Smears against Sarah Palin

Discussed in (click each link for the full post):

Joe Klein of Time got anti-Sarah Palin talking points from Journolist - 07/22/10

... attempts from others, see the Sarah Palin smear page. Note also the September 3, 2008 Klein piece "Angry Amateurs" (link): There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed...

Several reasons Frank Rich is wrong (Arizona immigration law edition #1) - 05/02/10

I haven't discussed a Frank Rich column here before, so let's start by showing several ways he's wrong in yesterday's "If Only Arizona Were the Real Problem" (nytimes.com/2010/05/02/opinion/02rich.html). It's centered around that state's new immigration law, but it's a wide-ranging rant. Here are just some of the ways he's wrong):

Politifact "Lie of the Year" misleads (Angie Drobnic Holan; Sarah Palin's "death panels") - 12/19/09

Politifact has named Sarah Palin's claim about there being "death panels" in Obama healthcare as their lie of the year; it was the top "lie" selected by both their editors and their readers. In an ironic - and not unexpected note - Politifact is misleading. You can read Palin's quote at the link above, and note that my predication came true: if Palin's supporters were competent they could have...

Adrian Chen, Gawker promote violence against politicians (Nick Denton; Sarah Palin tomato incident) - 12/08/09

Yesterday at the Mall of America, someone threw a couple of tomatoes at Sarah Palin; he missed and hit a cop and is now under arrest. In response, Adrian Chen of Gawker offered "Who is the Hero Who Threw Tomatoes at Sarah Palin?" (150k screengrab here, URL at [1]) in which he calls the person who threw the tomatoes an "American Hero". He then followed that with "In Defense of Throwing Tomatoes at...

Canadian comedian tries to embarrass Sarah Palin; fails; shows abysmal level of debate in U.S. - 11/27/09

Mediaite offers "Canadian Comedian Fails Miserably In Trying To Embarrass Sarah Palin" (link): During a book signing event in Columbus, Ohio, Canadian Comedian Mary Walsh ambushed (Sarah Palin) with camera crew and microphone to seek her thoughts on the Canadian health care system (and ostensibly embarrass her as well.) While the event security detail prevented a meaningful interview, Palin did...

Going Rogue: Andrew Sullivan pretends he didn't "run" with the Sarah Palin pregnancy story - 11/20/09

In her book "Going Rogue", Sarah Palin claims that The Atlantic (meaning Andrew Sullivan) "ran" with the disgusting story claiming that Trig Palin was actually the son of her daughter. Sullivan takes umbrage at her claim, saying that he never "ran" with the story but simply asked questions. This incident is one of the things I've noticed time and time again from many on the rightwing side of...

Huffington Post, AP mislead about Sarah Palin book; opponents not effective (pipeline deal) - 11/18/09

The Huffington Post and the Associated Press are reviving a smear both perpetrated against Sarah Palin about a year ago. At the same time, most of Palin's defenders aren't taking effective steps to counter-act what HuffPost and the AP are doing. In October of last year, AP writers Garance Burke and Justin Pritchard wrote about one of Palin's resume points, a pipeline deal. As contemporaneously...

Winner & Associates rep on NEA Office of Public Engagement conference call - 09/21/09

As discussed here, one of the people on the conference call organized by the National Endowment for the Arts was Bim Ayandele, a Senior Associate from Winner Associates, a public relations firm. Just about a year ago, officials from that firm were caught trying to make an anti-Sarah Palin video go viral. See the backstory at the link; at the time, it was pointed out that Winner had previously...

Jon Henke: Sarah Palin's "death panels" are a "cartoon" (Peter Wallsten on GOP's quest for acceptance, respectability) - 09/14/09

Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times - the reporter who refused to release the Obama/Khalidi tape (also here) - gleefully offers "Some fear GOP is being carried to the extreme/The Republican establishment hopes cooler heads will prevail over strongly anti-Obama parts of the conservative base" (link). In this case, Wallsten is what's called a "concern troll", and he's got some help. Those...

