The blame Letterman meme is catching on fast:
It’s too early to tell, but it’s likely that Palin simply got tired of the ritual media humiliations, along with the mundane reality of governing. It was only three weeks ago that she called David Letterman “pathetic” for telling an insensitive joke about her daughter getting “knocked up” by New York Yankees star Alex
Rodriguez.
And what does “likely” even mean in this context where no one knows anything about what is going on? How is it journalism to engage in such baseless speculation?
4tehlulz
Howard Kurtz is a journalist?
Walker
Since when did anyone ever accuse WaPo of practicing journalism?
gwangung
Kurtz the Moron.
If politicians don’t like the heat, they should stay out of politics. That, and the “mundane reality” of governing is what THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEALING WITH.
JR
Thanks, Dave. You’re a mensch.
Violet
I figure she’ll blame Canada next.
a1
Uh, does the noise machine really want to present Palin as willing to abandon her job because of mean jokes?
President Palin: I’ll be keeping ya safe, you betcha!
Osama: Hey, I heard Willow’s been putting on a little weight lately. And is Bristol pregnant again?
Ex-President Palin: Fuck this – I’m outta here.
Ash
The mundane reality of governing? Oh jesus.
Who the hell thinks it’s a good idea to say she up and quit just because she’s the punchline of jokes? NEWSFLASH LADY – when you’re President, it only gets worse.
Jennifer
Howard Kurtz is a goat-blowing assclown.
El Cruzado
It would be irresponsible not to!
BeccaM
If “being ridiculed and made fun of” is enough to make Sarah Palin quit her elected job, she’s proven (yet again) she is manifestly unsuited and unqualified to be elected to ANY office ever again.
I mean, jeez, does all it take is one rude SNL skit and she’d throw in the towel?
Skin as thin as tissue, coupled with an out-sized narcissistic ego… not qualities one wants in a national leader.
Rick Massimo
Yeah, that’s the mind-blowing part. When “hissy fit” is the COVER STORY, the real story’s got to be off the charts.
Comrade Stuck
The more this unfolds and unless there is a scandal about to break, and maybe even if there is, this woman is sounding more and more like someone suffering from a Lithium deficiency/ in a full manic run.
Enceladus
Whenever I have the misfortune of reading Howard Kurtz, I feel like I’m being asked to see the world through a completely alien set of sensory organs and mental faculties.
And obtuse ones at that.
Michael
Goddamn it – I was in a good mood tonight till I saw that. Nothing pisses me off more about fucking Big “C” Conservatives[spit] more than their wretched overarching intellectual laziness, power mongering and resume building.
They wonder why I despise them and look forward to defiling the grave of Reagan? This is Exhibit A – to them, every day in government is like 1979, and there is a beetle-browed liberal bureaucrat who has lost some scrap of paper that has some meaning to some claimed defense to a tax bill arising from their attempted cheat.
Fuck them in the ear sideways.
jim
Anyone who thinks a chronic attention-whore like Palin is quitting because of all the coverage she’s been getting lately, raise your hand … anyone? Anyone at all? Bueller?
*
I watched Palin’s response to Letterman – she looked utterly delighted to be back in the spotlight & playing the angry Mom defending her brood from the big bad talk-show host.
*
Her “I Quit” speech looked exactly the opposite: she was either tweaking hard or on the verge of a total mental breakdown. The mixture of inappropriate giddiness & barely concealed terror was outright creepy, even for her. She gave about four reasons for the sudden resignation – none of which were sufficient to justify such a crazy departure, either seperately or collectively.
*
Last I heard was that she’s threatening HuffPo, MSNBC, et al with defamation suits unless they retract their allegations re criminal investigation for embezzlement … talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight … I think she’s gonna need a bigger boat.
Rey
as per Kurtz. But has she really stepped out of the spotlight? How could she not think that people, pundits, hell– even Joe the Plumber (with that one brain cell he has) would not wonder– WTF? She is quitting her job as Governor. We say it all the time but, one more time… this woman is CRAZY. Thank sweet baby jesus the MaCain/Palin ticket lost on 11/04/2008
gwangung
Well, more like a dull butter knife…
Bill E Pilgrim
Putin is at this moment studying the Monty Python killer joke video.
