Sarah Palin

Fox News Recycles The Sarah Palin VP Script – Changes The Name To Paul Ryan

Posted by on August 16, 2012 at 1:03 pm. 1 Comments :

Professional marketers know that when you’ve got a winning product, stick with it. However that doesn’t explain what Fox News is doing with their promotion of Paul Ryan.

The Sarah Palin script was a non-stop parade of effusive flattery for her appearance, her stage presence, and the fresh invigoration she allegedly brought to the doddering campaign of John McCain. Fox News considered her a “rock star” who was the “future of the party.” Rich Lowry of the National Review was bewitched:

“I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, ‘Hey, I think she just winked at me.’ And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America.”

Unfortunately, what Fox appears to have forgotten was that Palin lost. When a campaign goes so dreadfully wrong it makes no sense to reprise it four years later with an even less appealing subject. What’s more, Palin is widely believed to have been a drag on the ticket, and she is now a washed up reality TV star and Fox News contributor who isn’t even invited to the GOP convention. Perhaps Ryan should be more worried than flattered.

Nevertheless, Fox has dusted off the Palin script, changed the names to Paul Ryan, and started the whole loser campaign over again. Only this time the “manly” men on Fox have to awkwardly profess their adoring attraction to another man who is best known for being a numbers wonk.

Will Fox calling Ryan a rock star propel him to victory? Will Lowry see starbursts and imagine Ryan winking at him? Will recycling the Palin script work any better on a budget committee chairman than it did on an Alaskan former beauty queen runner-up? I guess we’ll find out in about two and a half months. In the meantime, I hope that Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly can control themselves.

Sarah Palin Wants One Name Of A Hostile Republican. OK: Sarah Palin

Posted by on August 15, 2012 at 12:39 pm. 5 Comments :

Washed up GOP VP loser, half-term governor, and failed TV reality show star, Sarah Palin, appeared on Fox News last night with her friend Greta Van Susteren. The conversation turned to some of the nastiness on the campaign trail that Palin thinks is exclusively on the side of the Democrats. In a hilarious demonstration of self-delusion, Palin said…

“Name one — name one prominent Republican who even comes close to what like the Alan Graysons, the Harry Reids, the Joe Bidens come up with and spew to the American public. I can’t think of one prominent Republican who talks the way that they talk.”

Sarah Palin

Name one? OK: “Sarah Palin.” The woman who accused Barack Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” And earlier this year she said “Nancy Pelosi is a dingbat,” and that President Obama is “a tool.” And she repeatedly calls anyone with whom she has an ideological disagreement a socialist. Sarah Palin is about the most vituperative, mean-spirited, mud-slinger in America today. And she can’t think of a single name of a prominent Republican who fits that description. Well, in her defense, she did specify a “prominent Republican.” And she’s the same person who couldn’t think a single newspaper or magazine she had read.

In case Palin is interested in any other names, she might want to look into Allen West, who was her top choice for Romney’s running mate. West has called half the Democrats in congress communists and accused them of being aligned with Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. And I would also refer Palin to Michele Bachmann, Joe Walsh, Virginia Fox, Louis Gohmert, and Herman Cain. Then there are media figures like Rush Limbaugh who called a college student a slut and a prostitute, and Glenn Beck who called the President a racist.

There are way too many instances of Republicans descending into the most vile disparagement and hate-speech to list them all. Yet Palin can’t come up with a single name. And what makes that especially disturbing is that her own name would be at the top of the list. In this same segment with Van Susteren, Palin called Obama a socialist and defended “these powerful and truthful and accurate words to describe what President Obama is running on and what he is doing to America.” And how much more insulting can you get than to call someone a pal of terrorists?

Seriously, why does anyone pay any attention to this idiot?

The Alaska Mistake Mouths Off: Sarah Palin Finally Responds To Dick Cheney

Posted by on August 1, 2012 at 10:12 am. 1 Comments :

Sarah PalinIt took 72 hours, but Sarah Palin has finally responded to the blunt assessment of her by former Vice-President Dick Cheney. Palin visited the friendly territory of Fox News, and her old pal Greta Van Susteren, to swing back at Cheney who told ABC News that her selection as John McCain’s running mate was “a mistake.” Cheney does have a gift for understatement.