New York Times now admits: "A Basis Is Seen for Some Health Plan Fears Among the Elderly" - 08/22/09

On August 13, Jim Rutenberg and Jackie Calmes of the New York Times offered "False 'Death Panel' Rumor Has Some Familiar Roots" (link): The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama’s health care proposals would create government-sponsored “death panels” to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere in recent weeks... Advanced even this week by Republican...

Even if Palin is right about "death panels", will her supporters be able to do anything about it? - 08/13/09

I'm not familiar with the details of Obama healthcare so I don't know whether this post is right or not when it says that Sarah Palin wasn't wrong when she wrote the following: The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of...

Serge Kovaleski, Jim Rutenberg, William Yardley of NYT lie about Sarah Palin hair thinning (per hairdresser) - 07/19/09

Ask not why I'm writing a post about Sarah Palin's hair thinning. Ask why Serge Kovaleski, Jim Rutenberg, William Yardley, and others from the New York Times wrote an article making that false claim ("Palin’s Long March to a Short-Notice Resignation", link, via this): Friends worried that she appeared anxious and underweight. Her hair had thinned to the point where she needed emergency help from...

McCain campaign - not Palin - came up with "palling around"; Schmidt regrets largely true ad - 07/10/09

Marc Ambinder has an advance copy (link) of a book about the 2008 elections from Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson, and it might contain a good number of behind-the-scenes tidbits. For instance, one of the mistakes that Sarah Palin made was to claim that Barack Obama was "palling around" with Bill Ayers. Except, it was Nicolle Wallace of the McCain campaign - and not Palin - that came up with the "...

Mike Murphy ignores GOP incompetence, self-defeating behavior (Sarah Palin) - 07/09/09

GOP consultant and former John McCain advisor Mike Murphy offers "To go forward, GOP must snap out of its Sarah Palin spell" (link). While his bad advice this time isn't as bad as his horrible immigration advice, he's still on the wrong side: Unfortunately for McCain, the actual swing voters, the independents who do determine the winner of the election, didn't buy into this fantasy at all. After...

David Letterman smears 14-year-old girl; CBS, New York Times cover for him - 06/09/09

This site tries to avoid the Outrage du Jour, preferring instead to concentrate on topics that are actually important. However, this one is pretty outrageous. On last night's David Letterman show, he "joked" about Alex Rodriguez "knocking up" Sarah Palin's daughter during a Yankees game that Palin had attended. That's bad, but what's worse is that the daughter who was at the game was the 14-year-...

"How Obama Got Elected": documentary about Sarah Palin and media malpractice - 02/23/09

Former KFI talk jock John Ziegler has released his documentary "How Obama Got Elected" (link), which apparently contains example after example of the mainstream media lying about and smearing Sarah Palin. If anyone's seen it, please leave a review; note that I wasn't too very impressed with the Zogby poll Ziegler commissioned shortly after the election. The trailer is attached; see also the early...

Greg Mitchell misleads about MSM smears of Sarah Palin ("Why Obama Won") - 02/15/09

... part of that campaign. See the Sarah Palin smear page for a partial list.

Patt Morrison's greatest journalistic accomplishment: getting a thrift shop to change their name (Sarah Palin) - 02/14/09

During the campaign, Sarah Palin said that her favorite place to shop was a thrift store in Anchorage called ''Out of the Closet". I happen to know that there's also a chain of gay-benefiting shops in Los Angeles by the same name. If I had initiated the process whereby that chain considered filing a trademark infringement case against the Alaska store and that store had then changed their name to...

Ex-McCain strategist John Weaver: Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh are "extreme right" - 01/27/09

From July 2007 (link): For the past decade, John Weaver had been Senator John McCain’s chief strategist, the man behind the whole Straight Talk barnstorming shtick that made the conservative Arizonan a media star. Then, after building McCain into an apparent shoo-in for the Republican nomination—a maverick savior for his party—he sank the campaign into debt and disarray, leading to his...

Zogby poll shows how misinformed Obama's supporters are (and is yet another example of Obama's opponents making mistakes) - 11/19/08

John Ziegler - a former KFI talk jock who was pushed out after a dispute with John & Ken - has a video documentary including interviews with Barack Obama supporters showing how ignorant and/or misinformed they are. His site (link) also includes a Zogby poll he commissioned that tries to show the same thing. Unfortunately, some of the questions that are supposedly true either aren't true or...

