Back in November, Sarah Palin unloaded on the blogosphere in one of her first post-election interviews.
(CNN) — Sarah Palin fired a new salvo in her war on the media, unloading in a new interview on her home state paper and “bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie.”
The Alaska governor, who has granted a steady stream of interviews since Election Day, also told an Esquire reporter that she wishes she had told McCain campaign advisors she’d be “callin’ some of the shots.”
“Bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie annoy me….I’ll tell you, yesterday the Anchorage Daily News, they called again to ask — double-, triple-, quadruple-check — who is Trig’s real mom,” she said, in an interview to be published in the magazine’s March issue.
“And I said, Come on, are you kidding me? We’re gonna answer this? Do you not believe me or my doctor? And they said, No, it’s been quite cryptic the way that my son’s birth has been discussed. And I thought, Okay, more indication of continued problems in the world of journalism.”
The only problem is that Palin completely mischaracterizes what it was that the Anchorage Daily News was doing:
In an Anchorage Daily News column published last week, the paper’s editor said the only questions reporters there had asked about Trig’s birth came when the paper undertook a project to debunk conspiracy theories surrounding the event, but that they had abandoned the effort because of a lack of cooperation from the Palin family.
“I don’t believe we have ever published in the newspaper a story, a letter, a column or anything alleging a coverup surrounding your maternity,” wrote the editor in an e-mail sent to Palin and reprinted on the paper’s blog. “In fact, my integrity and the integrity of the newspaper have been repeatedly attacked in national forums for our complicity in the ‘coverup.’
Later, he added: “…So I don’t understand the behavior of the governor’s press office. Did the governor not share my email with the press staff? Did the press staff deliberately ignore what I said in order to have a longer list of press ‘outrages’? Or are they just sloppy with details? I don’t know.”
So, Palin’s effort to play the victim here fails miserably, but then I really think she doesn’t get it when I read stuff like this:
Even hard news sources, credible news sources — the comment about, you can see Russia from Alaska. You can! You can see Russia from Alaska. Something like that — a factual statement that was taken out of context and mocked — what you have to do is let that go.”
What Palin fails to address, of course, is the fact that Alaska’s proximity to Russia, which is a manifest fact, was cited by Palin and by several McCain campaign surrogates (see here, here, and here) as evidence of her foreign policy experience. As we learned soon after this idiotic idea was put forward, though, Palin has absolutely no role in homeland defense despite being Governor of Alaska because, you know, Alaska is a state and national defense is a Federal responsibility.
But back to the blogging thing. Michael Stallings at The Moderate Voice thinks that it’s evidence of Palin’s disdain for anyone who dares to criticize her:
Really, though, she’s not referring to anyone. She’s just attacking bloggers generally. Just like she thinks we all live in our parents’ basements, so does she think that we’re all bored and pathetic (and anonymous?), a bunch of liars. It’s just her way of lashing out at her critics, at anyone who dares question her. (I’m sure she’s fine with the many bloggers on the right who helped make her what she became, who drooled all over her and who long for her to lead them to the promised land of conservative bliss — God, guns, and a whole lotta drilling.) She avoided — or was kept away from — the media during the campaign, but now she’s a media manipulator herself, using various friendly media outlets on the right, as well as more mainstream outlets, to spew her spin and promote her cause, namely, herself.
As long as the media still bother to put a camera and microphone in front of her, enabling her and keeping her in the public eye long past her expiry date, we’ll have to put up with this sort of nonsense. And while we’re talking about lying, it’s Palin herself who’s full of dishonesty, as when she attacks the Anchorage Daily News for probing (and questioning) her maternity, an attack without basis in reality. But, then, so much of what Palin says and does is without basis in reality, and, in her eternal quest for victimhood (they’re all against me!), she’s apparently willing to make any claim, however fraudulent.
And that’s going to continue as long as she continues to find an audience willing to listen. Sadly, I think Sarah Palin is here to stay.
I hope she is here to stay. The GOP needs more like her if we are to make it back to the top. We need to be kicking the McCains and those like them, to the curb.
Sarah Palin is not the future of the GOP unless the GOP wants to become a minority party that makes any thinking person wonder why they’d bother voting for them.
If Republicans really want to win, they’ll start taking a serious look at a guy like Mark Sanford.
Ms. Palin “mischaracterizes” nothing. The fact that a major newspaper had to call on such a matter is symptomatic of the problem. There was no dig at the paper.
The slime at the Daily Kos are responsible for the lie about Sarah Palin’s youngest child.
Don’t encourage them.
Sarah Palin is the reason that McCain lost. Before he picked her, he had half of a fighting chance. But after he announced her candidacy, the entire country said, “Huh?” And for good reason, we had no idea who she was, or what she believed in. She’s a fraud, and we shouldn’t trust anything that comes out of her opportunistic mouth.
