Now that The Daily Caller has exposed the Journolist group for their collaborated effort to destroy Governor Palin on the day Senator McCain announced her as his running mate, members of the lamestream media are spinning to cover their tails. David Corn of Politics Daily is one such yahoo. Rather than admit that deciding to affect an election by scheming and lying about one candidate while covering up the buttocks of another is just, well, nasty, he points his finger at Palin as if she had no reason to take umbrage at the media's behavior. In typical Lefty fashion, Corn attempts to turn the tables and writes a hit piece called "Palin's Shocking Admission: Not Tough Enough to Be President."
He rants:
Sarah Palin can't expect anyone to take her seriously as a presidential candidate -- not after what she said this week.
In recent days, the former Alaska governor and Tea Party fave has been on a tear against Journolist, a list-serv for nearly 500 journalists, policy wonks and academics, most of whom are self-identified liberals working for self-identified liberal outfits. The participants on this off-the-record e-mail chain promoted their work, debated politics and policy (occasionally quite sharply), and traded and tested ideas for articles and columns. Last month, The Daily Caller, a conservative website, began running articles based on Journolist archives it somehow obtained. Some conservatives immediately denounced Journolist as a secret cabal that established a party line for the dreaded liberal media.
[...]
Palin's blast revealed deep ignorance. Journolistas were generally not prominent MSMers. And the few prominent journalists who were part of Journolist were mostly already known as commentators of a liberal bent. Yet Palin was pretending that Journolist was evidence of an MSM cabal. Worst, she tweeted, "forget freedom of speech and freedom of the press if these yahoos ever get their way in America."
During an interview with The Daily Caller, she went further, calling Journolisters "sick puppies" -- as she reacted to another article on the now-defunct list-serv revealing e-mail messages sent the day John McCain surprisingly picked Palin to be his running mate. In these e-mails, several participants -- including two Mother Jones reporters who worked for me at the time -- pondered why McCain had picked Palin and what would be an effective critique of her. That liberal reporters would privately discuss how best to criticize a conservative politician whose policies they oppose does not strike me as shocking. In fact, I am certain that during the 2008 campaign journalists at conservative media outfits talked among themselves about how best to puncture Obama.
So is David Corn arguing that Governor Palin showed deep ignorance because she expected liberal journalists to behave ethically? Perhaps he has a point there--if he's saying that many have shown of late to be incapable of ethical behavior. Surely he isn't making the case that liberal journalists are supposed to purposely impact an election, is he? He blasts the Governor for commenting on the sick puppies' sessions brainstorming "how best to criticize" a candidate. He couldn't possibly be equating criticizing a politician with campaigning to destroy one, could he? Does he think we're that stupid? David Corn, rather than revealing any ignorance on Governor Palin's part, places his own on display.
Furthermore, to excuse the behavior of his group, he points his crooked finger at conservative media outlets, saying he is "certain" they plotted to hurt Obama. Well, Mr. Corn's certainty means absolutely nothing. Where are those emails? Where's his proof? Where are the articles exposing conservatives for such despicable behavior? I imagine if these things existed, we'd all have heard about it by now--if not before, certainly after the Journolist emails became public knowledge. So, I'll just make an educated guess and say they don't exist, and since they don't, David Corn has no leg to stand on. He's simply talking out of his butt to divert attention from the real issue.
Final note to this loon: Governor Palin is not tough enough to be president? Dude, you couldn't possibly stand up under the weight she has endured--wife, mother of five, hunter, running a city, governing a state, energy expert, VP nominee, Tea Party activist, and survivor of the likes of you who conspire daily to pick away at the toughness you say doesn't exist. Dude, you couldn't carry the Governor's shoes, much less her resume'. Go sit down 'cause we don't take you seriously.
If you can stomach it, the full Corn-y article is here.
Now contrast that yahoo's article with this IBD editorial:
Media Bias: Ever wonder why 2008 VP candidate Sarah Palin was so ridiculed before much was known about her? Turns out liberal journalists engaged in a coordinated smear campaign to aid the Democratic ticket.
When we talked with Alaska's then-governor in the summer of 2008 about plans to develop her state's energy resources, she came across like most other Alaskans we've met — frank, down-to-earth, colloquial, but more than technocratically knowledgeable about the energy field.
The issue then for Gov. Palin was how to balance the development of Alaska's bountiful resources with its near-pristine environment. She also wrestled with how to create a healthy business climate in a state with a history of political corruption involving oil companies.
We detected a sense of duty as Palin spoke of bringing natural gas to the Lower 48, and we were impressed with the way she spoke authoritatively about Alaska's polar bear population and compassionately about the well-being of native Alaskans. We also interviewed longtime nonpolitical Alaskan bureaucrats who raved about working with the governor and praised her executive ability.
Sound like the Sarah Palin you read about when she was chosen as John McCain's running mate that fall? Hardly.
Suddenly Palin became a backwoods Christian fundamentalist hillbilly with five kids who couldn't possibly be who she said she was. Her intelligence was attacked, her accomplishments belittled, her verbal slips ridiculed, her family's privacy invaded and her clean record smeared with accusations of corruption, all of which proved false.
Now it's clear what was really going on. On Thursday, the Daily Caller published exchanges from a private forum called JournoList that showed how 400 top mainstream reporters and their activist buddies conspired in an attack against Palin the minute she entered the presidential race.
The piece goes on to explain what we have come to learn from the good work of The Daily Caller--which I highlighted here--how Journolist purposely protected their man, President Obama, and tried to rip Governor Palin to shreds.
But somehow David Corn thinks that such actions were acceptable and that Palin is a wimp for having the nerve to speak out against it. Somehow he doesn't see anything wrong with this smear campaign designed to dupe the American people. Pretty sad for someone so "progressive" to be so stupid. But I'm all about helping a brother out, so I will. The IBD article goes on to say:
There are so many things wrong with this, we hardly know where to start. Nominally competitors, these supposedly impartial media mavens colluded in a way that would put airline or insurance officials in the dock for anti-competitive practices. They engaged in activism instead of fact-finding and mixed incestuously with activists whom they also should have been covering impartially.
Worst of all, they deprived millions of Americans of the information they needed to size up this new face on the political scene and determine if she really was a candidate who represented their interests.
That still remains to be done — and the country is poorer for it.
Read the full IBD article here.
I hope Corn gets it now, but something tells me he doesn't--and that's exactly the problem with the lamestream media. For too many of them, the end justifies the means--regardless of the damage done to people, families, and the American public--all of whom deserve better.
(h/t Josh Painter and C4P)
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