being a mindless sheep, bleating out whatever talking points a different far-right wing blogger spits out. This is not the first time Michele’s posts have consisted of little more than her just pointing at something that someone else said along with her version of “Me too!”.
Gwen Ifill has spent years over at PBS and in journalism building a reputation that is fair and pragmatic. And the McCain campaign certainly didn’t object to her being named moderator of this debate when she was first announced months ago. It’s only now that she’s got a book coming out that some on the right are suddenly trying to find a reason to object to her role in this debate.
Let’s call it for what it is: this is just the right wing’s way of trying to make excuses for Sarah Palin before the VP debate. If you cast doubt about the moderator beforehand, then the sheep will overlook any mistakes that are made by assuming that they were made because the moderator was biased or the format was faulty instead of Palin making her own mistakes. This is purely about managing expectations for the debate and not about Gwen Ifill at all.

Gwen Ifill is a responsible, thoughtful journalist. All this baloney about her being a partisan is just the McCain campaign’s transparent attempt to position itself to cast blame elsewhere (the one thing they seem to be really good at) if Palin has a mediocre or worse-than performance.
My guess is that she’ll be so vague and incoherent neither Biden nor Ifill nor the public will be able to tell whether she’s actually responded to a given question or not. But she’ll repeat the code phrases that have been drilled into her head, much as she did in the Couric interview, and the people who were going to vote for her anyway will have a Pavlovian response (drool, drool) while the rest of us will scratch our heads, turn to each other and ask “what the hell did she just SAY, anyway?”
Doesn’t matter one way or another. Obama is up in North Carolina, college kids camped out all night in the rain to be the first to vote early for him in Ohio, Intrade predicts Obama will end up with 338 electoral votes to McCain’s 200. Even Diebold and the rest of the Repugnican thieves and voter intimidation agents won’t be able to steal this one.
Anything V-P Barbie (“Brain sold separately!”) says or does is now of entertainment value only. Thanks to her handlers assiduously keeping her away from the press, her image was formed not by her but by a talented comedienne who merely has to repeat Palin’s own statements verbatim to provoke incredulous laughter. Her supporters don’t seem to have caught on. Palin isn’t merely the object of jokes: she has BECOME a national joke. As such, her status and her image is now permanent, as impossible for her to shake as “potatoe” was for the hapless Dan Quayle, who next to Palin looks like an intellectual giant.

It is unfortunate that all you have to throw out are personal insults.

And it’s unfortunate that you don’t want to state the obvious: that this whole subject is nothing more than managing the expectations for the VP debate.
If Palin falters at all, or says something that’s grossly misinformed or flat out wrong, the right wing now has their convenient excuse in place. The moderator, who no one objected to for months, is suddenly at fault and biased because of a book she’s got coming out. That’s all this is about. It’s not about Gwen Ifill or her obvious fairness and pragmatism as a journalist. It’s just a handy excuse to throw around if Palin steps in it during her debate on Thursday.

Also, it’s worth noting that Gwen Ifill’s book was public knowledge BEFORE she was named the moderator of the VP debate, yet the McCain campaign didn’t complain at all. This article is from July 23rd and mentions Ifill and her book by name:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/23/smiley-faces-blog-anger/
And Ifill wasn’t named the moderator of the debate until August 6th, which was almost two weeks later.
So either the McCain campaign is incompetent and didn’t know about her book at the time, or they’re just putting their potential spin and excuses in place now should Palin falter. My vote says this is all just an excuse because McCain made a terrible choice for his VP and he needs as much damage control as possible.

And it’s unfortunate that you don’t want to state the obvious: that this whole subject is nothing more than managing the expectations for the VP debate.
Most (even liberals) have noted that all Palin has to do is show up and not drool. How much management does there need to be?
As I said (and there really isn’t any need for personal insults), we shall see.

