JISHOU, HUNAN — Like a moth to a flame, I can’t resist reading about the latest Sarah Palin escapade. The Attention-Monger with a Short Attention Span™ has put her cross-country bus tour on hold and canceled a well publicized trip to Sudan.
For jury duty.
** [UPDATE: In case you're worried, she hasn't been told to report yet, according to the Alaska Dispatch.] **
The only way anybody gets any news from the Palin camp is through her Facebook page. Her bus tour itinerary is kept more secret than a presidential motorcade’s timetable. So after the bus tour abruptly stopped, the media immediately began to wonder if she had quit the tour in midstream. Not that she’s ever quit anything in midstream before …
Palin then ran to the ramparts and shot off one of her folksy Facebook updates.
Imagine our surprise when reading media reports today that the “One Nation Tour” has been cancelled. Why didn’t anyone tell me? Oh, wait, that’s because it hasn’t been cancelled. (Good ol’ media… you never cease to amaze!)
As I said myself at the end of the east coast leg of the tour, the summer is long, and I’m looking forward to hitting the open road again. The coming weeks are tight because civic duty calls (like most everyone else, even former governors get called up for jury duty) and I look forward to doing my part just like every other Alaskan.
JISHOU, HUNAN — While tracking down Magician Joe (see previous post), I logged into my Twitter account for the first time in eons. For jollies, I follow Sarah Palin on Twitter, just to see what wacky things she’ll say next.
For a politician, she sure is touchy about things people say. Take this tweet, for example.
Setting the Record Straight: About False Quotes Attributed to Governor Palin
Posted on June 10, 2011
An absurd opinion piece in Politico includes a quote attributed to Governor Palin that is a total fabrication and yet is deliberately written to appear as if it is a legitimate direct quote. By any standard this is unacceptable even for an opinion piece. This puts us in mind of a real quote of something Governor Palin actually did once say to the media: “Quit making stuff up.”
The “absurd” piece in question is “Will rivalry make Sarah Palin run?” by Politico writers Paul Goldman and Mark J. Rozell, who suggest that the popularity of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) may convince Palin to quit being a tease and run for the GOP presidential nomination.
Apparently, an editing mistake made something look like Palin said something egotistical, when in fact it was the writers imagining she could say it. Politico removed the quotation marks and ran a correction. The paragraph in question is in bold below:
Will Sarah Palin’s intensifying rivalry with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) cause the former Alaska governor to run for president?
JISHOU, HUNAN — Sarah Palin erred in one way. Wikipedia got “corrected” in another. Somehow the twain met and still exposed the weaknesses of both.
If the current Wikipedia page about Paul Revere is to be trusted (the citations look solid, anyway), Paul Revere did in fact warn the British about the Massachusetts militiamen ready to fight them. But he didn’t do it at all like Palin said he did.
Predictably, Palinites are declaring victory for Saint Sarah, ignoring that the truth that she’s still embarrassingly wrong about a well known moment in American history.
Here’s the play-by-play.
At a rally Friday in Boston, Palin told the crowd that Revere rode through town, firing shots off like John Wayne and ringing bells like Bing Crosby, to warn the British (the British –OK?) that the red-blooded colonists were not going to give up their arms to any Redcoats without a fight. Here’s the exact quote, complete with her folksy diction:
“He who warned, uh, the…the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and um by makin’ sure that as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warnin’ shots and bells that uh we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free…and we were gonna be armed.”
So, Revere is on horseback making a lot of ruckus to alert the British army that the colonials were ready to shoot them. Nothing like tipping your hand. And this woman wants to be commander-in-chief?
[UPDATE: Since I wrote this post, people have also revised the Paul Revere entry at Andy Schlafly's Conservapedia to match the Palin version of history. And the battle at Wikipedia is still going on, it seems.]
JISHOU, HUNAN — Can American politics get any stranger? Alleged presidential contender and full-time media hog Sarah Palin recently mangled the story of Paul Revere in a public address, and soon after some of her fans went to Wikipedia to change the Paul Revere entry to match Failin’ Palin’s version.
Because, they said, Palin is a “reliable source,” so her imaginary version of events entitles them to rewrite history. One imagines if Palin told them the Moon was made of green cheese, they’d try to rewrite its wikipedia page, too.
Dumb and dumberer.
In case you missed the gaffe, Palin told a crowd in Boston on June 2 that native son Revere rode through the streets toward Concord ringing bells and making a lotta noise to warn the British.
“He who warned, uh, the…the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringin’ those bells and um by makin’ sure that as he’s ridin’ his horse through town to send those warnin’ shots and bells that uh we were gonna be secure and we were gonna be free…and we were gonna be armed.”
And we were gonna still be, um, part of that, um, peachy British Empire that has the nice grandma as queen, you betcha!
JISHOU, HUNAN — I wish she would just shut up, go back to Alaska and do whatever she did before being picked as Sen. John McCain’s running mate. Oh, wait, she can’t. She quit that job. Well, you get my point.
Days after the shootings in Arizona, after a number of people remarked on her use of gun-friendly terminology and metaphors, Sarah came out of her Lower 48 igloo to post a long-winded video on her Facebook page. Here is the text, with my commentary in all-caps. I apologize in advance if I offend anyone.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Like millions of Americans I learned of the tragic events in Arizona on Saturday, and my heart broke for the innocent victims. No words can fill the hole left by the death of an innocent, but we do mourn for the victims’ families as we express our sympathy. HOLE? POOR CHOICE OF WORDS FOR GUNSHOT VICTIMS. “WE” — ARE WE QUEEN NOW?
I agree with the sentiments shared yesterday at the beautiful Catholic mass held in honor of the victims. The mass will hopefully help begin a healing process for the families touched by this tragedy and for our country. BLAH BLAH BLAH — POLITICIANS’ PLATITUDES
JISHOU, HUNAN — “Sarah’s got a gun. Sarah’s got a gun. Her new show’s just begun. Not looking for Russians. What ’bout the caribou? What did it fail to do?” (With apologies to Aerosmith)
It failed to drop on her first shot, because Sarah can’t shoot. As a frontierwoman, she would starved to death on her first Alaskan winter. Watch, then read the article (link after the video).
Here’s the article fisking this obviously staged hunt.
Will people actually believe that Palin bagged this hapless animal all by herself, thereby proving what a rough-and-tough Mama Grizzly she is? Sad to say, the answer is probably yes. Her adoring fans have absolutely no abilities at discernment.
She and Dick Cheney ought to go hunting together. Ahem.
JISHOU, HUNAN — According to former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has what President Obama doesn’t — balls — because Brewer dealt directly with the state’s illegal immigration problem.
Since “balls” is too rude a word for such a God-fearing woman as Señora Palin to use, she instead used the Spanish slang, “cojones.” Or maybe she was trying to show off how street-wise she is. After all, Obama used “Sí, se puede,” during his campaign.
Of course, Obama was trying to appeal to potential supporters who speak Spanish natively. Palin used Spanish slang to criticize Obama’s supposed inability to deal with undocumented Spanish-speaking immigrants.
Was she even aware of the irony? Or the fact that Obama, as a man, is more likely to literally have cojones than Brewer (a woman, btw)? Or was she trying to make a joke? I doubt it.
Here’s what she said on air Sunday, referring to the controversial Arizona state law SB 1070:
Palin said on “Fox News Sunday” that Arizona’s female Republican governor has “the cojones that our president does not” when it comes to securing America‘s borders.
“This is a temporary suspension of some of the key elements in the law that Jan Brewer pushed hard for Arizonans and for the rest of the country to have the result of us being more secure,” said Palin.
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