Secondhand Smokette–no fan of Sarah Palin–has a blog out today that points out how abysmally Palin was treated when she first emerged on the national political stage. I have said that I believe much of the irrational, spittle spewing hatred of Palin originates with the birth of Trig, her baby with Down syndrome, which symbolized her personally socially conservative views for some, and brought out the inner eugenicist of others.
Debra doesn’t go there, but she notes that the biologically impossible and defamatory rumors that Trig was really Palin’s grandson were seized upon by the media, which rocked the McCain/Palin campaign with scurilous and insulting questions about Trig’s birth, reflecting the intense bias of a press determined to elect Obama. From “Was Sarah Palin Done in by Trig ‘Birther’ Story?:
When McCain picked Palin, his campaign team thought the media would hail Palin as a fellow maverick, a moderate who could work with Democrats, and avoided polarizing social issues by, for example, vetoing a bill banning benefits for same-sex spouses of state workers. That is, Camp McCain expected the sort of in-depth look that [New Republic's Josh] Green provided in “The Tragedy of Sarah Palin.” They also thought that personal profiles would portray Palin as a pro-life Republican who walked the walk when she chose to give birth to a son with Down syndrome.
Alas and woe to her, Palin had the misfortune of walking onto the national stage in the era of the blogosphere. A Daily Kos blogger charged that Palin faked giving birth to Trig five months earlier in order to conceal her teenage daughter Bristol’s pregnancy. Other bloggers, as well as British and Australian newspapers, joined the pile-on. That rumor was put to rest for all but the most ardent Palin “birthers” when Bristol turned out to be five months pregnant.
The Daily Kos used a photo taken two years prior, in which the overweight Bristol had a “bump,” changed the date in which the photo was supposedly taken, and used the “bump” as proof of pregnancy. It was all a fraud, but it was all the excuse the MSM needed to flip into TERMINATE mode, and uncoincidentally, Trig was made the point of the first spear. Back to Debra:
While most reputable American news outlets did not report the rumors, the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz wrote at the time that reporters deluged the campaign with questions “about the governor’s amniotic fluid, the timing of her contractions and whether she would take a DNA test to establish the baby’s parentage.” Those questions enraged the McCainiacs. Palin’s record as governor also went through the dirt washer. Palin wrote in her memoir “Going Rogue,” “Suddenly I was a book-burning evangelical extremist sweeping down from the North on her broomstick.” Factcheck.org felt compelled to report that Palin “did not demand that books be banned from the Wasilla library” and “has not pushed for teaching creationism in Alaska’s schools.”
Green laments that McCain/Palin didn’t run “as mavericks,” but instead “turned hard right.” He doesn’t seem to understand that the political press corps kept seizing unsubstantiated odd-bin tidbits to paint Palin as a right-wing kook and social-issues crusader — and thus shoved Palin into the right-wing ghetto.
And it was done with malice aforethought. The hatred continues unabated. And while it has been indisputably proven that Trig is Sarah’s son–some still refuse to believe it, the ignoble Andrew Sullivan, for one–and he remains at the core of the Palin haters’ seething cauldron of bile.
May 13th, 2011 | 11:47 am
This isn’t secondhand smoke; it’s secondhand news.
The Trig business is stale, stale, stale. Nobody cares about Trig any more, or about what happened to Crystal two years ago. Most people DO care that SP’s shooting herself in the foot with her own stupid remarks cost McCain the election.
You can try making a victim out of her all you like, but the fact remains that Palin has gotten rich doing her dumb and dumber act. No wonder she quit the Alaska governorship; there’s much more money to be made off the simple-minded in the lower 48.
HW
May 13th, 2011 | 12:29 pm
For evidence for Smith’s first paragraph, see above comment.
May 13th, 2011 | 4:14 pm
No fan of Palin, either, but John McCain ran such an incompetent campaign that even were Barack Obama his running mate, McCain would have lost.
The marxists sites are a fun read, though.
