Sarah Palin, Fragile Alaska Snowflake
Boo hoo Sarahcuda
Jeffrey Denny
So, this:
Proud and preening frontier-tough former Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah “Mama Grizzly” Palin was triggered and traumatized by a sentence in a New York Times op-ed inserted in haste on deadline: “The link to political incitement was clear.”
Maybe her political ad with rifle crosshairs over Arizona didn’t actually incite the Tucson mass shooter who killed six and wounded 18, including U.S. Rep. Gabby Gifford and a nine-year-old girl. But the link between gun militancy like Palin’s and mass shootings is clear. Violent words inevitably incite violent deeds.
The Times was extrapolating. Seems like fair commentary to me — not cause to threaten a core tenet of American freedom like the unfettered press.
Do Palin and fans also wish to nitpick and cancel speech in right-wing broadcast, internet and social media? Since purveyors proudly and demonstrably spread lies that spread disease and death and false conspiracies that incite anti-American division, sedition, violent insurrection and treasonous overthrow of our government?
Does Palin want to be responsible for right-wing media censorship when the political worm turns, as it always does?
But poor Mama Grizzly was wounded.
By words, mind you, not bullets. Yet like a real wounded grizzly, she attacks.
No matter that The Times published corrections and the editor honorably draped himself in sackcloth and ashes and committed every manner of disemboweling Seppuku for his sloppy edits. “This is my fault,” he testified. “I wrote those sentences and I’m not looking to shift the blame for anyone else. I want that for the record.”
Not good enough for Palin.
While infamous for her sharp, sneering attacks on political opponents, truth take the hindmost, apparently Palin can dish more red meat than she can chew.
She trafficked the lie that the Affordable Care Act imposed death panels, insinuated that President Barack Obama hates America, spread the racist birther lie, and claimed that Obama “pals around with terrorists.”
And so on.
Flash forward to now, Palin’s claiming her sterling reputation was tarnished by a few errant words that 99.9% of Americans probably missed. Until she promoted her defamation with her defamation suit, especially since it may reach a more friendly U.S. Supreme Court and shrink the First Amendment.
Cue other obvious ironies:
1. Fox’s defense of Tucker Carlson’s outright snickering lies.
Carlson’s fervent fans believe America’s #1 cable news personality, on America’s #1 cable news channel for 20 years and America’s #1 source of news, is the only TV multimillionaire who understands real Americans. And only he has the guts to tell the real God’s honest American truth.
Fox attorneys begged to differ.
As they argued in McDougal v. Fox News Network, nobody should believe anything Carlson says. When he accused Trump’s discarded lover/victim Karen McDougal of trying to “extort” Trump, which was demonstrably false, Carlson’s word choice was “loose, figurative or hyperbolic” and nondefamatory because it was mere “rhetorical hyperbole, a vigorous epithet.”
The Trump-appointed judge agreed. Carlson’s audience should know better. He’s “not stating actual facts.” He engages in “exaggeration” and “non-literal commentary.” “Given Mr. Carlson’s reputation,” the judge said, “any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statement he makes.” (Do they?)
2. Convenient belief in “fake news”.
The Times is #1 in news when it comes to Trump mainstream media bashing and MAGA re-bleating, with Fox piling on its media competitor like Mr. Pibb winning the laxative cola wars by attacking Dr. Pepper for not having a medical degree.
The number of times Trump called The Times “fake news” or, to emphasize, “FAKE NEWS,” are innumerable. (See for yourself.)
But which is it: The Times is fake news so nobody can believe it? Or does everyone believe The Times so much it can destroy a washed-up politician’s reputation in a single opinion piece? It can’t be both.
Also, given America’s low regard for politicians, is it even possible to defame them? Especially one still trying to cash in on brief infamy?
3. The Times fired the editor for publishing right-wing views.
Not for liberal bias that led to the Palin error, but after he approved a screed by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Shameless) that called for martial law to shoot and kill BLM protesters as necessary.
4. Sarah Palin’s cry for help.
Playing victim like a Seven Sisters frosh claiming toxic environment because the vegan dorm food is cruel to legumes seems off-brand for someone so rootin’ tootin’ gun-slingin’ meat-chewin’ facho.
But my heart goes out when life hands you lemonade and you make lemons.
Like when you’re almost the first woman U.S. vice president and Barbara Walters names you one of “America’s 10 Most Fascinating People of 2008.” Then even after ignominious election defeat, Time magazine still selects you in 2010 as one of the world’s most influential people.
Ten years later, you’re competing in season three of Fox’s “The Masked Singer” performing “Baby Got Back” by rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot from his third album, “Mack Daddy.” It’s about a woman endowed with prodigious “back.” Palin unfortunately was unavailable to perform in this year’s Super Bowl halftime rap retrospective.
Attacking the free press is the last refuge of political scoundrels.
People who hate the mainstream media enough to cheer Palin might ask themselves, who really do you hate?
Press you disagree with? Facts you don’t like? Opinions that don’t feed yours?
Do you hate journalists who work hard, most for little money, take a lot of crap from those they cover, not to mention from their editors and their editors’ editors who torture reporters for proof so they get the facts right most of the time (and get punished when they don’t)?
The press isn’t perfect, needless to say. But what’s the solution? Letting thin-skinned politicians abridge press freedom so the powers that be can get away with corruption? Is that the America we want?
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer and former journalist.