“Dah, forget sending Boris and Natasha, see if we can repatriate Yakov Smirnoff instead!”
Enceladus
“In the end, Palin made monkeys out of the pundits who spent endless hours debating whether she was positioning herself for a 2012 presidential run. And perhaps that gave her a small measure of satisfaction as she stepped out of the white-hot spotlight.”
Yeah, and the only response to that is:
“Shut up, drunk Howard.”
gwangung
I thought it would be , “Have a banana, Howard.”
Just Some Fuckhead
Maybe she’s tired of defending America from the giant head of Putin.
Edit: oops, I should say it’s likely that she is tired of defending America from the giant head of Putin.
Balconesfault
Yeah – when Sarah Palin retires from the public eye, Kurtz might have a freaking point.
Right now, every time Sarah makes an appearance, it will be like another resounding “you’re an idiot” to Howie.
John Hamilton Farr
How is it journalism? How is it THINKING?!? The “mundane reality of governing” is something she promised the people of Alaska she would DO, forgodssake, a responsibility she accepted with an oath, presumably.
“Simply got tired”???
Well, I guess that’s all right then. What a fucking role model.
Able Stanton
She would have made a great Vice President, or even President, in a universe where she melted under a withering attack from DAVID LETTERMAN of all people.
I’ll bet Mullah Omar could be far more insulting than Dave.
Fulcanelli
Does anybody think Bailin’ Palin regretted or learned anything from any of her gaffes and missteps since she stepped into the spotlight as McCain’s VP choice. Nah, I didn’t either. My bad.
Which is why I have zero sympathy for her. We may yet see her given a media platform in the future to bray like the naive political jackass she is and she won’t do or say anything different. The willingness and ability for self-correction and improvement isn’t there.
She’s a monaural intellect in a surround sound political world. Clearly this is good for Obama’dib, but the stooopid is gonna run really thick for a while. Many pixels will die a useless death, and ink will be spilled blathering about the upcoming exploits of the Wasilla Wingnut.
Keith
Note to Howie: Boo-fucking hoo.
JK
Where to begin with this..
For starters, Howard Kurtz is a clueless, dumbass, scumbag motherfucker who wouldn’t know how to pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel.
Bottom line for me:
Letterman’s joke about A-Rod and Palin’s daughter – OK
Letterman calling Palin slutty – Not OK
When it comes to comedy, we each draw the dividing line of good taste vs bad taste at vastly different places. I love Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Burns and Allen, and the Marx Brothers on the one hand but I also love Letterman, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, Denis Leary, Robin Williams, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, and George Carlin on the other hand.
I found Letterman’s joke about Palin’s daughter getting knocked up very funny. It was a joke involving consensual sex between adults. The intended target of the joke was A-Rod not Sarah Palin or either one of her daughters. Unfortunately, for Letterman and his writers, Palin’s underaged daughter attended the Yankees game. It was an honest mistake. There was no malevolent or malicious intent.
Because Palin’s underaged daughter was at the game, she and her supporters apply a Bizzaro World interpretation to the joke suggesting that David Letterman thinks child molestation is ok or Letterman is a supporter of child molesters. Palin and company are deliberating distorting the intent of the joke to turn Palin into a poor, innocent victim of Elitist, East Coast, immoral, media types.
The one concession I’ll make to Palin and Co. is that Letterman should never have described Palin as slutty. Letterman clearly crossed the line when he called Palin slutty. I despise Palin, but she’s not a slut. Is Palin a moron, a hypocrite, a phony? Yes, yes, and yes, but she’s not a slut.
David Letterman is a comedian not a journalist. His writers are not news editors who are obligated to do a fact check for every joke Letterman tells.
You fact check newspaper articles, magazine articles, tv news stories, and non-fiction books. You don’t fucking fact check late night talk show monologues or other jokes told by late night talk show hosts.
a1
Howard Kurtz is such an oblivious tool that if his “source” told him Howard Kurtz’s wife was sleeping with Mark Sanford, Kurtz would happily pass that along. “Guess my source must have heard something” would be merrily bouncing around that empty skull of his as he hit the Publish button. “On second thought” is a completely alien concept to that clown.
maya
walker;
Isn’t that WaHo now?
Balconesfault
“The one concession I’ll make to Palin and Co. is that Letterman should never have described Palin as slutty.”
Ahh hell – Letterman didn’t even say that. He just said her outfits were kind of slutty. You can say someone dresses stupid, for example, without saying that they’re stupid. Otherwise there are an awful lot of stupid people designing the internet.
Balconesfault
“The one concession I’ll make to Palin and Co. is that Letterman should never have described Palin as slutty.”
Ahh hell – Letterman didn’t even say that. He just said her outfits were kind of slutty. You can say someone dresses stupid, for example, without saying that they’re stupid. Otherwise there are an awful lot of stupid people designing the internet.
Jean
All I have to remember are her hateful rallies and the number of times she screamed into the crowd about Obama “palling around with terrorists,” and ending the screed with “in his living room?” at a pitch that makes my dog whine. This woman is the last person to complain about attacks against her. She thrived on attacking others. Still does. Now we’re supposed to believe that she can’t take the bad press? Remember what a laugh riot her line was at the convention? “Being a governor is a lot like being a community organizer except that a governor has actual responsibilities.” Not so much, it seems, in her case.
Keith G
Maybe Ms Palin can become the Repug version of Ralph Nader…..I can only hope.
Balconesfault
“Maybe Ms Palin can become the Repug version of Ralph Nader”
Except that Nader only took about 6-8% of the Dem vote … Palin could take about 50% of the Repub vote with her.
JK
@Balconesfault:
I don’t really want to get into hair splitting, however…
Yes, you’re correct. Letterman called Palin’s outfits slutty but didn’t directly call Palin slutty. One might argue that calling a person’s clothes slutty implies indirectly that the person in question is a slut.
I’ll amend my orig statement – I don’t think Letterman should have referred to Palin’s clothes as slutty.
Palin is breathtakingly and unimaginably dumb. There are enough examples of Palin’s exemplary dumbness for Letterman to feast upon, that I think he could have and should have avoided use of a word that is deeply offensive to many women.
John put up a post on Letterman’s use of the word slutty and I recall many women taking offense to the word and I think most of those women were opponents of Palin.
I’ll defend Letterman to my dying breath for the joke about A-Rod having sex with one of Palin’s daughters. It was funny to me and Howard Kurtz can go fuck himself. I just think Letterman should have drawn the line when it came to calling Palin’s outfits slutty.
Emma
If you ever send me to read Howard Kurtz again I’ll reach through the interwebs and strangle you! Ugh. What a stupid little man.
Ash
@Balconesfault: I remember Palin wearing these really trashy, pleatherish knee-high boots to some event, and I definitely thought to myself at the time that she’d fit right in as one of those “fun” flight attendants on G5s.
Keith G
From Howie:
Ok help me out here. I was not one of “those” journalists, but nine months ago I was wondering why a new mother with a large family and a special needs child would want to be either VPOTUS or POTUS at this particular time in her life. It did not make sense to me. Was I being sexist?
asiangrrlMN
When I first started hearing Kurtz’s name, I assumed he was just another full of hot air op-ed dude. Little did I know, he’s the dude supposedly assessing the media for us plebes.
Come again? I find his idiocy breathtakingly incomprehensible–which is probably why he’s defending Palin.
She didn’t do a single day of governing after her epic fail as VP nomination, and had she not been pushed out, she would have continued on her merry way doing what she’s been doing all the way to the end of her term. She didn’t give a rip about Alaska or her constituents.
I’m just waiting for the other Naughty Monkey shoe to drop.
Keith G., would you have thought the same if she were a man in the same situation? If not, then yes, her gender did influence your thoughts. If so, then no. Her hubby doesn’t seem to have a day job, so he apparently is the one who takes care of the children. I didn’t like the way Palin trotted her kids out and used them as verbal shields, though. I would have thought the same about any parent.
Keith G
@Balconesfault: Even better.
JK
In addition to the incredible nonsense that Howard Kurtz continually supplies in his Washington Post writings, another thing I hate about him is the smug, smarmy, self satisfied demeanor he displays on television. He acts as if he’s this brilliant critic who has descended from Mt Olympus to display his genius before the masses.
Fulcanelli
Did A Scandal Sink The USS Palin?
IMO, the money shot behind her resignation, but in politics ‘ya never know. Oh, wait. It was a “higher calling”. Or something.
Jennifer
@JK:
Gotta disagree with you.
Letterman’s joke was that Palin had gone to Bloomingdale’s to shop for cosmetics to “update her slutty flight attendant look.”
It was a funny joke, because it hits so close to the mark. The minute it’s out there, everyone hearing it is thinking, yeah, that’s exactly it.
And Letterman, to his credit, in the initial response to the Palins screeching about him “joking about raping a 14-year old girl” first explained that he did nothing of the sort, then moved on to the slutty flight attendant look joke and said…”now…all I can say about this is I kinda like that joke.”
He never mentioned that particular joke again in his final apology – he never apologized for it. And let’s be clear on the fact that it was that joke that Palin was so incensed about – but she couldn’t directly reference it without showing how thin-skinned she is, so they concocted this bit about defending their underage daughter.
Mike G
And what does “likely” even mean in this context
It means Kurtz pulled it out of his ass because it fit his prejudices.
passerby
Consider this, in her “I quit” speech, Palin used the word “Alaska”/”Alaskans”32 times.
Not including the “your state” and “our state” type of references. This is clearly a pitch for the “home-town” support.
Yesterday, Rosali, IIRC, pointed to Palin’s appealing to the jury pool in her “speech” . Federal indictments in the wings.
Palin is trying to make the “national media” look like the bad guy while appealing to the home crowd. Sarah and Todd got some ‘splainin’ to do.
Palin fears a jury of her peers. Palin is going down. All she has been good for is stoking the base–rabble rousing.
Brachiator
Kurtz is absolutely right on here. And he has history on his side. Remember when Harry Truman resigned the presidency in December 1950, after Washington Post music critic Paul Hume wrote that Truman’s daughter couldn’t sing?
What? Didn’t happen? Oh, well.
So, what? Is Palin trying to become Empress of America? Because as far as I know, most political offices have something to do with, you know, actually governing.
JK — The one concession I’ll make to Palin and Co. is that Letterman should never have described Palin as slutty.
He didn’t. The actual line from the Top 10 List was: Bought makeup from Bloomingdale’s to update her “slutty flight attendant” look.
I don’t think you could argue that at all. Even teen age girls who stash an extra outfit in their backpacks so that they can leave home looking acceptable to their parents, and then deliberately change into clothes that even they admit look slutty, nonetheless know that they are not sluts.
But in any event, Letterman never made a joke about Palin’s clothes.
And even the reference to makeup is slightly borrowed. There is a Simpsons episode where Homer invents a makeup gun and wants to try it out on his wife.
Homer: Now you’re ready for a night on the town.
[holds up a mirror]
Marge: [gasps] Homer! You’ve got it set on “whore”.
Homer: Okay, this time try to keep your nostrils closed.
AhabTRuler
@Brachiator:
Even now, the memory of that scene has me cackling out loud.
Wile E. Quixote
Dear Howard Kurtz,
Whose cock did you suck to get your job at WaPo. Or was it cocks, plural? Were you also rimming these people so that they didn’t have to use toilet paper? Come on Howie, come clean, how come you’re still employed while Dan Froomkin was sent walking?
va
A-Rod’s silence in all this speaks volumes.
JK
@Jennifer: @Brachiator:
You both make valid, reasonable points and I understand that this joke isn’t the main focus of the latest media scrum. I mentioned the joke to illustrate where I draw the line on certain occasions.
On the bigger issue, the A-Rod/Palin’s daughter joke, is it safe to say we’re all on the same page? A fine joke, maybe not an all-time great, but certainly nothing out of bounds in terms of taste.
I feel forever trapped in the Sarah Palin spacetime continuum.
Every time Sarah Palin opens her big fat mouth to blast the media for its unfairness to her, the media responds by telling us that Palin just blasted the media for its unfairness to her. This is a bad state of affairs. A criminally unqualified potential presidential candidate has engaged the MSM in a vicious cycle: cry victimization – get publicity – make a gaffe – gaffe reverberates – cry victimization – get publicity.
This nation needs to find a way out of the Sarah Palin spacetime continuum.
Where are Jean Luc Picard, Data, and Spock when you need them?
GregB
Palins is obviously a cream-puff. Hillary Clinton has been abused by the media for almost two decades and she has the strength to continue on doing what she does.
Poor Palin. The new GOP-er Joan of Arc Welding.
-G
Ash
@GregB: Remember when Caribou Barbie was getting on Clinton’s case about how, “Oh, I just can’t stand it when other women whine…”
Mostly I’d just like to slap a giant STFU and STFD and GTFO across her annoying face.
JK
@GregB: @Ash:
It’s like I said the other day. Palin entered stage right as Clint Eastwood and exited stage left as George Costanza.
Joshua Norton
She’s twatting all over Twitter that she’s suing the entire internet.
jcricket
She can keep talking, for all I care. Look, I’d rather we have no distractions like Palin, Limbaugh, Sanford, etc. – because the country is seriously fucked up right now and we should be having serious discussions about how to fix it (it being everything from infrastructure to schools to healthcare to foreign policy to energy). But if we’re gonna have distractions, and stupid stories ruling the media, let’s at least have ones that fuck over the GOP.
pattonbt
Tired of the “mundane reality of governing”? Seriously? That right there is the nail in the coffin for ever holding an elected office ever again. Thats what being an elected official is all about – mundane governing.
That one little comment shows Palin more truthfully than anything yet – shes only about grifting off the public monetarily and exposure-wise. When governing (or more precisely defending her lack of ability at it) became ‘too hard’, she quit. Of course she only quit knowing she could move onwards and upwards in the modern insane R party.
You betcha, also.
trizzlor
Funny how the same governing position that was supposed to have provided her so much executive experience is now treated as if it were a hobby that got in the way of her career.
r€nato
Bill Clinton was subjected to all sorts of vindictive, nasty, petty, mean jokes (as well as his wife and young daughter). For years.
Clinton never quit and as far as I can remember, he never whined about it either, nor played the martyr.
Remind a wingnut of this the next time they try to mount the ‘quitters always win’ defense of Palin.
r€nato
@pattonbt:
She’s an ex-beauty queen and therefore she’s used to everyone bowing and scraping to her and having life handed to her on a platter if she just gives a little wink and a grin.
That’s why she thinks it’s so gosh darn unfair to be subjected to the same criticism which politicians like Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton get day-in and day-out from the reichtards.
lotus
Ooo, Phil Munger commends that pesky YouTube to Palin’s lawyer. Meanwhile, if you haven’t seen how NoMoreMisterNiceBlog susses this out, you’ve got to: 100% nailed.
El Cid
Can’t David Letterman just offer the Washington Post $250K for a special message salon access meeting and they’ll shut up?
Or is this the opposite?
Did they go to Letterman and say, “Hey, nice show you got here, ‘be a shame if somebody was ta get the idea that it was your fault that Sarah Palin quit, know what I’m sayin’?”
The Grand Panjandrum
Palin will now be able to spend more time doing the peoples Real Business: Looking for Obama’s birth certificate.
El Cid
Also:
*****************************
A Letter to Our Readers
By Katharine Weymouth
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Dear
SuckerReader:I want to apologize for a planned new venture that
unfortunately got exposedwent off track and for any cause we may have given younot including our normally crappy coverage and slobbering over any crazy hawk foreign policy or right wing propaganda we want to push this weekto doubt our independence and integrity.A flier distributed last week suggested that we were selling access to power brokers in Washington through dinners that were to take place at my home. The flier was
supposed to be word of mouth onlynot approved by me or newsroom editors, and it did not accurately reflect what we had in mind.But let me be clear:
I am really pissed that I have been inconvenienced by this shit and now I have to act like I give a damn about the ‘journalism’ or whateverThe flier was not the only problem.In other words I just don’t think that blaming the temp running off fliers at Kinkos would fly, but if it would I’d do it.Our mistake was to suggest that we would hold and participate in an off-the-record dinner with journalists and power brokers paid for by a sponsor. We will not organize such events. As publisher it is my job to ensure that we adhere to standards that are consistent with our integrity as a news organization
ha ha ha ha ha had you going on that one.Last week, I let you, and the organization, down. The Washington Post remains committed, now and always, to the highest standards of journalistic integrity
, standards which we learned by listening to George Will, Fred Hiatt, and Jackson Diehl. Nothing is more important to us than that, and nothing will shake that commitment.jd
Good grief, folks. Forget the Letterman/blogger/ethics fog thrown up by Palin. There has been crap brewing for months behind the scenes, and it is about to drop on her head. She isn’t going to running for any office, she’ll be too busy talking to the Feds. Put your ear to the ground on what’s going on in Wasilla, not the Lower 48.
Charity
Don’t they realize that — by conferring all this power on Letterman — they’ve guaranteed him an audience for LIFE?
I for one will be tuning in tomorrow to see how he responds to this. He’s probably sitting by his pool right now, cackling over first drafts of his monologue.
JK
@Charity:
I’m not sure if Letterman will be back from vacation tomorrow.
It’s been hard to deal with Palin’s shocking announcement while Letterman, Stewart, Colbert, and Maher are on vacation. I can’t wait until they’re all back on the air.
Cat Lady
@jim:
Wasilla Wingnut
got pushed or jumped. Hits iceberg?
Fear in word salad.
IndieTarheel
@passerby:
Fixed.
media browksi
How much did Palin 2012 pay for that “opinion” there Howie? $25K? $250K?
Anyway, this all stinks to high heaven and everyone not already in the tank/on the take knows it. Either she’s insane or a $$scandal is coming…perhaps buying influence from the Washington Post?
PaulW
Journalism hasn’t been journalism since the Clenis incident. It’s been Opinion Echo Chamber 24/7 the moment Sam Donaldson passed judgment on-air instead of focusing on his job to report. I despair that I was the only one to actually get a good grade in a Journalism Ethics class since 1990… which explains why I never got a job in journalism ever. :/
PaulW
@El Cid:
Your version, El Cid, has the virtue of being true.
Donna
liked that so much I just had to see it again.
RedKitten (formerly Krista - the Canadian one)
She, like so many other wingnuts, is really no different than your standard 6-year old bully. They’re delighted to attack others, and make an art form out of strutting around, loudly proclaiming how tough they are. But if someone picks on them? Hoo boy…it’s all tears and cries of “It’s not FAIR!” after that.
This is obviously a woman who is incredibly immature — she tries to enter into national politics, thinking she can bully and charm her way through, and when she is attacked (as all national politicians invariably are), she plays the outraged damsel in distress. And then, as soon as the spotlight on her starts to fade and the adoration from her fans starts to wane, she becomes bored and cranky, like a spoiled toddler.
She reminds me of nobody so much as Eric Cartman, except without the occasional moments of bravery and self-reflection, and the entertaining imagination.
RedKitten (formerly Krista - the Canadian one)
I’m still convinced that the advent of the 24-hour news channel spelled the death of proper journalism. No matter how compelling and incredible the story, there are only so many facts that can come out during a given amount of time. So, to fill the airtime, they had to do “analysis” of the news. Besides, it is much less work for someone to “analyze” the news than to go out and actually investigate a story and try to dig up more facts.
So now, instead of proper journalism, we have a tiny nugget of news, followed by 12 hours of speculative bullshit — because Heaven forbid that someone change the channel to see what else is on, right?
jcricket
I’m not sure journalism was ever truly what we thought it was (I mean, the WSJ editorial page has been spouting complete bullshit for 30 years, and there’s the yellow journalism scandals from, what, 100 years ago?).
At any rate, I agree with you, and you can use the financial channels as a perfect example. What the stock market does on a daily basis should be of just about zero interest to anyone short of a Black Friday type event. Instead, we have 3-4 channels devoted to 8-16 hrs of market coverage. This creates an impression in the public that we need to be paying attention.
When, in fact, we should not be paying attention to the market on a daily or even monthly basis unless it’s our job to (which it probably isn’t).
And the 24-hr news channels relentless focus on the latest scandal, outrage or out-of-the-ordinary event makes people think stuff is going to hell in a handbasket, when instead the world is safer than it’s ever been. And of course we’re left uniformed on topics that actually matter.
JPK
@jcricket:
I’m sure you meant “uninformed” here, but I think there may be a higher truth in your typo.
JK
@jcricket: @RedKitten (formerly Krista – the Canadian one):
This is exactly the way I have always felt. Maybe, media critic Danny Schechter put it best when he said “The more you watch, the less you know”.
I also agree about the problem of over analysis and too little actual reporting.
However, my biggest beef with 24 hour cable news is the obsession with tabloid news that pushes hard news into a black hole.
When I think of the thousands of hours devoted to tabloid garbage like Laci Peterson, Drew Peterson, Chandra Levy, Natalee Holloway, and now this Michael Jackson nonsense, I want to put the execs of CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News on trial for journalistic malpractice. Pissing away all this valuable airtime on these garbage news stories is far more obscene and objectionable than catching a glimpse of Janet Jackson’s breast during a Super Bowl halftime show.
cosanostradamus
.
So, I guess Dave outranks Rush now, hunh? Could he make the rest of the ‘Pukes & DINOs resign now? Please?
Might as well take advantage of the opportunity and vote for a new national anthem, while Dave is still in charge.
.
Dennis-SGMM
Whatever the reason for Palin’s resignation, you can bet that it will be another source of simmering RW resentment against the left. How do I know? Because everything is another source of simmering RW resentment against the left.
JK
@cosanostradamus:
So many incredible songs out there from which to choose.
I have to go with So What by Miles Davis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGrUDAzlXzI
SGEW
@JK: How about So What? by Ministry instead? Or maybe a mash-up (which would be awesome).
JK
@SGEW:
That’s interesting, but I have to stick with Miles Davis and John Coltrane. There’s something ethereal and transcendental about that performance.
SGEW
@JK: Oh, I agree (I was being all ironic like). Nothing ethereal or transcendent about Ministry’s nihilistic yet sophomoric rantings: but somehow I sense that a football stadium full of Americans shouting “I’m ready to fight! I’ll kill ’em all if I like! I’m a time bomb inside, no one listens to reason, it’s too late, and I’m ready to fight!” would be deeply, shockingly appropriate for certain aspects of this nation. (see, e.g., Johns McCain and Bolton, Dick Cheney, Andrew Jackson etc.). Plus the beat’s pretty rockin’.
Martian Buddy
I was going to post some snark about the “the mundane reality of governing” line, but it occurred to me that Alaska would probably have been better off if she’d left all of the actual work of running the state to her underlings and focused on what she’s good at—looking pretty.
Sarah Palin: figurehead of the Republitanic.
Common Sense
@cosanostradamus:
I vote “other”
America! Fuck Yeah!
Ok seriously all I would suggest is you add Marvin Gaye’s rendition to your choices.
Brachiator
@jd:
Almost every speculation about Mark Sanford’s disappearance turned out to be spectacularly wrong.
Similarly, in the absence of, you know, actual facts, speculations about Palin’s resignation don’t mean much. Not even the Alaskan newspapers seem to know what the deal is, and you can’t get much closer to the ground than that.
But following the rule that the simplest answer is often the correct one, I suggest that Palin realized that the Peter Principle had hit her full upside her head. No matter how hard the wingnuts or neo-con buttlickers like Bill Kristol tried to prop her up, Palin never demonstrated the slightest qualification to hold national office.
And while she may have been OK as mayor, she realized that she was incompetent to continue to serve as governor.
Her political career is over. People can pretend all they want. But instead of “Git ‘er done!” Palin is offering “Quit ‘er done!”
This nonsense might work with the truly delusional or Mary Matalin. And in the Washington Beltway, where you are never a failure as long as you can get an invitation to a pundit show, Palin’s spectacular self-immolation might actually look Mavericky.
But the sane part of the world calls it what it really is. Bonehead Stoopid.
Now she may well make a bundle of money for herself, and may be a heck of a fundraiser for the GOP in wingnut gooberville. But I’m not even sure that the book that she is supposedly working on will sell as well as people might think.
But apart from being a shill for Fox News and the GOP, Palin is pretty much done.
Bulworth
“…the mundane reality of governing.”
Yeah, well, there is that.
Maybe if she could be prez then she could bomb, bomb Iran or Venezuela and governoring wouldn’t be so mundane.
kth
Uh, Howie, Palin being gone is a good thing. In the remote likelihood that David Letterman actually caused Sarah Palin to give up politics, his birthday should be made a national holiday.
ricky
How crass a dismissal of self made monkeys.
Persia
@Brachiator:
And the truth turned out to be even crazier than any of us had speculated. Makes you wonder, huh?
cosanostradamus
@JK:
.
@SGEW:
@Common Sense:
Thanks, JK, SGEW & Common Sense. Your suggestions will be forwarded to President Dave, as soon as he puts down this O’Brian coup.
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