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:

• Barack Obama is not the Antichrist
• Sarah Palin is not a right-wing religious warmonger
• The National Review doesn't think Sarah Palin is stupid

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.

Related posts:

• "The New York Times, Insularity, and Assumptions"
  (October 21, 2008)
• "(Some of) Sarah Palin's Exact Words"
  (September 12, 2008)
• "DC Gun Ban, Online Censorship, Individual Rights, and Power to the People"
  (June 27, 2008)
• "On November's Ballot: The Anti-Christ?!"
  Excerpt from "A Presidential Candidate Named Hussein? Get a Grip!"
  (February 28, 2008)

News and views:

• "CNN's Drew Griffin Warps Quote From National Review in Palin Interview"
  NewsBusters / Media Research Center (October 22, 2008)
• "The Corner"
  More from MRC on that CNN Butchering of an NR Quote
  National Review (October 22, 2008)
• "How Palin Governed"
  National Review Online (October 22, 2008)