Sunday, October 5, 2008

"According to the New York Times, and they are hardly ever wrong..."


These are words that should surely come back to haunt VP nominee (she seems to enjoy using the vernacular "VP" over "vice-president"), Bush-in-skirts, Sarah Palin.

They came in a nasty campaign speech where she attempted to reconnect Barack Obama with William Ayers, former sixties radical, and Weatherman (you would think Palin would feel a comraderie since she herself was a Sportscaster).

She was quoting a New York Times article, that we are expected to believe she picked up on her own (she said in the speech, "my copy of the New York Times." Right.), in which, in fact, the Times made clear that Obama's relationship with Ayers was infrequent and relatively casual.

Of course Palin twisted the article for her own perverse, divisive and negative purposes. Isn't The New York Times one of those "main stream media filters" she swore to avoid?

When citing the Times she said
, "according to the New York Times, and they are hardly ever wrong..." Now, since there is no video of this speech in Denver (which she repeated later in the day in Carson, California without her endorsement of The Times' veracity - video below), there's no telling if she winked when she delivered the line. If she intended irony, then she undermined her entire argument. If they New York Times cannot be trusted (and is there a conservative who does trust?), then her attack on Obama is illegitimate.

However, if she meant to praise the New York Times' accuracy in reporting, then any criticism it levels agains Palin, McCain, their campaign, or Palin's troubles in Alaska, have to be taken at face value, don't they? She can no longer dismiss these criticisms as the out-of-control crusade against her, Joe Sixpack, hockey moms and conservatives of all stripes, can she?

Inevitably, Palin will continue to accuse Obama of some who would "pal around with terrorists," she should be reminded that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin all could be accused of the same thing. This country began in revolution, guided by radicals and terrorists, and that people like Palin are betraying the freedoms and democracy that those terrorists fought for.

BTW, in watching this speech, she talks of America as "a nation of exceptionalism." She's apparently been asleep through the past eight years. If American is a nation or exceptionalism, how is it that our financiers are steeped in the "corruption and greed" she denigrated in her debate on Thursday? Exceptional greed?

1 comment:

Straight Talk on McCain said...

If Palin wants to bring this up, she really needs to be careful. One of the people who McCain pals around with is G. Gordon Liddy, who was involved in the Watergate scandal and admitted in his autobiography to plotting to kill people. Oh, and on his radio show, he instructed people on the best way to kill government agents. http://straighttalkonmccain.blogspot.com/2008/10/domestic-terrorism.html