Andrew jumps all over David Kuo’s complaint about what he calls Sarah Palin’s “betray[al] of her faith for political ends” in the face of Charlie Gibson’s questioning about her “task that is from God” remarks. But what both he and Kuo fail to note is that the entire premise of Gibson’s question was based on a spectacularly irresponsible misrepresentation of what Palin had actually, you know, said. I will now sit and wait patiently for a correction.
[UPDATE: And cf. Joe Carter. The biggest problem, as I have said already, is that this sort of thing is going to distract from the fact that the foreign policy positions Palin articulated in the interview were downright chilling. But smears and fabrications are smears and fabrications, and deserve to be acknowledged as such. And so I wait ...]
[UPDATE 2: Apparently the LA Times gets it.]
Filed under: media/culture, religion
“I will now sit and wait patiently for a correction.”
You’ll sit and wait until the stars burn out. I don’t think Andrew has fully internalized the extent to which his (and a lot of the media’s) feeding frenzy over the last few weeks have rendered Palin absolutely bullet-proof to any but the most shocking, public, and obvious screw-ups. Anyone who was on record claiming that all things related to Gov. Palin’s sex life is a vital matter to the republic has eaten the seed corn of their credibility with a lot of voters. Bang up job, MSM!
Your comment about waiting for a correction reminded me of this Jewish joke:
A traveler arrived in a village in the middle of winter to find an old man shivering in the cold outside the synagogue. “What are you doing here?” asked the traveler.
“I’m waiting for the coming of the messiah,”
“That must be an important job,” said the traveler. “The community must pay you a lot of money.”
“No, not at all. They just let me sit here on this bench. Once in a while someone gives me a little food.”
“That must be hard. But even if they don’t pay you, they must honor you for doing this important work.”
“No, not at all, they think I’m crazy.”
“I don’t understand. They don’t pay you, they don’t respect you. You sit in the cold, shivering and hungry What kind of job is this?”
“Well, it’s steady work.”
I like that, Peter. And Adam, you’re almost certainly right. I think that Andrew’s tone has improved markedly since his little – ahem – vacation, but this is exactly the sort of thing where if it were Obama’s words that had been subjected to this sort of crass distortion, he’d be flipping his lid. Of no party or clique, indeed …
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/
Exact Words?
12 Sep 2008 01:58 pm
Schwenkler is in a tizzy because I used Gibson’s “task that is from God” remark. Here’s the LA Times:
Gibson went on to take a second part of her comments out of context. Palin had asked the group to pray “that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.”
But Gibson dropped her reference to praying — and instead quoted Palin as saying the war was God’s plan. He asked if she believed the country was sending her son on a task from God.
She is a long-time member of the Assemblies Of God. That’s all you need to know.
[...] Andrew says that I am “in a tizzy” over Charlie Gibson’s flagrant dishonesty – can you imagine what he’d be saying if the shoe were on the other foot? But fear not [...]
Sullivan is not interested in accurate representation. He is interested in creating a mini-media circus around his ongoing out-loud “process” (his word) so as to increase his web stats and sell his book on conservatism, doubt about Obama, McCain, Biden, and Palin be damned. He has been this way, I think, ever since he started at Time.com. Akin to why people watch Reality TV, the reason one reads his blog now is because he has become a real-time TrainWreck.
Matthew Dallman
Please.
Sullivan is a Trig truther, for goodness sakes. Let’s not mince words: that’s insane.
The man pushed the theory that Palin faked her daughter’s pregnancy…AFTER they announced her actual pregnancy.
In.
Sane.
Move on to someone important and relevant, please.
[...] to blogger johnschwenkler for challening him on quoting Gibson’s having taken Palin’s comments about [...]
I’m confused. How was Gibson’s characterization of Palin’s comment wrong? I had seen that whole video before the interview, and I think I share his impression. Palin seemed to be saying that the congregation should pray that the Iraq war is part of God’s plan. In the same video, she says “God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that”. Don’t these seem like clear cases of Palin taking political issues and supporting them by saying they are God’s will? Where is the spectacularly irresponsible misrepresentation? And when Gibson was asking if she thought the Iraq war was a holy war, wasn’t he asking for clarification? Based on this video, at least, Palin seems to view at least some political issues as a question of whether God’s will is being done. Why is it out of line to ask how that perspective would relate to Iraq? Because last time I checked, a war fought according to God’s Plan could be considered a Holy War. Gibson certainly had the right to ask the question, and Palin had the chance to clarify. Have we reached the point where questions are off limits too?
It’s straightforward: what Palin did was ask the congregants to pray that our leaders be sending our soldiers on “a task that is from God”. This is not the same as, and indeed directly contradicts, the claim that such a task is what they in fact are being sent on, but it’s that latter claim that’s the one that Gibson attributed to her. She didn’t say that the plan was God’s plan, but rather prayed that it would be. It would be just the same as if I attributed to you, on the basis of the occurrence of the phrase “they are God’s will” within your comment here, the belief that the oil pipeline and the war were God’s will: that would be irresponsible and misleading. And Palin DID try to clarify, and Gibson simply told her that those were her “exact words”, end of story. If that’s not spectacularly irresponsible misrepresentation, I don’t know what is.