Posted on 01/28/2015 2:18:59 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Matt Lewis has a column today over at the Daily Beast headlined, "You Betcha I Was Wrong About Sarah Palin: It’s time to admit that, whatever their motivation was at the time, the Alaska governor’s critics always had a point." I don't really disagree with much of what Matt says when it comes to noting that Palin's speaker-circuit pandering and Hee-Haw witticisms have become cringe-worthy—speaking as a Christian, I was pretty dissappointed last year when Palin referred to waterboarding as baptism for terrorists. As usual, Matt makes some very good points so I encourage you to read his column.
However, I am interested in why Matt felt he needed to offer up a personal mea culpa here. Despite her recent and much criticized speech in Iowa and feint at presidential ambitions, it's not really news the epitaph to her political career has been written. And yet, the gratuitous media persecution of her and her family has, and continues to be, entirely shameful and unjustified. See the CNN anchor mocking her daughter's assault, as recently as this October.
Perhaps Sarah Palin has proven she's not a major intellectual. But let me assure you that there are lots and lots of dumber politicians that were never attacked in such a vicious and unforgivable manner. They are allowed to hide behind handlers, and in many instances, grow into the job. Frankly, I think Palin had raw political talent and intelligence that, had it been properly guided and allowed to develop free from the trauma of having her family being persecuted every five seconds, we'd all be talking about a very different woman. Instead, Andrew Sullivan spun conspiracies that would have made Alex Jones blanche and people such as Bill Maher mocked her developmentally disabled child. Compare how Palin's family has been attacked by the media with the way the media lost all sense of proportion and propriety going after a lone GOP staffer who made some comparatively mild criticisms of Obama's daughters.
Obviously, Lewis isn't wrong to acknowledge she is not the reincarnated Pericles. And he's right that the adulation for her from parts of the conservative base was truly excessive for a time. However, Palin has often been far more wily than her critics and vindicating the media even slightly when there's been no real apology for the inexcusably vicious way they went about making their criticisms seems unneeded. Please do recall that the other option for VP in 2008 was Joe Biden, who after 36 years in the Senate was a well-documented liar of few real accomplishments, not to mention total buffoon. It's kind of amazing we're still debating Palin's merits for public office when Joe Biden's been VP for 6 years and has done things such as completely blow getting a status of forces agreement in Iraq, thus paving the way for ISIS, and the media shrugs and says, "Crazy Unca' Joe's at it again!" And as for all of the attention paid to Palin's supposed white trash brood, remember that Joe Biden's son Hunter was given a special waiver to join the Navy at age 43 only to be kicked out for doing cocaine at age 44. This is the same son who had rather questionable ties to a Ukrainian gas company. Despite being far more consequential problems than whether or not Palin's kids got in a scrape at a snowmobile kegger, these scandals barely registered and media sure as hell hasn't pointed many fingers at the Vice President for the decisions of his kids. With all the tabloid coverage of Palin and her family since 2008 her critics certainly act like they're vindicated, but it's telling they don't even try to make the argument that Joe Biden was a superior man for the job.
Anyway, like Matt, I wish Sarah Palin had been able to show more poise and grow as a politician amidst being hysterically accused of not giving birth to her own child and shooting a congresswoman. I wish she had fulfilled her term as governor instead of cashing checks on the lecture circuit making cornpone jokes and shallow observations.
But I still don't feel I was wrong about Sarah Palin in that I felt comfortable voting for her in 2008. The real problem lies not with Palin so much as our slanderous media pursued someone they found threatening to their myopic liberal consensus so doggedly and cruelly that they undoubtedly had a hand in creating the problematic, tabloid figure she's become all these years later. Maybe Palin isn't entirely a victim, but because she seems to be an unsteady figure in 2015 it is by no means vindication for what her critics said and did to her in 2008.
Amen. As do I.
Full of themselves and FOS.
So now they attack her because evidently she is not “sophisticated” to their taste. Dear God preserve us from these soi disant intellectuals
I agree. If Governor Palin had told McCain no thank you, I have work to do in Alaska, she would have won a second term and been ready for a run in 2016.
What have Matt Lewis or Mark Hemingway accomplished in life? They’re basically bloggers.
Yeah, because that’s what most people do, turn down an offer to be vice president of a country.
Well, if I’m grateful for anything concerning the whole GOP backstabbing of Palin, it’s that it truly opened my eyes to the vileness of the Republican Party establishment, and how it in no longer represents my values or my beliefs. It ended my lifelong, exclusive-GOP voting record; it ended all the wasted time I used to devote listening to so-called ‘conservative’ pundits; it ended my viewing of FoxNews after being a longtime watcher.
Hence, it’s really taken a big burden off my shoulders, and freed up a lot of time.
Speaking of Biden, what would the media have said if Palin recalled how President Franklin Roosevelt went on TV in 1929 to reassure America that things were gonna be OK?
Why would anyone with any decency facilitate the left's "politics of personal destruction?"
Lukewarm piece, yet true enough with regard to a semblance of perspective.
Even in it’s lukewarmness it s brave in it’s own way.
I don’t like the supposed conservatives, Ben Shapiro being number one, totally spewing ay her like any MSNBC Palin Derangement Syndrome sufferer.
I ave realized the lack of any rationality or objectivity when it comes to her is a type of xenophobia.
It’s scary and visceral in that it is more akin to a lunch mob or childish bullying than anything mature or rational.
The media we are getting angry about in this case is supposedly “conservative” media that that is supposed to be ‘on our side’.
We have the MSM (Mainstream Media) but we also have an RSM (RINOstream Media) in this country, too.
You are all missing that this is an incredibly brave article for him to write.
Being chosen for VP is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. There is no coulda-woulda-shoulda about it.
Sarah Palin resigned because she was being bankrupted by political operatives.
Of course she was going to hit the lecture and TV circuit.
Do you even understand how much debt she had accumulated trying to defend herself?
I am sure somebody has turned down that job. Pretty sure I wouldn’t want it.
It’s “brave” at the Weekly Standard to sorta weakly defend a conservative former governor? My, how far we’ve gone down the road towards statism and PC socialism.
Perhaps I was wrong and she is just another self serving politician. Starring in stupid reality shows lends credibility to your position.
And I thought the TV gigs were just a distasteful job accepted only to pay legal bills.....
Thomas Eagleton had it yanked from him, but other than that?
So only the left should be on television? How do you even fight a culture war that way?
speaking as a Christian, I was pretty dissappointed last year when Palin referred to waterboarding as baptism for terrorists.
As a Christian that actually has a sense of humor and understands that terrorists are the biggest threat to freedom liberty and Christianty, I was able to see the humor in her statement........
Agreed.
My moment of realization came when the GOP establishment kept silencing the microphones any time Ron Paul's name was mentioned at the last convention.
It was a foregone conclusion at that point that he wasn't going to win, but they couldn't be satisfied with that, they had to silence the mic's any time his vote tallies were mentioned as they went through each state's results.
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