In the course of the interview Palin went out of her way to insult Cheney by saying that his remarks about her were the result of his having been “convinced” of a “false narrative” by “the lamestream media.” Cheney may be many things (many terrible, frightening things), but he does not tend to swallow prepackaged media presentations. Rather, he is more likely to invent them himself. Nevertheless, Palin tossed out her usual word-salad saying…

“Here’s where the mistake would have been, Greta, I believe. It’s had I not answered the call. I was honored to get to run for Vice President of the United States alongside Senator John McCain. I was honored to accept the nomination from the GOP.”

Palin seems to think that the mistake Cheney referenced was that she accepted the VP nomination, rather than McCain offering it to her in the first place. That sort of incoherent misunderstanding validates Cheney’s opinion of her. But Palin wasn’t finished. She went on to glorify herself and the sacrifice she undertook to become a major party candidate for vice-president.

“It would have been a mistake to have hunkered down, just lived that luxurious, if you will, comfortable lifestyle in Alaska.”

Of course, we now know that Palin gleefully exploited the notoriety she attained from the nomination. She peddled her books and speaking engagements. She signed a multimillion dollar deal with Fox News. She starred in laughably inept reality TV programs. She increased her net worth many times over, yet recalls wistfully her “luxurious” lifestyle in Alaska. Is anyone really buying this tripe?

LMFAO: Sarah Palin Calls Nancy Pelosi A ‘Dingbat’ – No, Really!

Posted by on July 1, 2012 at 10:54 am. 10 Comments :

Sarah Palin’s Friday appearance on Sean Hannity may have produced the funniest moment of the year. In response to a question about how Congress and Mitt Romney should deal with the Supreme Court’s ruling that ObamaCare is constitutional, Palin took a bit of a detour:

Hannity: Politically speaking, how should Congress deal with this, and how should the Romney campaign deal with it if you were to give advice?
Palin: Well, first off, Nancy Pelosi is a dingbat. And she is the perfect spokesperson for this whole agenda of the far-left running the Democrat Party.

Really? A former Miss America runner-up who quit her job as governor mid-term, failed at both presidential politics and reality TV, is calling the first woman Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives a dingbat? That’s a little bit like Charles Manson calling Mother Theresa a mentally deranged butcher.

Sarah Palin Dingbat

And if that weren’t bad enough, Palin also made a disparaging, phallus-related insult directed at President Obama:

“About the 15% of Americans who aren’t paying taxes and are feeding from President Obama’s hands, perhaps they will vote for such a tool.”

I’m not sure where Palin is getting that 15% number, considering that the latest national polls show Obama well ahead of Romney, and the state-by-state electoral college surveys put Obama just shy of victory. But even more disturbing than her made up statistics, and her profane insults, is her characterization of America’s poor as akin to animals “feeding” out of the President’s hands. That’s pretty much how she and the Tea Party/GOP view the less fortunate in our society. And paraphrasing Palin: She is the perfect spokesperson for this whole agenda of the far-right running the Republic Party. And in this interview with Hannity she sounds like she’s … er … medicated. Which may explain her endorsement of radio wingnut Mark Levin for vice-president.

GOP Chairman Rush Limbaugh Chides Democrats For Straying From Message

Posted by on June 4, 2012 at 7:52 pm. 3 Comments :

In an exercise of Olympian hypocrisy, Rush Limbaugh, the de facto chairman of the Republican Party, spent much of his radio program today lambasting Democrats who he alleges have gotten off message or, even worse, “endorsed” Mitt Romney. Chairman Rush’s unique and dishonest means of expressing this observation is to say that the offending Democrat was “taken to the woodshed.”

“So it looks like Bill Clinton, ladies and gentlemen, was taken to the woodshed. Bill Clinton was taken to the Cory Booker Memorial Woodshed for endorsing Romney last week. You’ve got to wonder, what is in this woodshed to get so many people to change their tunes so quickly? It’s gotta be a pretty big woodshed. All these Democrats have been taken to the woodshed. In Clinton’s case, it could almost be anything in that woodshed: pictures, stained dresses. The mind boggles.”

Oh boy, is that Rush fella a barrel of laughs, or what? Although, I haven’t figured out exactly what he’s talking about when he says “All these Democrats…” The only ones that Chairman Rush identifies are Clinton and Booker, and neither of them were taken to a woodshed, or anywhere else. They have always been, and continue to be strong supporters of President Obama. Clinton even said that if Romney were elected it would be “a calamity for the country and the world.” I suppose that’s what Chairman Rush considers an endorsement because, on the GOP side, so many of Romney’s supporters have been achingly public about how much they hate him. It was Newt Gingrich who called Romney a “Massachusetts Moderate.” And Rick Perry called him a “Vulture Capitalist.”

