Tag: Sarah Palin

More on the Palins and the AIP

John McCain’s campaign staffers are pushing back hard on Jake Tapper’s ABC News report that Sarah Palin had once been a member of the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP), which tells you all you need to know about how toxic they fear this issue will become.

Kate Klonick, writing for TPM Muckraker, has now verified that Todd Palin was a member from 1995 through 2002. What’s still hanging out there is this: the McCain camp also denies that Sarah Palin attended the party’s state convention in Wasilla in 1994 — but Tapper’s got three on-the-record witnesses who say they saw her there.

And so it continues.

Media Nation was talking a little while ago with a friend whom I would describe as slightly right of center and deeply versed in foreign-policy issues. He probably would have voted for McCain if he had chosen Joe Lieberman or, for instance, Condoleezza Rice. Mitt Romney? Maybe.

The Palin choice, though, has driven him into the Obama camp for two reasons: his fear of what would happen if she became president; and what it says about McCain’s judgment.

Jeremiah Wright’s running mate?

Jake Tapper reports that Sarah and Todd Palin are former members of the Alaskan Independence Party, whose motto is “Alaska First — Alaska Always.” The controversy, Tapper says, is over how hard the party has pushed for independence from the United States. But it gets a whole lot better than that.

According to Lynette Clark, a top party official with whom Tapper spoke, the Palins were members in 1994, and attended the party’s statewide convention, in Wasilla, that year. Sarah Palin quit the party in 1996 in order to run for mayor of Wasilla; there is no indication of when she first joined.

Why are these dates important? Because party founder Joe Vogler, who was chairman right up until his death in 1993, was a “sulphurous” presence known for his “‘America be damned’ rhetoric delivered at D-9-cat decibels,” according to an Anchorage Daily News editorial published in 1998.

America be damned? Gee, who does that remind you of? And could the Palins have been ignorant of Vogler’s views in 1994?

To this day, the Alaskan Independence Party’s Web site proudly carries the following quote from Vogler: “I’m an Alaskan, not an American. I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions.” And Tapper found that Palin had sent a video message to the party’s annual convention just last year.

I’m leery of relying on Wikipedia, but, given what we already know about Vogler, this seems safe: he was murdered, and, as he had previously made it clear that he wished not to be buried under the American flag, he was buried instead in the Yukon.

Country first, eh, Sen. McCain?

Let me jump ahead to the defense we can anticipate: the Alaskan Independence Party is part of the cultural milieu of Alaska, it doesn’t mean the same thing to Alaskans as it would to us, Palin is really a patriotic American, blah blah blah. And you know what? I have no trouble believing any of that.*

Just as I had no trouble believing that Barack and Michelle Obama are patriotic Americans despite their long membership in the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church.

*But you know what? On reflection, I wouldn’t be surprised if Palin thought Alaskan independence was kind of a neat idea. That would have been the whole point to joining the party, right?

Thoughts on media rumor-mongering (II)

You may have already heard this, but Sarah Palin has made public the fact that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. Bristol Palin will marry the father, according to CNN.

The report also says that John McCain knew about the pregnancy before choosing Palin as his running mate, and that the decision was made to announce it now because of Internet rumors that Bristol, not Sarah, is the mother of four-month-old Trig.

And that, I hope, is the end of that.

Thoughts on media rumor-mongering

New-media thinker Steve Outing disagrees with my post on Andrew Sullivan, arguing that the days are long gone when the news media could pretend that rumors millions of people are talking about don’t exist. It’s smart and thoughtful, and I suggest you read the whole thing. Outing writes:

Sorry, Dan, I totally disagree. Long gone are the days when “the press” had the power to keep stuff like this under wraps, taking a Father Knows Best approach and not sharing the “sordid” details with the public. This thing is already spreading like wildfire, without being mentioned by mainstream news organizations. It’s going to play out with or without the mainstream press taking part.

This is a strong rumor that’s already got legs. News organizations need to investigate, and if they can confirm that it’s false, they should report it. It doesn’t have to be a big deal or take up a 24-hour news cycle. A simple short story — Palin baby rumor has been debunked — would suffice.

