7/27/2009

Riot of the Year -- Palin's Directive to Media

Or, we should say, it would be a riot if it were not so serious, and this person was not actually considered a potential leader of the GOP.

Here are Palin's words to a media that -- despite constant cries and whines to the contrary, has actually gone rather softly on her IN RELATION TO THE FACTS. "Quit making things up."

Palin, without, of course, supporting her accusation, was referring to the media "making things up" with respect to American Soldiers.

Last year, Sarah "Quit Making Things Up" Palin, stated that Obama's statement that our air raiding Afghanistan villages was resulting in too many civilian casualties, was a "a reckless, reckless comment and untrue comment." Eight days before Obama's comment, the Washington Post reported on its Sunday front page
A mounting toll of civilian casualties, mostly in bombing raids... have inflamed public opinion, turned many Afghans against the foreign forces [note; that's us], and further strained [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai's credibility.
Of course, remember that when asked what source of news she reads, Palin could not cite a single one.

Palin also does not appear to listen to our top military commanders, either: In September of 2008, Afghanistian Senior Commander David McKiernan (who in the vice presidential debate, Palin called "McClellan") asserted that there were mounting civilian casualties in Afghanistan, due to an over reliance upon air power. The next day, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, issued an apology to the Afghanistan government for the excessive casualties -- the ones that, in Palin's world of "making things up," didn't exist. (That's "straight talk" for ya: Something that Palin is a virtuoso at claiming she delivers, and the exact opposite, in actually delivering.)

The "Bridge to Nowhere," that in speech after impassioned speech Palin riled her supporters with her boldly and almost zealously repeated"principled" opposition to? Palin was a firm supporter of it until the issue was over -- until it became a national issue, until Congress made clear that it was withdrawing any more support for the project (and thus, no longer a matter of "pork," Alaska would have to pay for it), and even until shortly after John McCain scathingly mocked it himself on the campaign trail.

Last year, to Joe Biden's point that the McCain campaign opposed granting bankruptcy judges the power to change interest rates and principal on borrower’s primary residences, Palin, who clearly did not know, again, simply "made something up," and stated: "that is not so." It was so. And McCain's campaign corrected Palin the next day.

Here's Palin completely "making stuff up" on Energy -- the topic on which she is an alleged expert -- and then continuing to do so, even after being corrected.

Climate Progress.org calls the Washington Post editorial page a "joke" for running an energy piece by Palin. Is it?

The piece was against capping carbon (perhaps not a good position, but that is not the issue with the piece.) Palin, the "quit making things up" ex-Alaska Governor, was asked this by Gwen Ifill during the vice presidential debate. "do you support capping carbon emissions? PALIN: I do. I do."

And the list goes on... and on.... and on....

Yet Palin, as with many things rhetorical, has reduced attacking the media to art form and unequivocal passion until the media, even if it does not do its job and stays soft, simply states Palin's version of reality. This is perhaps more troubling in a popular figure than many, Republican or Democrat alike, seem to recognize:

In fact, to this same media which almost universally proclaimed her "performance" both reasonable and gaffe free, Palin has repeatedly vented in this manner, as if in a "democracy," the role of an independent press -- which Thomas Jefferson considered so important that he proclaimed given a choice between the two, he would choose it before government itself -- is to merely parrot the points of candidates and the government that the candidates and government want the people to hear; that is, the operational principle of almost every governmental system the world over, that is in fact not a democracy.

....Actually, it is manipulation, and misinformation like Sarah Palin delivered in spades to the American people, that is the problem. Not to mention our putting up with it.