But the really striking departure from reality for Chairman Rush is that no one exemplifies the persona of a strongman dictator better than Rush himself. Last year there were several high-ranking GOP leaders who were called to come before their master and grovel for forgiveness. They included Michael Steele, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Darrel Issa, Mark Sanford, Phil Gingrey, and even Sarah Palin, who excused Rush’s use of the word “retard,” so long as it was used against liberals.

Even if what Limbaugh is saying were true, it would not be particularly surprising for the President to express his desire that his surrogates be aligned with his agenda. He is the candidate and the leader of the party. However, it is appallingly inappropriate for a radio loudmouth to make actual politicians cower before him and seek his blessing. Limbaugh may think he’s cute with his “Cory Booker Memorial Woodshed” business, but it’s Limbaugh who invented the concept and still demands that Republicans subject themselves to his dominance or face the “Rush Limbaugh Memorial Waterboard Shed.” And the sad part is that the Republicans so willingly acquiesce to Limbaugh’s authority.

Most Hysterical Headline Of The Year: Palin Pulverizes Obama

Posted by on May 22, 2012 at 4:42 am. 18 Comments :

I know it’s only May, but this is going to be tough to beat:

Fox Nation

How anyone could take seriously the notion that Sarah Palin would provide any intellectual competition for President Obama is utterly unfathomable. This is the woman who thinks that a “gotcha” question is “What newspapers do you read?” This is the woman who thought that Africa was a country. This is the woman who thinks the vice-president is in charge of the Senate. And now Fox thinks that her nearly incoherent rambling on Sean Hannity’s program represents some sort of victory – and not just a victory, but a pulverization.

Fox Nation is fond of overextending itself with puerile hyperbole, but this is so far removed from reality that the guys with butterfly nets must not be far behind. The subject of the discussion was Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s remarks criticizing Obama for attacking Mitt Romney on his business resume, and specifically on Bain Capital. Booker was wrong on the substance of his criticism and went completely out of bounds when he conflated the right-wing’s obsession over Jeremiah Wright with the legitimate criticisms of Romney’s tenure at Bain. Booker later clarified what he meant and reiterated his support for Obama. Ignoring that, Palin referenced Booker as well as Democrats Harold Ford and Steve Rattner in an attempt to suggest that they were anti-Obama. She said…

“His surrogates there come from, in many respects the private sector, and each one of those individuals does have a lot of private sector experience, unlike their leader Barack Obama.”

Well, it was nice of her to praise these surrogates so highly. Indeed, they do have a lot of private sector experience. And what’s more, they all endorse Obama for reelection. So if we are to accept Palin’s commentary that these are intelligent, experienced people with insight into business and economics, then we should, therefore, be sure to vote for Obama in November.

Thanks for your support, Sarah. And thanks for a pulverizing so thorough that it whipped back around and transformed into an endorsement. Seriously, after seeing this I have to wonder if Palin would even know what pulverize means. Clearly the editors at Fox Nation don’t.

Today Show Ratings Down With Sarah Palin As Guest Host

Posted by on April 4, 2012 at 3:10 pm. 10 Comments :

Sarah PalinYesterday Sarah Palin was the guest co-host of the Today Show on NBC. It was a desperation move on the part of NBC who was reacting to ABC’s booking of Katie Couric for the whole of this week. And apparently it didn’t do them much good.

The Today Show won the time period as expected. They have long been the #1 morning network news program with ABC’s Good Morning America coming in second. However, the ratings for Tuesday on the Today show were 5.497 million total viewers, and 2.209 million in the 25-54 year old demo. That’s down from their average for the February 2012 sweeps period (5.55 Total/2.47 Demo). So Palin obviously didn’t do anything to help out the program.

By comparison, Good Morning America was able to beat their February sweeps average in total viewers with the help of Couric. Tuesday’s program pulled in 5.141 million viewers with 1.917 million in the demo. That was an improvement in total viewers over their February sweeps averages (5.03 Total/2.05 Demo).

So if anyone were analyzing the benefits of the bookings for these programs, it is clear that ABC got more out of Couric than NBC did from Palin. That may seem to be a predictable result since America mostly hates Palin and Couric is America’s sweetheart. But Palin doesn’t help herself by appearing on NBC and twice referring to “the failed socialist policies” of President Obama. And I can’t believe that doing cooking segments with Tori Spelling do much to improve her image either.