I think he’s wrong, and I’ll explain why in a moment. First, though, as Media Nation reader Kang notes, this so-called story is already falling apart. A Daily Kos diarist — not the one who got all this started — has posted a photo he found at the Free Republic, a conservative Web site, showing Gov. Palin very pregnant with Trig.

With that out of the way, I want to explain why I think it’s not a big deal that nutty stuff like the Palin pregnancy rumor gets hashed out by pseudonymous bloggers at sites like Daily Kos, but that it’s a very big deal when a well-known blogger with journalistic credentials like Sullivan writes about this for a prestigious media outlet like the Atlantic. (Even now, Sullivan, while reluctantly conceding the photographic evidence, smugly tell us that criticism of his ethics is mere “hyper-ventilation.”)

Outing says that “millions of people” were finding out about the rumor anyway. Yes. But the key is that they were finding out about it at a site of haphazard reliability. I am not criticizing Daily Kos (although the diarist who got this rolling clearly has the ethics of a snake). At its best, it’s a place where rumors like these can be hashed out very quickly, and that seems to be what happened here. This is what is meant by the self-correcting nature of the Web.

Who was hurt by Daily Kos? No one, really, because there’s all sorts of misinformation percolating in the tubes (I thought an Alaska reference would be appropriate). What you hope is that the solid stuff will rise to the top, and that it will be proven or debunked. And if it’s debunked, it ought to be done somewhere other than in the mainstream media.

As for what “millions of people” who know about the rumor would think if the media stayed silent, well, I don’t hear any complaints over the lack of an investigative series on 9/11 conspiracy theories. Most people are smart enough to understand that the media would not shy away from a story like Palin’s fake pregnancy if it were true and could be verified.

Note, too, that Sullivan didn’t investigate the rumor. Instead, he slapped it onto the Web site of one of our most prestigious magazines and said, hey, MSM, check this out, OK? “I have claimed nothing,” he self-righteously wrote when people began to call him on it.

Outing cites the traditional media’s failure in the John Edwards story. I’ve written about that myself. On reflection, though, I’m not sure the media could have verified the National Enquirer’s initial report without devoting far more resources to it than it deserved. Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer has written with insight about the media’s role in the Edwards affair, and I recommend it.

Crass political aside: Can you imagine what the effect would have been if the New York Times or the Washington Post had taken on the Palin rumor and it turned out not to be true? Palin would be off-limits for the rest of the campaign.

Finally, I would observe that if the media were to adopt the ethos that nasty rumors like this should be hashed out in public, then they have handed a lethal weapon to rumor-mongers. It’s not difficult to concoct semi-believable garbage. When I saw the first Kos post on the pregnancy rumor, it struck me as credible enough that journalists ought to make a few discreet inquiries.

But if the media were to take up such things routinely and publicly, then there would be much more of it, and we’d never talk about anything else. That’s not what I want, and I don’t think it’s what Outing wants, either. Sullivan? In his case, I’m not so sure.

N.Y. Times whiffs on bridge story

Yesterday the Anchorage Daily News used Sarah Palin’s own words to show that she had been a full-throated supporter of the “Bridge to Nowhere” in her 2006 gubernatorial campaign, even mocking opponents as elitists who didn’t care about the lives of “Valley trash”:

In September, 2006, Palin showed up in Ketchikan on her gubernatorial campaign and said the bridge was essential for the town’s prosperity.

She said she could feel the town’s pain at being derided as a “nowhere” by prominent politicians, noting that her home town, Wasilla, had recently been insulted by the state Senate president, Ben Stevens.

“OK, you’ve got Valley trash standing here in the middle of nowhere,” Palin said, according to an account in the Ketchikan Daily News. “I think we’re going to make a good team as we progress that bridge project.”

So why does the New York Times today weigh in with a weak story, headlined “Account of a Bridge’s Death Slightly Exaggerated,” that leaves you thinking that maybe she did, maybe she didn’t?

