The Best Totally Wrong Predictions of the Republican Primary
Sarah Palin said she was "through whining about a liberal press" last week, but evidently she's not done whining about the conservative press. The Daily Caller's Chris Moody contacted Palin for a response to reports that her reality show, Sarah Palin's Alaska, got $1.2 million in state tax credits. Palin demanded that Moody print her entire 650-word response to the news. And he did--but only on the second page of the article. So Palin took to Facebook to rant about "having to set the record straight on my Facebook page yet again is further proof that the media can't be trusted even to print a statement in a manner that people can read."
Talking Points Memo's Benjy Sarlin says the exchange offers a window into how Palin's staff deals with the press. Moody told Sarlin that he was surprised by the Facebook post since he'd printed her whole statement. Moody told Sarlin that Palin's spokesman would only provide at statement from Palin if Moody ran the entire thing--extremely rare in political reporting. "After some back and forth, I said I would write the story that accurately represented her view, with the full quotes available for readers. Her spokesman said that would be fine," Moody says. But it wasn't. "Goodness, cleaning up the sloppiness of reporters could be a full time job," Palin groused.
At Salon, Alex Pareene says the episode offers a nice lesson in modern press relations. "Palin made the Caller jump through a ridiculous hoop to even obtain her self-serving statement, which it used to provide balance to what had been printed elsewhere as a negative, anti-Palin story, and its reward for jumping through that hoop was that she declared war. She is a very classy individual." On the other hand, Pareene jokes, "Her complaint does have some merit. If Sarah Palin herself is too stupid to click on the button that sends you to the second page of an article, she can't possibly expect her admirers to figure it out."
Elsewhere in Palintology, the former governor dug again into the world of questionable words last night (recall "refudiate"?) among her famous word-coinings. On Fox News, Palin wondered whether the U.S. is at war with Libya--or whether it's just in a "squirmish."*
*Edited: A helpful reader points out that this word has been heard before.
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Elspeth Reeve
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