How much management does there need to be?
Ask the McCain campaign. Apparently, they have to add the charge that the moderator is biased to their handy checklist of excuses if Palin falters.

two thoughts: (1) the title of a book and the date of publication are chosen by the publisher, not the author; and (2) there is nothing known about the book yet to suggest any pro-Obama bias.
Further, for no one to be writing about the historical ‘breakthrough’ of a black candidate for the Presidency would be far more distressing to me than the fact that so far only one has chosen to do so.
Gwen Ifill has a solid reputation of being an excellent journalist who does not play favorites.
Sure wish people would form their opinions once the facts are in rather than before. But then, so many people today confuse ‘opinions’ (which are necessarily based in fact) with ‘beliefs’ which necessarily are absent fact.

Ask the McCain campaign. Apparently, they have to add the charge;-i:
umm…yeah.

the title of a book and the date of publication are chosen by the publisher, not the author
On the other hand, if (on inauguration day) President McCain is being sworn in, a book title that includes “Age of Obama” may be a non-starter.
there is nothing known about the book yet to suggest any pro-Obama bias
The Amazon preview describes Ifill’s treatment of “this pivotal moment”…which will be decidedly less “pivotal” if Obama loses.

umm…yeah.
So McCain did the right thing. Good for him.
Let’s see if the obedient little sheep on the right like Michelle Malkin and the writer of this blog follow suit, or if they insist on keeping this pathetic line of attack up and going when Palin falters during the debate.

Minnie, perhaps many conservatives don’t live and breathe the “talking points”.
Perhaps those who blame McCain’s campaign (yelladawg) might reconsider casting blame before considering the facts.
Perhaps there really is a bias, but that bias will be under control. (certainly my opinion is that there is a bias, but Ifill is a professional and knows that if the bias shows there will be an unpleasant backlash. It is in the best interest of Obama that her behavior be unbiased.)
obedient little sheep on the right…pathetic line of attack
It is unfortunate that your own line of attack involves personal insults.

“It is unfortunate that all you have to throw out are personal insults.”
and anyone who has followed ifill’s career and can still think that she can’t do the moderation professionally is, well… insulting. it’s an insult to ifill and an insult to the public that do know her. she’s a very well respected journalist.
if you don’t know her professionalism then to assume that because she wrote a book about obama (and it should be noted that the book is about many successful african-americans) somehow taints her ability to be fair, or to accuse her of having a “vested interest” in the debate is puerile.
i think that minnie hit the bullseye here. if palin crashes and burns in the debate, the mccain campaign and all the right wing mouth pieces and their dedicated dittoheads will slam ifill for “being in the tank for obama” or as part of the “liberal media elite”, just as michele has done. because in their minds, it can’t be that messiah palin is not qualified and not prepared, or that mccain made a big mistake by picking her, or that she just plain sucks. she can’t answer simple straight forward questions that apply to the job that she wants so desperately to have and somehow that’s the media’s fault. well excuse them for doing their jobs.

It is unfortunate that your own line of attack involves personal insults.
And it is unfortunate that this sort of condescension seems to be your only reaction to anything.
Conservatives have spent decades demonizing liberals, turning them into walking, breathing incarnations of the worst things imaginable, and there’s never a peep of complaint from people on the right that maybe things are getting heated and out of hand. But the second anyone to the left of Attila the Hun points out the idiocy of a conservative, it’s “unfortunate” that there’s a personal attack? What rock have you lived under? The right wing says and does worse with regard to the left all the time.
Calling a spade a spade here isn’t unfortunate. It’s necessary.

And it is unfortunate that this sort of condescension seems to be your only reaction to anything.
Me, personally? Like all of the comments I’ve made regarding the actual issues, but not personalities – particularly commenters on this blog? Like asking GAT to lay off the name-calling…like that?
Even yelladawg asked a few days ago for everybody to lay off the name-calling.
I’m not going to play that game. But you go ahead.

I haven’t been reading this blog nearly as closely as I once did, because the content and comment I do read seem really predictable. Granted, I may have missed those brilliant insights on days I just don’t take the time to read here anymore. But, MzEllen, I find myself agreeing with you. Gwyn Ifill probably is biased, and probably won’t let it show in the least little way. You’re right, she helps Obama by cleaving to the fair and balanced approach just as much as she can. I think Biden is the wild card in this debate.

Ifill has responded by saying that only one chapter will involve Obama .. and that that chapter has not yet been written. Obama is not the focus of her book, and this is a pretty pathetic attempt to claim ‘victim’ status once again on the right.