Notable Quotables Flashback: Ten Months of Media Scorn for Sarah Palin
In announcing that she was stepping down as Alaska Governor on Friday,
Sarah Palin noted the unrelenting hostility of liberal media elites. In
the barely ten months since she burst onto the national scene, Palin
has been scorned and mocked by journalists - including many supposedly
objective reporters - like few other politicians. Here are a few of
the choicer attacks, as compiled from MRC's Notable Quotables newsletter:
"She
is a far-right conservative who supported Pat Buchanan over George W.
Bush in 2000. She thinks global warming is a hoax and backs the
teaching of creationism in public schools. Women are not likely to be
impressed by her opposition to abortion even in the case of rape and
incest."
- Newsweek's Jonathan Alter in a "Web exclusive" posted on his magazine's Web site, August 29, 2008.
"[McCain
has] done it [picked Sarah Palin] at great cost, because the whole
Republican convention...was going to be the slogan, 'He's not ready to
lead,' meaning Barack Obama. Well, Sarah Palin makes Barack Obama look
like John Adams. I mean, it's just, it's no contest."
- Newsweek's Howard Fineman on MSNBC's Countdown, August 29.
Newsweek's Eleanor Clift:
"This [McCain's selection of Sarah Palin] is not a serious choice. It
makes it look like a made for TV movie. If the media reaction is
anything, it's been literally laughter in many places across news-"
Host John McLaughlin: "Where is that? See that?"
Clift: "In very, very many newsrooms."
- Exchange on The McLaughlin Group, August 31, 2008.
"I'm not that convinced that that's her baby....The daughter - who we
know is fertile because she's knocked up again, or maybe for the first
time...she did like take a five-month leave from high school because
she had [uses fingers to indicate quote marks] 'mononucleosis' right
around the time the baby was being born. And the mother, the so-called,
you know, okay, maybe it is the mother, but, you know, she was back to
work three days later. You don't smell something?...It's not like
they're not willing to lie about everything else."
- HBO's Bill
Maher on Real Time, September 5, 2008, promoting the left-wing
conspiracy theory that Sarah Palin's infant son is actually her
daughter Bristol's baby.
"If [Bobby] Jindal had been governor of
Louisiana in 2005 [during Hurricane Katrina], everything would have
been different, and he would be John McCain's running mate instead of
this wacko right-winger."
- Co-host Mort Kondracke talking about Sarah Palin on FNC's The Beltway Boys, September 6, 2008.
"Before
Gov. Sarah Palin came flying in from the wilds of Alaska for the
Republican convention in St. Paul, there was a lot of sniggering in
media rooms and satellite trucks about her beauty queen looks and
rustic hobbies, and the suggestion that she was better suited to be a
calendar model for a local auto body shop than a holder of the
second-highest office in the land....In the press galleries at the
convention, journalists wrinkled their noses in disgust when Piper, Ms.
Palin's youngest daughter, was filmed kitty-licking her baby brother's
hair into place."
- New York Times media writer David Carr, September 7, 2008.
"You
know, the one thing that I don't think anybody's said yet is that she's
very mean to animals, this woman. Why does she have it in for these
poor polar bear and the caribou and she aerial kills wolves? That's a
very mean thing to do. I think that that's an important point."
- ABC The View co-host Joy Behar explaining her opposition to Sarah Palin, CNN's Larry King Live, September 9, 2008.
"Is
this a, like a Clarence Thomas where they wanted to pick an
African-American for the Supreme Court so they picked the kind they
wanted?...They have a person [Palin] here, who's apparently, to some
extent, in terms of foreign policy, tabula rasa. Someone they can fill
up with all this neo-conservative thinking....Is that what they wanted,
just sort of a vessel to sell and carry their product, rather than
someone with independent thinking on foreign policy?"
- MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Hardball, September 16, 2008.
CNN's Jack Cafferty: "If
John McCain wins, this woman will be one 72-year-old's heartbeat away
from being President of the United States. And if that doesn't scare
the hell out of you, it should....That [Sarah Palin's interview with
Katie Couric] is one of the most pathetic pieces of tape I have ever
seen for someone aspiring to one of the highest offices in this
country. That's all I have to say."
Wolf Blitzer: "She's cramming a lot of information."
Cafferty:
"There's no excuse for that. She's supposed to know a little bit of
this. You know, don't make excuses for her. That's pathetic."
- CNN's The Situation Room, September 26, 2008.
"Is
this [vice presidential debate] about her brain power?... Do you think
cute will beat brains?...Do you think she'd do better on the questions
on Jeopardy or the interview they do during a half-time?...My
suspicion is that she has the same lack of intellectual curiosity that
the President of the United States has right now and that is scary!"
- MSNBC's Chris Matthews during the 7pm EDT Hardball on October 2, 2008 a couple of hours before the debate.
"Here's
what's disturbing: Either she didn't know, because actually the
legislative role [of the Vice President] is just about zero as Biden
says, or - scarier - she has a little bit of Huey Long in her. The
kind of - you could see her being a demagogue, saying 'I got to do
this, the rules are in the way, to heck with the rules, let's do it.'"
-
Newsweek's Evan Thomas reacting to Palin suggesting at the debate that
a vice president has a legislative role, on Inside Washington, October
3, 2008.
"Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly
unqualified to be vice president...She has never spent a day thinking
about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell
of a time to start....For John McCain to have chosen this person to be
his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible."
- Newsweek international editor and CNN host Fareed Zakaria in his Oct. 6, 2008 column, "Palin Is Ready? Please."
"The
fact of the matter is, the comparison between her [Sarah Palin] and
Hillary Clinton is the comparison between an igloo and the Empire State
Building!"
- MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Hardball, October 14, 2008.
Reporter David Wright: "Last summer, McCain mocked Obama as an empty-headed celebrity....But then he created a celebrity of his own."
Clip of John McCain: "When you get to know her, you're going to be as impressed as I am."
Wright: "Many were impressed, but plenty of others came to see Sarah Palin as an empty designer suit."
- ABC's World News, November 5, 2008.
"Sarah Palin: Ill-informed, inarticulate shopaholic has ego bigger than Alaska - and she's still the darling of the GOP."
- From Newsweek's "Conventional Wisdom" column, December 29, 2008-January 5, 2009 issue.
"Sarah
Palin - now don't laugh - is writing a book. Not just reading a book,
writing a book. Actually, in the word of the publisher, she's
'collaborating' on a book....What an embarrassment! It's one of these
'I told you,' books that jocks do. You know she's already declared - I
mean, why they do it like this? 'She can't write, we got a collaborator
for her.'"
- MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Hardball, May 13, 2009.
"Here's
the question: Would you rather listen to a speech by Sarah Palin or a
speech by Newt Gingrich...or would you rather just stick needles in
your eyes?"
- CNN's Jack Cafferty on The Situation Room, June 9, 2009.
Ex-MSNBC anchor Dan Abrams: "Sarah Palin, to me, is like the representative of everything that's gone wrong [for the Republican Party] lately."...
Comedian Chuck Nice: "Sarah Palin to the GOP, this is what I've got to say: She is very much like herpes - she's not going away. Okay? That's it."
- Exchange on NBC's Today, June 9, 2009.
-Rich Noyes is Research Director at the Media Research Center.