The sooner the media (and Palin) realizes that Palin is old news and has nothing to offer, the sooner they can quit pretending that she has some sort of relevance that they can exploit. By all indications NBC might have done better in the ratings with Kim Kardashian or Octomom as a co-host.

April Fools? Sarah Palin To Co-Host NBC’s Today Show

Posted by on April 1, 2012 at 9:34 am. 1 Comments :

As I was planning out an elaborate hoax for April Fool’s day, I came across this video and decided that NBC had beaten me to it: Sarah Palin Co-hosts TODAY on Tuesday.

The video is posted on the NBC News YouTube channel, so it isn’t a product of Saturday Night Live or The Daily Show. There is, however, no indication of it being a joke. Nevertheless, there are reasons to be suspicious.

First and foremost, why on earth would any allegedly credible news enterprise employ Sarah Palin as a host? Sure, she fits right in as a political analyst at Fox News because their prerequisite for political analysts is to be either ignorant or dishonest. Palin has both of those criteria covered. And she can assume hosting duties of an Alaskan travelogue where she spends her time hurling dead fish across the deck of a boat (or maybe not since that show was canceled after the first season with steadily declining ratings). But hosting a news program, even one that is jammed with trivialities and traffic reports, seems above her capabilities.

Secondly, Palin is still under contract to Fox News. Her exclusivity has been exercised on a strict basis, keeping her from appearing on most other media, even for an interview. She has appeared only once on one of the non-Fox Sunday news programs in this election cycle. When she made her announcement that she was not going to be a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination on Mark Levin’s radio show, her boss, Roger Ailes, exploded with rage saying that “I paid her for two years to make this announcement on my network.” It seems unlikely that her appearance as a co-host on a competing network (especially their nemesis, NBC) would be permitted under the circumstances.

Of course the primary reason that Palin doesn’t do other media is that she is unable to form a coherent thought and knows that she would embarrass herself by attempting to do so. Any news anchor other than a friendly Fox colleague would stump her mercilessly by asking gotcha questions like “What do you think about that, Sarah?”

I have no evidence that the promo for Palin’s Today Show stint is anything but genuine, but I still can’t shake the feeling that it’s a prank. If it is real then it’s a depressing devolution of integrity by the mainstream media (if that’s possible). There is simply no justification for elevating Palin to this role when she has no experience or talent for it. It could be considered a desperate ploy for ratings, but the Today Show is already #1 and, thus, not desperate (perhaps CBS should have tried to snag her). The only thing this booking serves to accomplish for NBC is to provide conclusive proof as to who the fools are this April. One way or another.

Not So Breitbart: Branding Sandra Fluke A Retroactive Public Figure

Posted by on March 22, 2012 at 4:25 am. 12 Comments :

The legacy of Andrew Breitbart is safe in the hands of those who have assumed control of his Internet enterprise. It’s that legacy of lies, defamation, and ignorance, that endures in articles like the one posted yesterday that asserts that Sandra Fluke was a public figure when Rush Limbaugh broadcast a vile commentary that referred to her as a slut and a prostitute. And thus, she is fair game for libelous attacks.

It is rather dumbfounding that even after Limbaugh made an (insincere and weak) expression of regret, even after his advertisers have abandoned him in droves, apologists like the Breitbrats are still defending his boorish misogyny.

The column by William Bigelow begins by mocking President Obama for advocating public discourse “that doesn’t involve you being demeaned and insulted. Particularly when you’re a private citizen.” Bigelow then makes the argument that there is a legal basis for Fluke to be considered a public figure. He cites a Supreme Court opinion in the case of Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., which addressed the standards of libel for defamatory statements. In refuting the representation of Fluke as a private citizen, Bigelow wrote…

“According to the Supreme Court in Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974), public figures include those who ‘have thrust themselves into the forefront of particular public controversies in order to influence the resolution of the issues involved … they invite attention and comment.'”

Consistent with the Breitbartian proclivity for misrepresentation and taking edited content out of context, Bigelow deliberately quoted a brief portion of the opinion that described a commonly held view of what might constitute a public figure, but he left out the conclusive language that found that the plaintiff was not, in fact, a public person:

“We would not lightly assume that a citizen’s participation in community and professional affairs rendered him a public figure for all purposes. Absent clear evidence of general fame or notoriety in the community, and pervasive involvement in the affairs of society, an individual should not be deemed a public personality for all aspects of his life.”