HistoryWriter Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 4:45 pm
@jb,
And the most incompetent part of it was drafting a non-entity like Palin for the VP slot.
HW
Wesley J. Smith; Reply:
May 13th, 2011 at 6:32 pm
I’ll bet she’s done more with her life than you, anonymous HW, and in about half the time.
HistoryWriter Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 6:00 am
@Wesley J. Smith;,
Gee, Wesley, love does strange things: there you are waxing poetic over all the stuff she’s accomplished in only half my lifetime. Yep, she’s definitely got me outclassed: In my 7+ decades I’ve never wanted to have books removed from a library http://www.adn.com/2008/09/04/515512/palin-pressured-wasilla-librarian.html never abused my authority http://articles.cnn.com/2008-10-10/politics/palin.investigation_1_todd-palin-stephen-branchflower-state-trooper-mike-wooten?_s=PM:POLITICS never been charged with a single ethics violation (let alone ten of them) http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/25/palin-faces-latest-ethics-complaint/ and I’ve certainly never quit an elected post (I have held one)
You must have a crush on Palin otherwise you wouldn’t act so hurt about “the Palin haters” and their imaginary “seething cauldron of bile.” What’s the fascination? Is it that impressive record of hers? That lovely, sonorous voice? Or do Republicans of a certain age fantasize over her as a dominatrix? I’d really like to know.
HW
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 10:03 am
HW: No love, just disgust at the seething hatred and the attempts at personal destruction. Read Josh Green’s piece in the New Republic. Most of it, including some of what you referenced, was baloney, starting with the Daily Kos fraud about the Bristol “pregnancy” photo. But it is relevant here because so much of it reeks of anti disability bigotry. This thread is not to be turned into a general defense or attack on Palin. The Left has turned sheer hatred into a science.
HistoryWriter Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 4:39 pm
@Wesley J. Smith,
“This thread is not to be turned into a general defense or attack on Palin.”
I can agree with that. Can you?
HW
May 13th, 2011 | 9:58 pm
I’ll bet she’s done more with her life than you, anonymous HW, and in about half the time.
She may be many things, but she’s not “incompetent”.
HistoryWriter Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 6:05 am
@Blake,
The “incompetent” referred to McCain for pulling Palin into his campaign.
HW
May 14th, 2011 | 11:56 am
This continuing obsession with Sarah Palin by journalist’s and pundits on the far left shows how shallow and pseudo-intellectual they really are. On the other hand, I think Palin has been very shrewd in the way she has capitalized on her notoriety. Is she running for president, or just trying to become rich?
The left in particular are scared by the idea that someone like Palin could be president. Personally, I am more scared by people who think politics is only open to some kind of self appointed aristocracy. A free and open democratic society means that it is free and open to even non-elites like Palin.
May 14th, 2011 | 12:19 pm
Hate to even get into this, but she is a grifter. Nothing more. So is Trump.
It is disgraceful that American government has been taken over by attention tarts and buffoons. None of them are worth defending.
The kid? He didn’t cause the trainwreck and probably should be off-limits. He already is to intelligent people who have some manners.
Palin has driven the cause for women in government backwards 50+ years, IMO, through her careless remarks, endless victomhood and idiocracy. And I don’t forgive her for that.
It’s not seething hatred. It’s utter disappointment. At least for me.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 12:32 pm
“Probably should be kept off limits?” I am not writing about disliking her. As I said, Secondhand Smokette is no fan. It is about HATING her. And there is more of that than is healthy for anybody. Alas, Trig has always been at the center of the cauldron.
HistoryWriter Reply:
May 14th, 2011 at 4:51 pm
@Wesley J. Smith,
Old stuff, Wesley. The Trig business is passe. You’re just using it as an excuse to promote Palin.
Why are you concerned whether people hate her as opposed to merely disliking her? Why are you so willing to dismiss even well-documented criticism of her as “baloney?” Are you now going to tell us with a straight face that you’ve suddenly become appalled by the poisonous character of American political campaigns these days?
