Just a reminder to those watching ABC’s Gibson interview of Palin, that Gibson was almost laughed off the stage at the ABC Facebook debate among Democrats for announcing that middleclass income could be defined as a family of two college professors [that’s funny too] who - teaching together at St. Anselm, earn $200,000 per year [lots of laughs]
Media Matters should get lots of kudos for citing the Census bureau to immediately correct Gibson at the time:
Portions of that Census corrective and transcript from Media Matter are below the jump. MM also posted a large excerpt of the transcript. I urge readers to at least review the entire MM excerpt – its analysis is superb -at
http://mediamatters.org/...
The audience at St. Anselm wasn't the only group laughing at Gibson's skewed view that $200 thousand per year, rather than about $65 thousand per year - constituted a "middle class" family income. Media matters went directly to the Census bureau - which no one on stage managed to do:
[C]ontrary to Gibson's suggestion that $200,000 is a typical, middle class household income in the United States, the U.S. Census Bureau's data for 2006 -- the most recent year available -- place the median household income at $48,451, and the mean household income at $65,527. According to the Census data, only 3.4 percent of U.S. households have an income of $200,000 or more
http://mediamatters.org/...
Reading that transcript and seeing how Gibson tried to frame his question about tax cuts will help give a pre-interview context to inform any review of what will likely be a highly sycophantic set of questions - and why. It will not be capitulation to the 'deference' issue - but because Gibson just doesn't get it - and the McCain campaign loves the fact that Gibson is one of them.
[Of note to couch psychologists: the question was explicitly directed at Edwards, however Clinton immediately jumped in, and answered the issue – and very well – before Edwards began speaking. Edward’s answer was mostly about the urgent topic of jobs and the homeless, which, because it did not speak directly to the tax cut inquiry, was excised from this diary. Obama attempted - unsuccessfully - to interpose a word or two.]
ABC News: January 5 broadcast "ABC News-Facebook" Democratic debate:
GIBSON: Senator Edwards, I will take this question to you -- but you raised the issue of the economy right now. And we have a housing crisis in this country.
CLINTON: Yes, we do.
GIBSON: We have an energy problem in the cost of energy, and we now have a jobs problem. We have, when we are -- and you raised the 'R' word, recession -- when we are approaching recession, it is consumers who have spent us out of recession in most cases. You're all talking about letting some of the Bush tax cuts lapse.
CLINTON: Yeah, but Charlie, the tax cuts on the wealthiest of Americans, not the middle class tax cuts. One of the problems with George Bush's tax policy has been the way he has tilted it toward the wealthy and the well-connected.
GIBSON: If you take a family of two professors here at St. Anselm, they're going to be in the $200,000 category that you're talking about lifting the taxes on. And --
[laughter]
EDWARDS: Oh, I don't think they agree with you.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL): I'm not sure that that --
CLINTON: That may be NYU, Charlie; I don't think that's St. Anselm.
GIBSON: Two public schoolteachers in New York?
EDWARDS: Charlie --
GIBSON: But that is -- you're in a situation where you're taking money out of the economy.
CLINTON: Look, if we set the cap where I'm saying, at 250,000 and above, that's a very small percentage. And what I want to do is fix the alternative minimum tax; create these new job opportunities, primarily through clean, renewable energy; but also, get back to where middle-class families get the kind of tax relief that they deserve, which they really haven't been getting under George Bush.
EDWARDS: Can I say --
GIBSON: Go ahead, yeah.
EDWARDS: Thank you. What you see happening in America today -- if you're president of the United States, and you're looking at this from altitude -- is you see very few Americans getting wealthier and wealthier. You see the biggest corporations in America, profits through the roof. Exxon-Mobil just made $40 billion -- record profits. All of that happening at the same time that we have 47 million people with no health care; 37 million who will wake up in this country tomorrow worried about feeding and clothing their children.
.... This is a battle for the middle class. Let's take jobs, which we haven't talked about. ... We've had a trade and tax policy that is bleeding American jobs, and all it has done is pad the profits of the biggest multinational corporations in America. You talk about professors here at this college. Let me say --
GIBSON: Well, I shouldn't have done that, apparently.
Longer excerpt at Media Matters:
http://mediamatters.org/...
His view regarding tax cuts and the middle class may not have gone over well with the academic audience but - if not called out again and again - may successfully propagandize many American into believing the Republican line about tax hikes.
I hope another diarist, with more skills at analysis than I have, will incorporate the context - Gibson’s skewed view of just who is the American middle class - into any analysis of his upcoming interview. Will he note - for example - that each Alaskan receives state funds each year as there are no state taxes? That Palin instead has raised consumption taxes - including on food? Inquiring minds want to know whether viewers ever learn these important facts during a Gibson interview of Sarah Palin....