The GOP will be the minority pary as long as non thinking people talk about losers and ignore Jindah and Palin. Its time to get back to the roots of the conservative movement.
The Palin worshippers do her no service with this blind allegiance. It is a safe haven for the notion that Palin need not improve. She just has to preach to the choir. It will hit the wall for them at some point and it will be a very rude awakening. OF COURSE, it wont be THEIR fault. That seems to be the anthemn.
[...] posted at Below The Beltway This entry was posted on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 and is filed under 2008 Election, Palin, [...]
You title should read Sarah Palin against the Far Left Blogosphere.
We on the Libertarian Right adore Gov. Palin.
If Sarah Palin is not the GOP nominee in 2012, countless Republicans, particularly of the libertarian bent, will just stay home, or maybe vote for the Libertarian Party.
The GOP would be insane not to run her.
Is there any other Republican out there who can attract a crowd of 70,000 to a rally like she did in Florida?
Not even close.
Sarah Palin will only be the GOP nominee if Obama is so popular in 2012 that unseating him is nearly impossible. She’d be the sacrificial lamb in the same way that Bob Dole was in `96.
In a real campaign, against candidates of substance like Sanford and others, though, she will be revealed to be the intellectual lightweight that she clearly is — and she’ll have to compete for the far-right vote with guys like Huckabee.
Eric,
Don’t pretend that you speak for all libertarians, because you don’t.
“We on the Libertarian Right adore Gov. Palin.”
“Is there any other Republican out there who can attract a crowd of 70,000 to a rally like she did in Florida?”
…which goes to show where politics is going in this country. Remember those “biggest celebrity in the world” ads? Apply here.
Of course the media will sniff after rumors of bastard children. They have since Henry VIII in Tudor England.
But one hopes that the infection of extreme right wing idiocy that Palin so ably represents does not become the alternative to Obama and whatever his presidency evolves into.
She appears to make sense. The Republicans with brains should look carefully at what she is actually intending to do – her record in the media so far does not reflect that of a future leader. More like a super mom.
Okay Mataconis, noticed you completely deflected, and ignored my main point.
Show me another Republican who can get 70,000 cheering fans into a football stadium anywhere in the country?
Mark Sanford? I love the guy. He’s brave. He’s bold. He’s courageous. And he’s a libertarian.
But sexy, exciting, and a celebrity, he is not.
If there’s one thing we Republicans should learn from this election, it’s that the American voting public does not want policy wonkers. They want style. They want pizzaz. They want to be entertained.
If we run a wonkish libertarian like Sanford, we’ll get crushed.
If he runs, I’ll support him. But I won’t be at all confident. It will probably end up being a libertarian educational campaign, with no chance of winning.
With Sarah we get both; principled libertarian, PLUS a great chance of actually winning.
No, I don’t speak for all libertarians. I’ve only served on the Libertarian National Committee, run as a Libertarian for public office, founded the Republican Liberty Caucus, served as 1976 Libertarian Party Presidential candidate Roger MacBride’s personal aide for 5 years, got Ron Paul elected to Congress in 1996, served as his top aide for 6 years, recruited Wayne Root to run for 2008, and got Barr and Root on the ballot in 5 states.
Nah, you’re right there Mataconis, I “don’t speak for all libertarians.”
If Obama is runs in 2012 they can trot out Nixon’s corpse. It will win in a landslide. Even the lobotmized will have learned what hope and change mean by then.
Thomas,
Perhaps.
Or perhaps Obama will be lucky enough to be running for re-election at just the point when the recession will have ended and an economic boom, which he will, right or wrongly, claim credit for, begins.
That’s what happened with Clinton in 1996, and there’s no reason it can happen again.
Additionally, when it comes to selecting a challenger in 2012, do not underestimate the ability of Republicans to totally screw things up.
Eric,
If you think that all the GOP needs to do is trot out a celebrity in 2012, then you know even less about politics than I thought.
The GOP’s problem isn’t that it’s candidates aren’t “popular”, it’s the fact that it has spent the past eight years governing like socialists.
Did Sarah Palin speak out against the bailout ? No, she endorsed it.
For that reason alone I will never vote for her and will actively campaign against her if she runs for President
You know who has been one of the loudest voices against the bailout ?
Mark Sanford.
Given a choice between the two, it’s rather obvious to me.
So anyway, where in the heck did the idea that Palin is libertarian come from, for Pete’s sake? She’s obviously right-wing fruitloop.
tfr,
From what I’ve gathered, Eric is the only person who continues to call Palin a libertarian.
Like you said, she’s not.
She’s a Mike Huckabee social conservative.
And we sure as heck don’t need another one of those.