For the past five days, I’ve been riveted by the media frenzy over vice presidential pick Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska. What strikes me most is the way the media – print, tv, radio, online – have rushed to fill in the details on the sketchy knowledge available about the candidate.

They say that nature abhors a vacuum. I would suggest that the media abhors a vacuum even more. Since the announcement, we’ve learned about Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy, “Troopergate,” her support for the “Bridge to Nowhere,” her husband’s involvement in the Alaska Independence Party, her lobbying for federal funds for local project, her role in a 527 for Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, and who knows what will turn up in the days to come.

Also fascinating was the Wikipedia battle that arose from the appearance of a user “YoungTrig,” who began editing Palin’s Wikipedia entry the day before the announcement. Check out this NPR story for more details on that angle.

What to make of all this? Certainly there has been a rush from both the G.O.P. and the Democrats to “define” Palin one way or the other. But the definition is hinging on the reporting of media outlets and bloggers, responding to a wide-open v.p. pick with the type of reporting you probably wouldn’t have seen had the pick been a “known quantity” like Min. Gov. Pawlenty or former presidential aspirant Mitt Romney.

It’s too soon to see what damage all these revelations might have on the McCain campaign, but it’s fascinating to watch the media in action. Naturally, the McCain campaign has complained that the media are being “vicious and scurrilous” in their Palin stories.

I don’t really see that as the case. The media are doing their job. They are retroactively vetting the McCain vice presidential pick. They did the same to a lesser extent with Joe Biden, Barack Obama’s pick. But Biden was a known entity. He’d been a presidential candidate twice, and a senator for a long time. If Obama (who has had his own taste of the media scrutiny) had picked a little-known governor from a small (population) state, he’d have witnessed the same intense scrutiny of his pick.

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This summer, I taught a class at Eastern Illinois called “Freedom of Expression,” a senior seminar that dealt with the first amendment and its evolution in American judicial and political history.

Throughout the course, we had the opportunity to delve into some of the aspects of the current campaign for the U.S. presidency. One of those aspects that I found fascinating was the rise of a word in the political lexicon: dog whistle, as in “dog whistle politics.”

The use of “dog whistle” isn’t new to this campaign, but the term is relatively new, appearing (from my limited research for class) only in the late 1990s in relation to politics, and originating in the Australian political campaigns of prime minister John Howard.

Today, Melissa McEwan in the Guardian (U.K.) explains what a dog whistle is, how it works, and why it’s such a pernicious piece of political strategy. To wit:

The dog whistle piques them with something the average person won’t see as bigoted, but that the constituency for which they advocate (and/or of which they’re a part) will expect them to call out, because they instantly spy it and recognize it for what it is; they’ve heard the tune of that particular string being plucked their whole lives. Then whoever calls it out is marginalized as a hysteric, over-reactionary, looking to get offended, etc.

It’s a pretty good primer and one I’ll bookmark for any future discussions of the topic.

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