Michael Crowley/TNR falls for obvious hoax (source of Sarah Palin smears) - 11/10/08

The New Republic - home to a long series of reprehensible folks like James Kirchick and Jason Zengerle - has fallen for another hoax. This time around, Michael Crowley offers the post "Even More Palin Cluelessness" (blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/archive/2008/11/10/even-more-palin-cluelessness.aspx, via HotAir) about a supposed former McCain campaign advisor admitting that he was the source...

Washington Post admits coverage tilted to Obama, doesn't admit their incredibly biased coverage for him and their lies for him - 11/08/08

Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell offers "An Obama Tilt in Campaign Coverage" (link). Unfortunately, about the only "tilt" she admits to is in the amount of coverage. She almost completely ignores the fact that the Washington Post served as little more than an arm of the Obama campaign by lying and misleading on his behalf and by serving as the source for and amplifier of smears. About...

New smear: Palin didn't know Africa was a continent or the three countries in NAFTA - 11/05/08

[IMPORTANT UPDATE BELOW] An unnamed John McCain aide supposedly told Carl Cameron of Fox News - a tool if there ever was one - that Sarah Palin didn't know that Africa was a continent instead of a country. The aide also told him that she didn't know which countries were in NAFTA. Needless to say, this comes on the heels of a long line of smears against Palin, and it's almost assuredly a smear as...

Sarah Palin cleared in Troopergate - 11/03/08

From this: A new report just released -- hours before the polls open on Election Day -- exonerates Gov.

Did Barack Obama flip the bird to John McCain? (give the finger) - 11/03/08

Back in April, Barack Obama might have "flipped the bird"/"given the finger" to Hillary Clinton. In September, BHO said "You can put lipstick on a pig, itaBack in April, Barack Obama might have "flipped the bird"/"given the finger" to Hillary Clinton. In September, BHO said "You can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig" (link) in what was probably a swipe at Sarah Palin. His supporters know...

ADN: AP Palin story on pipeline bids was "remarkably skewed" (Justin Pritchard, Garance Burke) - 11/01/08

The Anchorage Daily News - a paper that's endorsed Obama - offers "Misfire at Palin" (link) about last week's Associated Press "investigation" from Justin Pritchard and Garance Burke about bids for a major Alaskan pipeline project [1]. This report from The Associated Press is a remarkably skewed account with little new information to support the charge it implies. Presumably, readers are...

Don't donate to Goodwill Industries (Palin smear) - 10/28/08

How could anyone encourage people not to donate to Goodwill Industries? Well, because they spent the money they received in past donations on smear ad campaigns like the one described here. The two page ad features "Dear Sarah Palin, We eagerly await your $150,000 clothing donation on Nov. 5th" in the left pane and "Dear Barack Obama, If you'd care to donate any of your $1,500 suits on Nov. 5th,...

Naomi Wolf: Sarah Palin - not Obama - will usher in a police state - 10/28/08

Ah, the HuffPost. Other than scraps of paper on laundromat walls the only place where Naomi Wolf could write 'The Battle Plan II: Sarah "Evita" Palin, the Muse of the Coming Police State' (link): Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah "Evita" Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state... Reports confirmed my suspicions: Palin, not...

Keith Olbermann lies, says Sarah Palin is a socialist and described Alaska that way - 10/28/08

This site doesn't normally track the lies of Keith Olbermann since there are so many and no one outside his bubble trusts anything he says. However, sometimes he crosses the line, as he did with tonight's "Olbermann on Palin: Socialist, fraud/Governor doesn't have a problem with Alaska's socialistic collectivism" (link) which contains this: Who was the collectivist share-the-wealther, who was...

Alexander Lane, Amy Hollyfield/Politifact spin redistribution for Obama - 10/28/08

Alexander Lane and Amy Hollyfield of Politifact continue to show that that "fact checking" site might as well be working for the Barack Obama campaign by offering 'Obama would "experiment with socialism."/The McCain campaign experiments with dishonesty' (politifact.org/truth-o-meter/statements/826). It's another example of the MSM taking a statement that wasn't phrased in a painfully legalistic...

