I’m sure there are plenty of people who are happy to talk crap about her – a good case of sour grapes. But I formed my own (negative) opinion about her long before these stories starting coming out.

Previous statements made by her made it a non-surprise. I find that telling.

edit :: And it isn’t a gender thing, look at what happened to Dan Quayle. He got tons of shit for being stupid too.

Who knows? She’s demonstrated herself to be woefully lacking in knowledge on several fronts, including geography (not to mention the U.S. Constitution!), so there are lots of news people gunning for her.

I wouldn’t be surprised if her words had been misinterpreted. On the other hand, she brought it on herself.

Tabby, her words weren’t “misinterpreted”. The person that said that about her did not exist. He was make-believe, a fairy tale, a hoax, and not made up by “news people” but a pair of obscure filmmakers.

If the person providing the information is Anonymous assume its false. If you can’t give the reference then you might as well be making it up. I’d say there should be standards that disallow certain anonymous statements from entering the media stream, but then again people should have standards themselves on what they accept as fact.

Of course if you get anonymous information that could detrimental to life, assume it’s serious. Then investigate.

How many people will never really care?

I agree with JP. Its sad that i really didnt find the africa thing to be a shock, it was on par with half the other shit shes said.

Who’s Sarah Palin?

The GOP could have paid the aide to say it was all a joke.

But really, who cares? It isn’t like that was the only dumb thing she was accused of saying. And the other stuff is recorded.

If you go to mudflats.wordpress.com, which is a blog about Alaska politics created by an Alaskan citizen well before Palin’s nomination as vice president (created in response to the Alaska state legislature wanting to do away with Mother’s Day), they post video, newspaper, etc. based upon the local perspective.

She never refutes not knowing, she just says its a jerky thing to say.

Nope, any opinion I have of Sarah Palin comes from watching her, and from Alaska sources. I expect the Republican party to do better. It’s the party of Bill Buckley, for goodness sake!!!

pete, but there it wasnt an aide that said it. the person did not exist! does no one read the article? :(

I don’t have a NY Times account and it wants me to log in.. I can’t see the article.

pete, sorry about that! weird, you shouldn’t have to have an account to see it. the NYT is free online.

try this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/arts/television/13hoax.html?scp=2&sq=Martin%20Eisenstadt&st=cse

I only get this much:

A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: November 13, 2008
The claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Martin Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months.

before it says:

For free access to this article and more, you must be a registered member of NYTimes .com.

Journalism is dead in America, all that’s left is contrived theater. I’m not sure what is more disturbing, that fact, or the fact that nobody really cares just though they are fed with what may agree with their deluded idealogy, be it on the left or the right.

Here’s a permanent link to the article.

I was planning on authoring a question asking if people really believed the hoax. I thought it seemed fishy. Granted, Palin hasn’t shown herself to be burdened with an overabundance of schooling, but this particular rumor seemed a bit far-fetched. As much as I dislike her, I’m glad that the truth is out.

Who the hell cares about Sarah Palin?!? Let her disappear back into the obscurity she came from and so obviously deserved.

aidje, thanks for the link, i was tearing my hair out!

i feel about the same way as you do.

i honestly didn’t find the story that fishy. i just figured she had one of those slip-ups like “and other countries, such as africa”

the main reason i wrote this question is i’m really appalled that the mainstream news media did such a bad job of investigating their sources as to spread this story around so much, and i wanted to see if anyone else was up in arms about that.

also i think it’s sad that a lot of people will probably never know the truth.

@aidje: thanks for the link. I just caved and made an account right before you posted it.

yeah, that’s bad. doesn’t anyone investigate before they report?

@La_chica
Agreed; I thought it looked like something stemming from a verbal slip-up. And I’m glad you posted this.

You know what?

Al Gore never said he invented the internet either.

Payback’s a bitch.

Well, either way she knows now.

@dalepetrie- Tru dat.

This says far more about the state of the media than anything. I so often in political coverage see a story in a so called legitimate news source where it’s just a repeat of one candidate’s talking points.

I’m seeing this bullshit all the time with the Senate race here in Minnesota which I’m sure you know is about to go to a recount. Basically the incumbent Republican (who has proven time and again that he has zero morals and in a just world would have never been elected the first time much less be this close the second time), took a 700 vote lead when 99% of precincts were counted and declared victory (even though 3 million had been cast and state law mandates a recount with a .5% difference which is a LOT more than 700 votes), and tried to shame his opponent into conceding, saying if the tables were turned, he would concede (my ass!).

So in the past week they’ve been doing their final check up on these numbers, and there are transposition errors, numbers written down wrong, votes change here and there…nothing all that material and some movement on both sides. But the opponent has cut the lead down to 200 votes. So this prick comes out and says it’s suspicious, tries to smear the Secretary of State and his opponent (both of whom have clearly said they just want to determine…and abide by…the will of the voters via a fair and accurate recount). So, when one set of votes that was dictated as I think 426 votes, but was actually 526 votes for his opponent, suddenly 100 votes (out of 3 million) in one direction is just statistically unfeasible. He’s got lawyers going to every precinct. He’s filed two lawsuits already (basically lost both) and the recount hasn’t started yet. He’s had operatives sit in a car all weekend long to watch the courthouse where some ballots are stored. He’s taking any news whatsoever that doesn’t help him and turning it into an accusation of cheating. And of course they’re dragging ACORN back into this because ACORN did register some voters in Minnesota (like that means anything). Here’s the guy who said he didn’t want to expose the people of Minnesota to a costly recount (it will actually cost $90,000), yet he’s going to spend $1 million in legal fees, how much is THAT going to cost Minnesota once he’s done suing?

So now I’m reading things in papers all over the country, including the fucking Wall Street Journal for Christ’s sake which talk about all the funny business going on in Minnesota. We’ve got the BEST election system in this country, we’ve had optical scan for 26 years, and in fact if anything, history shows that the vote changes are lower than in previous elections and that these types of changes have historically ALWAYS benefited the Democrat. He should be grateful he lost only 500 votes, in 2002 when he won the first time, his opponent picked up 59,000 votes and he picked up only 50,000…it’s just part of the process. But he’s smearing good people who jsut want to determine the will of the voters in order to make it seem like he’s somehow being cheated, and the media is buying it.

Why? Because as this case illustrates….THE MEDIA DOESN’T CHECK IT’S FUCKING WORK ANYMORE! It’s the same story….Al Gore and the internet, Sarah Palin and Africa…or the 2000 election which if you watched the news was all about hanging and dimpled chads and butterfly ballots, but if you read foreign press you learned that it was stolen by illegally invalidating voters and keeping them away from the polls.

it’s been 8 years of pure propaganda and zero journalism, so that’s not likely to change unless people demand better. Of course, most don’t even realize how pathetic it is, because they have nothing to compare it to. I recommend avoiding US media news as much as possible, it’s the only way to attemp to temper the bias or at least learn to recognize it.

@Dale: The WSJ has gone down hill since it was acquired. Seriously downhill. It’s got a lifestyle/fashion section now ferchrissakes! Like.. with a Dear Abby style advice column. DOWNHILL.