I'm sitting at Whole Foods listening to some good music on a warm spring day. (I know, but there just aren't many blogger-friendly establishments with free WiFi that don't attract liberals. Besides, they are a whole lot more capitalist than they let on.) Palin has come and gone, leaving in her wake mostly honest press coverage (for once), with one glaring exception: this
horribly flawed article by Politico's Andy Barr. Frankly, I'm surprised that Politico hasn't bothered to print retractions. If I were a reputable news agency, I would insist that my reporters get the basic facts of their stories straight. I'm surprised no one has called for Andy Barr's resignation in this latest episode of media malpractice. Not only did Barr completely embarrass himself with this excuse for reporting, but he dug the hole even further on May 10th with another disingenuous article about Palin's poll numbers. Since the list of Barr's transgressions here is already pretty long, we'll deconstruct the second article in Part 2. In this episode, we take you deep inside the dark heart of hack journalism by wading through the demented inner working of Andy Barr's "brain", or whatever organ it is that resides inside his skull. Look at that Andy, I can use quotes to mock someone too!
The
article starts out with an innocuous enough title: "Sarah Palin's pragmatic moment". But apparently, Barr has interpreted Palin's new-found pragmatism as a call to redouble his efforts to destroy her career. The article gradually deteriorates as you read further. Virtually every sentence is riddled with problems, so let's deconstruct them one by one:
Sarah Palin outlined a more detailed foreign policy agenda Monday night than she had before, arguing the mission that killed Osama bin Laden perfectly exemplifies a proper use of American force.
Why not just say that Palin outlined a concrete policy? According to lamestream media doctrine, Palin is never allowed to get anything right on foreign policy, so it was only "more detailed than before". Moreover, Palin did not merely "argue" that the mission exemplified a proper use of American force, she won the argument. Unless, of course, Barr would like to disagree with the President, the Democrats, the GOP, and virtually every American other than a few loons on the left who somehow think that taking out bin Laden equates to a violation of the chimerical construct of "international law". Heavens! The delicate sensibilities of terrorist sympathizing Pakistani officials might be offended that we did not first seek their approval before going after bin Laden (at which time, of course, bin Laden would have mysteriously disappeared). No Andy, Palin articulated a more solid foreign policy than I have heard from any other potential presidential candidate, including Obama, and knocked it out of the park.
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