Palin's wardrobe: $150,000. Obama's trips to Hawaii: $800,000. Obama at Invesco: $5.3 million - 10/27/08

The fact that Sarah Palin and/or her GOP helpers spent $150,000 or so on her wardrobe should be a very minor matter. Except, it isn't because the BHO campaign and their surrogates in the MSM have blown it into a major "scandal". Meanwhile, they've ignored the cost of Obama's trips to Hawaii: $800,000 (link).

Paging Andrew Sullivan, MSM: Palin in a noose - 10/26/08

Chad Michael Morrisette of West Hollywood shows how low "liberals" are willing to go with the following Halloween decoration of Sarah Palin in a noose (link): Wonderfully "liberal" person that he is, he also has a display of John McCain emerging from flames of some kind. Now awaiting the condemnation from "liberals" in 3,023,094,392,393... 3,023,094,392,392... UPDATE: New frontiers in vetting...

ZOMG! Sarah Palin wears donkey scarf at Reno rally! (Democrats!) - 10/23/08

OMG! OMG! At a rally in Reno, Sarah Palin wore a donkey-themed scarf, just like the Democratic Party's logo! The mindless, Obama-supporting drones across the internet are using this as yet another instance of their attempts to portray Palin as the new Dan Quayle. Just one problem: there's the strong possibility that some cute little prankster planted it on her.

Drew Griffin/CNN smears Sarah Palin with completely out-of-context National Review quote - 10/21/08

Drew Griffin of CNN recently conducted an interview with Sarah Palin and asked her this: Governor, you've been mocked in the press, the press has been pretty hard on you, the Democrats have been pretty hard on you, but also some conservatives have been pretty hard on you as well. The National Review had a story saying that, you know, I can't tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid,...

Is Jimmy Lee Shreeve trustworthy, or does he just make things up? (Sarah Palin) - 10/21/08

Jimmy Lee Shreeve wrote an article for England's Telegraph yesterday ("Sarah Palin: Pointing a loaded gun at the environment?", link via this) which contained this completely fabricated Palin quote: "magnificent, cuddly white bears are doing just fine and don't need our protection. If the ice melts, they'll adapt to living on the land." That article went on to get over 3300 Diggs. While the...

Dana Milbank/WaPO lied about Secret Service; may have lied about "kill him" - 10/18/08

Showing once again that it's the dumb ones that give the game away, on the 16th Dana Milbank of the Washington Post claimed the following during an online chat: In cooperation with the Palin campaign, [the Secret Service has] started preventing reporters from leaving the press section to interview people in the crowd. As could be expected, various "liberal" sites rushed to retransmit Milbank's...

Rachel d'Oro/AP's sleazy race-baiting to support Barack Obama - 10/18/08

Rachel d'Oro of the Associated Press offers an extremely sleazy, disreputable, race-baiting article called "Alaska's minorities feel ignored by Palin" (link). Articles like this show exactly how a Barack Obama presidency would operate: surrogates - assisted by the mainstream media - would attempt to racialize every decision made by Obama in an attempt to silence critics. Alaska's black leaders...

Live coverage: John McCain/Barack Obama Hofstra "debate", 10/15/08 - 10/15/08

Live coverage of the "debate" at Hofstra University between John McCain and Barack Obama commences now. McCain is taking BHO to task for the "Sarah Palin is a ****" t-shirts and for BHO's implication of widespread rabble-rousing at McCain/Palin rallies. And, BHO is stumbling. He indeed has a "glass jaw", yet no one wants to take advantage of his lack of experience at being challenged. "Let's get...

No class: Barack Obama supporters boo Sarah Palin, eight-year old daughter - 10/11/08

Some might question why the Philadelphia Flyers were celebrating hockey moms instead of getting to the game. Some might question why Sarah Palin was bringing her daughters out onto the ice.

CQ Transcriptions/NYT/CNN made transcript "error" for Palin/Biden debate (no funny business at all!) - 10/11/08

As pointed out here, the transcripts of the Sarah Palin/Joe Biden debate from both CNN and the New York Times contained a rather curious "error".