HW
May 14th, 2011 | 5:55 pm
Palin has driven the cause for women in government backwards 50+ years, IMO, through her careless remarks, endless victomhood and idiocracy. And I don’t forgive her for that.
Endless victimhood? LOL. Someone is projecting!
Suggesting that the vile, irrational, hateful things spewed at her and done to her is not “victimhood”. It is complaining about incivility.
What Sarah Palin has really done is punctured the faux victimhood that is feminism:
[Blake: I deleted the rest of your comment because I don't want to get into an argument about feminism. Thanks.]
Blake Reply:
May 15th, 2011 at 7:51 pm
@Blake,
[Blake: I deleted the rest of your comment because I don't want to get into an argument about feminism. Thanks.]
Sorry, chief.
Just makes me mad that Sarah Palin transcends every “insurmountable” obstacle “holding women down” and instead of getting credit, she’s attacked as if she were a “bad person” for doing so.
You do not need to divorce or take govt handouts to be successful. Sarah Palin ought to be held up as a role model. Yet, even being nominated to the Republican presidential ticket is somehow “not an accomplishment” when Palin does it. The mind simply boggles.
May 14th, 2011 | 9:28 pm
Over the last couple of years, while others were planing on how to convince us that they have ample capability and fortitude, Sarah was showing us she has ample capability and fortitude.
Here are a few of the reasons why Americans already owe Sarah:
Jump-started the weakening of Obamacare. (Death Panels)
Gets Obama wee-wee’d up.
Rallied and strengthened the TPMovement.
Gave us TPM-Republicans in the House and Senate.
Saved the GOP from nominating someone for 2012 who couldn’t even beat McCain last time.
(This last one is ‘in progress.’)
And most important in my and some other cases anyway – she helped us have hope.
To me, it is as if she has been earning the support others are just asking for on promises.
May 15th, 2011 | 5:35 am
Wesley, I’m not even sure its accurate to claim that the mainstream media, as you put it, “flipped into terminate mode” over the Trig issue. Your wife’s article states, in so many words that most reputable American news outlets did not report the rumors – and this is largely consistent with how I remember the reporting both at the time and since then. This whole “Trig Truther” issue is driven by bloggers (who tend not to be quite as committed to the idea of “fact-checking” as they ought to be) and the indefatigable Andrew Sullivan. One UK journalist recently described these stories as arising from “the stubbly nether regions of the internet untouched by Occam’s razor”.
When mainstream journalists have written about this they have usually done so merely to dismiss the allegations as conspiracy theories. Is there a single article in a mainstream media publication (not written by Andrew Sullivan) which takes the allegations seriously? Has a democratic politician ever suggested that Sarah Palin is not Trig’s biological mother? I think not.
This, as David Weigel points out (in the liberal publication Slate) , is a non-story. It’s just another indication of how effective bloggers and alternative media sources can be at polluting the news pool with misinformation and irrelevancies.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
May 15th, 2011 at 10:35 am
She states they barraged the campaign with outrageous questions. I remember her calling me about it from the convention at the time. It was outrageous, based on a fraud. There was such a drooling frenzy, the McCain team couldn’t talk about what they wanted to. And all based on fraud. Andrew Sullivan is very mainstream.
May 15th, 2011 | 7:32 am
[...] Palin’s grandson were seized upon by the media, which rocked the McCain/PalinArticle source: http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2011/05/13/exterminate-the-medias-original-trig-att… Category: Feeds Tags: google news, google news sarah palin, palin news, palin tweets, [...]
May 15th, 2011 | 11:25 am
“I remember her calling me about it from the convention at the time.”
“Her” as in Smokette, or “her” as in Sarah Palin?
