Progressive Press Peeved Palin Prays?

File this under incredible.

Opinion Journal's James Taranto brings more clarity to Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin (see transcript). Recall that Mr. Gibson construed Sarah Palin's words in such a way as to imply she believed America's troops were just bellicose Blues Brothers on a "mission from God." Here's an excerpt of Taranto's post from Friday, Sept. 12, 2008:

Although she had spoken the words Gibson attributed to her, his rendition of the quote was a dowdification.[†] He took the words out of context to make a prayer that "the task is from God" appear to be an assertion that it is.

This misleading quotation might have been an error rather than a deliberate deception, and it did not originate with Gibson. Our Tuesday item noted that CNN had misrepresented Palin's words on Monday, and on Sept. 4 "AllahPundit" pointed to an Associated Press dispatch from the previous day that might have been the origin of the falsehood.

Yesterday the Associated Press, in reporting on the interview, relied on its own inaccurate reporting of a week earlier in claiming that Palin had "contradicted an assertion she made at her former church that 'our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.' " This claim disappeared from later versions of the AP dispatch, although we haven't found any evidence that the wire service issued a correction.

ABC seems to have realized its mistake as well. The version of the interview that aired on ABC's "World News" last night (video here) edited out the lines in which Palin disputes the accuracy of Gibson's quote and Gibson replies, "Exact words." In their place is a YouTube clip of Palin speaking at the church. Again, as far as we know, ABC has not expressly acknowledged the error.

The journalists at AP, CNN and ABC who took liberties with Palin's quote might or might not have intended to deceive. But there can be little doubt that they intended to further a stereotype of Palin as some sort of religious nut. What's interesting is that in the course of doing so, they ended up disparaging her for praying.

As we noted yesterday, some of the less well-grounded members of the political media have been harshly attacking Palin for having a baby. Egads! Can we really have a heartbeat away a Christian who prays, or a woman who has borne children?

I do like Taranto's last line: "With friends like these, who needs Karl Rove?" My thoughts exactly.

†A dowdification is a fabrication or corruption of a quote, epitomized by the putative style of Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist who is to literacy what phone sex is to oratory.

©2008. All Rights Reserved.

General Housekeeping: On Alito; Rove

To Harry Reid, Alito Too Qualified?

The nomination of Samuel Alito for associate justice of the United States Supreme Court occurred moments ago. First impressions yield only this: the guy is incredibly well-spoken. In fact, he might be the most grammatically and syntactically precise speaker I've heard in a long time. Yes, of course, he is an Ivy-leaguer (which is no bad thing), but it is clear he's no legacy child. I'll wager he entered Princeton and Yale on his merits.

Harry Reid, the petulant Democratic senator from Nevada, has already berated President Bush for nominating "another" appellate court justice. To Reid, the court is now looking a bit like a "good old boys club", resembling nothing of America at large. Apparently Harriet Miers should have been confirmed. We must, after all, keep up appearances. (One Democrat has already called Mr. Alito an "extremist.")

McCain Denies Bush/Rove South Carolina "Smear"

In other news, I think many of you will recall that Karl Rove, the wunderkind of the White House, is feared and loathed by his critics for his allegedly heavy-handed schemes and ploys in policy-making and election campaigning. Recall that in the 2000 election cycle it was alleged Republican John McCain was defeated in the South Carolina primary by a Rove scheme wherein phone calls were made throughout the state asking potential voters if they had heard about John McCain's illegitimate child (Mr. McCain has no such child). Though this story was dubious from the start, and has been soundly dismissed by credible analysis, activist Democrats believe the veracity of the story to this day, and believe that Rove is the devil for doing something so unseemly. But what a moment today when Mr. Don Imus (Imus in the Morning, MSNBC) asked Mr. McCain about the Rove-Libby duo, and whether Mr. McCain was glad to see bad luck fall upon his political foes who so abused him in South Carolina. McCain's reply was telling: "I don't think they had anything to do with that." Oiks! There goes another myth. (And it was also telling that McCain reiterated that though he thinks the Iraq War has been badly mishandled, "every intelligence agency in the world" asserted that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction. Thus, McCain defended the Administration's earlier claim that the fact of Hussein's possession of WMD was "a slam dunk." Ouch!)

Lastly, I leave you with this quote from C.S. Lewis' great speech, Membership:

Fruit has to be tinned if it is to be transported and has to lose thereby some of its good qualities. But one meets people who have learned actually to prefer the tinned fruit to the fresh. A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much of his digestion; to ignore the subject may be fatal cowardice for the one as the other. But if either comes to regard it as the natural food of the mind–if either forgets that we think of such things only in order to be able to think of something else–then what was undertaken for the sake of health has become itself a new and deadly disease. [emphasis added]†

Why this quote? Just to remind myself, really, that political thinking is a means, always a means, and never the end in itself. Politics is so much tinned fruit. The man who eats solely from its bounty is sure to go hungry; is sure to fall ill.

Contratimes

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
†The C.S. Lewis address may be found in The Weight of Glory, Walter Hooper, ed., MacMillan Publishing, NY. Page 109.