Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Sarah Palin is "incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, or all of the above"

It must be true: we heard it on CNN.

Quotes Aren't Always Quotes

I don't know if a CNN interviewer's radical misquote of a National Review article was an honest mistake, or a calculated risk. I'd guess that not all that many CNN viewers read the National Review, and the article was available only in the print edition of NR. At first.

The National Review Said What?!

In an interview for Tuesday's Situation Room on CNN, Drew Griffin pointed out that conservatives were "being hard" on Sarah Palin:
  • Drew Griffin:
    "...'I can't tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, or all of the above.'"
  • "Sarah Palin:
    "Who wrote that one?"
  • "Drew Griffin:
    "That was in the National Review."
Here's what the National Review actually published:
  • "Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it's sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward, or — or, well, all of the above."
(Byron York, "How Palin Governed," National Review (October 22, 2008))

Same passage, as quoted by Griffin on CNN:
  • "Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it's sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward, or — or, well, all of the above."
(Drew Griffin, The Situation Room interview with Sarah Palin, CNN (October 22, 2008))

It could have been an honest mistake.

CNN must have liked that exchange, though. They used it in a promo for the interview:


(From http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=e4SUQuZukU)

ABC made a (mistake?) like this in September, 2008, when they outed the Alaska governor as a radical right-wing dangerously religious warmonger. That 'revelation' took chainsaw editing of something Sarah Palin said in a church.

Reality Check, Please!

I'm going to make this short:

The American Presidential Election is Coming: Please Think!

Things aren't true, just because some guy in a nice suit says it's so.

It's always a good idea to verify quotes and claims. That goes double for claims that the National Review thinks Sarah Palin is stupid.

And, thanks to the Internet, ordinary people can do their own research. I like the Information Age.

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Blogroll

Note! Although I believe that these websites and blogs are useful resources for understanding the War on Terror, I do not necessarily agree with their opinions. 1 1 Given a recent misunderstanding of the phrase "useful resources," a clarification: I do not limit my reading to resources which support my views, or even to those which appear to be accurate. Reading opinions contrary to what I believed has been very useful at times: sometimes verifying my previous assumptions, sometimes encouraging me to change them.

Even resources which, in my opinion, are simply inaccurate are sometimes useful: these can give valuable insights into why some people or groups believe what they do.

In short, It is my opinion that some of the resources in this blogroll are neither accurate, nor unbiased. I do, however, believe that they are useful in understanding the War on Terror, the many versions of Islam, terrorism, and related topics.