HW
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
May 15th, 2011 at 2:13 pm
My beloved. ; – )
May 15th, 2011 | 12:10 pm
How could I have missed this:
WJS quoting conservative writer Debra Saunders: “Factcheck.org felt compelled to report that Palin ‘did not demand that books be banned from the Wasilla library…’”
Of course Palin didn’t “demand” that books be removed from the Wasilla public library. Instead, during a hearing she grilled the City Librarian about whether she would remove books if Palin asked (read “ordered”) her to do so. When the Librarian was less than enthusiastic Palin attempted to have her fired for “disloyalty.”
The Factcheck entry includes the following statement which, for reasons one simply can’t imagine, Ms. Saunders omitted: “But in January 1997, Palin fired Emmons [the City Librarian], along with the police chief. According to the Chicago Tribune, Palin did not list censorship as a reason for Emmons’ firing, but said she didn’t feel she had Emmons’ support. The decision caused ‘a stir’ in the small town, according to a newspaper account at the time. According to a widely circulated e-mail from Kilkenny, ‘city residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin’s attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter.’”
I raise this issue, not because I detest Sarah Palin’s politics (I freely admit that I do), but to show how conservative spinmeisters (WJS included) refuse to give up on trying to reshape her public image into that of a latter-day Wonder Woman being sacrificed upon the altar of pervasive left-wing bigotry. In my opinion it’s a worthless effort — but then as the saying goes, “tell a big enough lie often enough ….”
HW
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
May 15th, 2011 at 2:16 pm
She was quoting the liberal author of the original TNR article. Spin my foot.
HistoryWriter Reply:
May 16th, 2011 at 10:12 am
@Wesley J. Smith,
Fact remains, Saunders left out details that would have given the “Poor Sarah” article a completely different spin. You’re a lawyer. Have you forgotten that we ask people to tell “the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but ….”
HW
May 16th, 2011 | 12:14 pm
From a reader via email:
I just read the post on your blog about the birth of Trig being the real reason for the hatred of Sarah Palin. I can’t say I disagree with you. On the subject of extermination of babies with Down syndrome, I thought I’d forward you my commentary that was printed in the Burlington Free Press last week. Not that you have time to spend reading the on-line comments, but some of them scream of a eugenic worldview:
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011105110318
HistoryWriter Reply:
May 17th, 2011 at 12:07 am
@Wesley J. Smith,
I took the time to read both the article and the readers’ comments, and found that most of the posters believed that it’s ultimately up to parents to decide whether they’re capable of raising a child they know will be born with Down Syndrome and its related problems. Not one of the opinions I read had to do with eugenics.
The writer of the article stated her concern that improved diagnostic tools allow Down Syndrome to be identified during the first trimester of pregnancy when abortion is a relatively simple and straightforward procedure, thereby posing the threat of eliminating any possibility of Down Syndrome children being born.
I had serious concerns about her reasoning. She opposes abortion generally, thus the objectivity of her opinion about prenatal diagnostic testing as abortion-facilitating where severely disabled fetuses are concerned, is questionable. The presence of Down Syndrome is one of those borderline situations in which a child may (and I emphasize MAY) live a relatively normal life despite it, although other severe, chronic health problems typically accompany it.
Not every parent is capable of dealing with the challenges of raising a disabled child. It makes as little sense to criticize them as it does to criticize, say, the Palins for deciding to raise one. As always, it’s a matter of personal choice for the families involved.
HW
May 17th, 2011 | 10:36 am
believed that it’s ultimately up to parents to decide whether they’re capable of raising a child they know will be born with Down Syndrome and its related problems.
Hey, but autism is widely viewed as worse than Down Syndrome, so by that logic it’s not fair to restrict killing kids before they’re born, because autism sometimes is not diagnosed until years later.
If we’re going to have a policy of labeling people defectives, it should apply to all imperfect people.
(And be careful. You could find yourself to be revealed as less perfect than you think.)
I wonder if, in the future when we can “choose” what our child is and looks like, little mistakes like a child that turns out to not have the blonde hair the parent ordered will be grounds for termination.
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