The court found definitively that Gertz, was not a public figure. Nevertheless, Bigelow cites this case to try to prove that Fluke, who was unknown to the public when she was prohibited from appearing before a congressional committee hearing that almost nobody would have seen anyway, was a public figure.

It is not the least bit surprising that Bigelow chose this particular case with which to deceive his readers. The plaintiff, Elmer Gertz, was an attorney who had represented the family of man who was murdered by a Chicago police officer. The respondent, Robert Welch, Inc., is better known as the John Birch Society, a virulently racist and McCarthyesque anti-communist organization. I’m sure that the Breitbrats have a great affinity for the Birchers.

Next Bigelow makes a bold attempt to assert that Sarah Palin is not a public figure. Seriously! Sarah Palin, who was governor of Alaska and a candidate for Vice-President of the United States. Sarah Palin who is currently a Fox News political analyst and still floats hints of running for office. Bigelow contends that “Palin was just as much a private citizen as Fluke,” because she is no longer a governor. Sometimes the addled logic of these cretins is physically painful.

What apparently set Bigelow off on all of this is a statement Fluke made at a forum in Washington, D.C., where she said…

“Numerous American women have actually written to me in the last few weeks saying that I should run for office, and maybe someday I will.”

To which Bigelow sarcastically added, “Sandra Fluke. Private citizen. Yeah, right.” So it was that statement on which Bigelow based the entire premise of his article, as well as his assertion that Fluke was a public figure, even at the time that Limbaugh broadcast his attack. And that was all that was necessary for him to jump to the absurd conclusion that Fluke was somehow retroactively a public figure because weeks afterwards she would speculate that “someday” she “might” run for office.

What is really amazing about this is that anyone actually regards the Breitbrats as having any credibility whatsoever. After their promotion of deceitfully edited videos about ACORN, Shirley Sherrod, etc.; after their embarrassing episode with Hug-Gate, the Derrick Bell non-scandal; and now this incoherent excuse to prop up their hero Rush Limbaugh despite nearly universal condemnation of his abhorrent behavior, the fact that there are still some people who pay any attention at all to the Breitbrats is a sad commentary on a certain sector of the human race.

Rush Limbaugh: Digging Sarah Palin Up From The Grave

Posted by on March 14, 2012 at 11:01 am. 2 Comments :

In a desperate play for attention, Rush Limbaugh has taken to defending Fox News analyst Sarah Palin, who was recently the subject of a Democratic fundraising video. However, the form of Limbaugh’s defense may be not be particularly complimentary.

Rush Limbaugh

Limbaugh: Barack Obama is running a re-elect ad against Sarah Palin who is not running. So it’s time now for them to have a new demon. In this case, they’ve got to go back to the graveyard, dig Sarah Palin back up.

The graveyard? I wonder how Palin’s Facebook ghost writers will respond to this insult. Limbaugh is echoing the same sentiment that Fox News expressed yesterday on their Fox Nation web site when they complained that “Four years later, President Obama is still running against Sarah Palin.” The general consensus among these conservatives is that Palin is a has-been who is not worthy of attention, despite her current employment by Fox News and her hints that she would accept the GOP nomination for president at a brokered convention.

Limbaugh continued his remarks regarding Palin to assert that there is conspiracy to demean the woman he regards as irrelevant:

“And it’s bouncing off of the HBO movie, Game Change. Which is all part of the plan. It’s all part of a brilliantly conceived plan that they hope will be a flawlessly executed plan. Now they’ve got the movie based on the book, Game Change. And it makes Palin and all these Republicans look like idiots. The heroes in that movie are the people who are portrayed as knowing Palin was the wrong choice, and admitting that Palin’s stupid.”

For the record, the characterization of Palin in the book and movie, Game Change, has been affirmed by the Republican campaign strategists for McCain/Palin and her own handlers. If there is a conspiracy it is being orchestrated from the right, not the White House.

The real problem that Limbaugh is dealing with is his own irrelevancy. In the past couple of weeks he has lost more than a hundred advertisers due to his boorish misogyny. His show is running with cheap local ads, free public service announcements, and even dead air. Nevertheless, Limbaugh and his supporters are steadfast in their insistence that none of this has hurt Limbaugh or his show. Fox Nation posted an article claiming, without any evidence whatsoever, that he has “Has the Biggest Audience He’s Had in Years.” But we’ve heard that kind of denial before: