Palin’s Defenders
The initial stories and reports did their best, but they were in the end unsuccessful thanks to the strong voices of rational thinkers in the press. While it is difficult to fully articulate the media climate after-the-fact, these quotes should help you understand just how bad things were…
If Sarah Palin, tapped as John McCain’s running mate, were a man, it’s unlikely we’d even be having this conversation. (A man, or a Democrat.)… [But the] women on the left, who fought long and hard for the ability to raise children simultaneously with election cash, are in spasms
The stupendously sexist New York Times printed a front-page article noting that some unnamed women argue over “whether there are enough hours in the day for her to take on the vice presidency, and whether she is right to try.”
- Andrea Peyser, at the New York Post
The media- and blog-generated uproar about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s oldest daughter’s teenage pregnancy is one of the most disgusting episodes in recent political memory. There are many reasons to fault John McCain’s selection of Mrs. Palin as his running mate. Her daughter’s pregnancy is decidedly not one of them.
- Ted Van Dyk, Wall Street Journal
How did the media overstep? By offending people by going so immediately and so personally into issues surrounding Mrs. Palin’s family.
- Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal
I thought this was one of THE most disgusting spectacles we have seen in my 10 years in the blogosphere… you have people like Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic just peddling smears… there is no weapon the Left will not use against Sarah Palin…. It is disgusting.
- Jonah Goldberg
Daily Kos has become the voice of the far Left in this country and it is despicable in terms of the kind of gutter comments and personal attacks… it’s all about personally trying to lible and intimidate you.
- Juan Williams, NPR, Fox NEws
“It’s completely fair to question Palin’s experience, question her record, and question her judgment. Every candidate should expect that. But what’s jaw-dropping here is how a supposedly feminist media elite can so abruptly drop all their principles and start questioning whether a mother of five can handle this job. They don’t only look biased, but extremely partisan and opportunistic…
- Tim Graham, The Media Research Center
“How dare they question whether Sarah Palin has enough time to spend with her children, and be vice president? How dare they? They would never ask a man that question.“
- Former mayor Rudy Giuliani, during his Convention Speech
[what the media is] trying to go after her on is she believes in abstinence and whether or not she was taking birth control or not, she wasn’t abstaining. So they’re trying to say that Sarah Palin is a hypocrite and doesn’t raise her family right and her daughter is a renegade and the woman can’t control her family…
It [the rumors]came from an obviously developmentally troubled liberal kid at a blog website on the fringe left. And the Drive-By Media simply accepted it as fact — and ran with it.
- Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show
I am absolutely incensed, I am offended and insulted that the media has made much-to-do about that and how Dare she run for Vice President when she has a child with a disability.
- Rosario Marin, former US treasurer
Do I even live in America anymore? Is there any shame anymore?
I’ve never seen anything this bad in my life … I was with Geraldine Ferraro in ‘84 – and this is worse. … I have never seen from some of my friends such vicious and mean-spirited attacks on her most personal choices, which is what they are.”
The Palin family values the sanctity of life. They talk the talk and walk the walk. It is driving the Left absolutely insane beyond the farthest reaches of unhingedness. Now comes the news that 17-year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant. “News” that wouldn’t be news but for the nutroots P.D.S. conspiracy theories that won’t die.
This represents but a small fraction of honest, reasonable reactions to the media’s over-reaction to a non-story. Many untold bloggers were also involved and, as is the nature of the internet, the message was communicated, person-to-person, pageview-by-pageview. We applaud these efforts and are confident that their efforts were instrumental in the collective backlash–of which this site is proudly part of.