Andrew Sullivan goes there

It was only a matter of time before a wild rumor about the Palin family broke into the mainstream. Now the line has been crossed by Andrew Sullivan, who blogs about it at the Atlantic.com. The rumor: Sarah Palin is not the mother of young Trig Palin. The mother is actually her 16-year-old daughter, Bristol.

I strongly believe Sullivan should have laid off this. I could have linked to it yesterday, but didn’t, since at that point it was only fodder for a pseudonymous diarist at the Daily Kos. This is the sort of hurtful story that reputable news organizations should check out thoroughly before injecting into the debate. I mean, come on. Does anyone think Josh Marshall hasn’t been following this? Or dozens of other liberal political blogs and Web sites, including Media Nation? None of us went there, and Sullivan shouldn’t have, either.

Interestingly, the Huffington Post beat Sullivan with a double-reverse flip, raising it only to tut-tut about ethical standards at the Kos.

But now, thanks to Sullivan’s reputation as one of the early blogfathers and the prestige of the Atlantic, this story is, for all intents and purposes, Out There. Which news organization will be the first to debunk it? Or, uh, not?

Instant update: Sullivan is already defending himself:

The job of a press is to ask questions which have a basis in fact. Read for yourself the full chronology here. See whether you are certain there are no legitimate questions worth asking. I have claimed nothing.

Sorry, but it doesn’t wash. The job of the press is to ask questions and then to present its findings to the public — or, in this case, if it found nothing, to do its best to make sure the story never saw the light of day.

If Sullivan was that worked up about about the Palin rumor, he should have e-mailed some reporters he knows and asked if they were on the case. This is the definition of a story that shouldn’t be hashed out publicly.

For the bridge before she was against it

As you may have heard, Alaska’s two largest daily newspapers have published editorials questioning the Sarah Palin choice. The more negative is the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, which says in part:

Most people would acknowledge that, regardless of her charm and good intentions, Palin is not ready for the top job. McCain seems to have put his political interests ahead of the nation’s when he created the possibility that she might fill it.

The Anchorage Daily News isn’t quite so harsh, although this editorial does say “it’s stunning that someone with so little national and international experience might be heartbeat away from the presidency.”

The Daily News also confirms that stories of Palin’s opposition to the “Bridge to Nowhere” are largely fictitious — and that when Palin herself said on Friday, “I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere,” she was, at the very least, leaving the most relevant facts unspoken.

“Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it,” the Daily News reports, telling us, among other things, that her support for the project was a key issue in her successful 2006 gubernatorial campaign. After federal funding was withdrawn, she changed her mind, leading to accusations that did it in a way to attract national attention.

Let’s get real: If federal funding had been withdrawn for the Big Dig, Michael Dukakis and Bill Weld would have been against it.

The Daily News also reports that Walt Monegan, the state commissioner of public safety, whom Palin fired, says both Palin and her husband, Todd Palin, contacted him about her ex-brother-in-law, a state trooper involved in a nasty divorce with Gov. Palin’s sister. Monegan claims he was fired in large measure because of his refusal to get rid of the inconvenient trooper.

This would appear to contradict statements made by both Palins. And there may be e-mails.

Palin favored the “Bridge to Nowhere”

Flummoxed conservatives looking for something nice to say about Sarah Palin cite her opposition to the “Bridge to Nowhere,” a proposed $398 million Alaskan boondoggle that John McCain fought against. For instance, here’s what New York Times columnist David Brooks said on “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” last night:

But what he saw when he looked at her, according to the people I spoke to, is someone who fights the same fights I fight. The first gateway sort of fight that he thought they have in common was the bridge to nowhere. He’s been talking about that for years. She’s the one who killed it.

Wrong. As The New Republic’s Bradford Plumer shows, citing reports from the Anchorage Daily News and Palin’s own official statement, Palin supported the bridge at every step, and dropped it from her list of priorities only when it became clear that federal funding wasn’t going to be forthcoming. In her statement, she even criticizes congressional opponents of the bridge, including, by implication, McCain:

Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island. Much of the public’s attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here. But we need to focus on what we can do, rather than fight over what has happened.

Here’s an AP report from Sept. 22, 2007, noting that Palin had withdrawn her support for the bridge because of lack of funding.