If ever you needed proof that Sarah Palin has been using the Duck Dynasty controversy for her own attention-getting purposes, consider her admission on Fox News last night that she doesn't know what Phil Robertson actually said that got him into so much trouble. This after spending a week publicly defending him.
The revelation occurred during a Duck Dynasty discussion on On The Record last night. It occurred nearly a week after Palin posted on Facebook her solidarity with Robertson after A&E suspended him from the show. That, as anyone who has turned on cable news lately knows, was the result of his inflammatory and crude comments about gays, race and religion in a GQ interview.
The day after her Facebook post, Palin spent more than 11 minutes on the Hannity show warning (incorrectly) that our Constitutional right to freedom of speech is at stake.
On The Record's Duck Dynasty discussion was the first of a two-part interview with Palin that gave some last minute hype to her war on Christmas book – almost surely on its way to being remaindered on the 26th.
But, unfortunately for Palin, the interview will probably go down in history as another Katie Couric moment. It has already gone viral. However this time, Palin and her defenders will have a hard time pointing to BFF Greta Van Susteren as some “liberal media” gotcha interviewer, the way they did with Couric and Charles Gibson.
First, Palin dropped her concern about the First Amendment. She announced she's “letting attorneys decide” if it’s really a free speech matter or not. Now she told Van Susteren, the Duck Dynasty controversy has become a “discussion… within the exchange of ideas in the public and private square and in pop culture.”
But, apparently, that “exchange of ideas” does not depend on actually knowing what you’re talking about. At least not if you’re Palin.
VAN SUSTEREN: It is one thing to express your opinion. Do you have any problem about the manners of how (Robertson) said it? …(I)f you actually read the article, there’s a rather graphic and… at least I think offensive description of it. I mean, there are two ways to say different things. And his, in the article – and I know he’s a graphic type guy – but do you have any objection on the manners aspect, how he said it?
PALIN: I haven’t read the article. I don’t know exactly how he said it. But, Greta, what he was doing was in response to a question about a lifestyle that he disagrees with and yet he has said over and over again he doesn’t hate the person engaging in a lifestyle he disagrees with but he, in response, he was quoting the gospel. So people who are so insulted and offended by what he said evidently are offended by what he was quoting in the gospel. …So that’s another interesting aspect in all of this.
Yes, interesting indeed. Because the offense was probably even less about quoting gospel than it was about the First Amendment. In case anyone besides Palin doesn’t already know, the GQ interview quoted Robertson as follows:
“It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.”
…“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”
That’s not counting his allegations that African Americans were happy under Jim Crow and his comparison of non-Christian religions to Nazis.
Palin was not just hilariously wrong in her characterization of Robertson’s remarks, she was hilariously ironic. And not just because she was holding herself up as a champion of remarks she didn’t even bother to read. But during the same appearance, she was also holding herself up as a champion of Christ-like humility.
In the second part of her interview last night, Palin announced that the “heart of Christmas” is “being humble enough to admit that” you’re wrong. Without any cynicism whatsoever, Van Susteren asked Palin to relate an anecdote from her book in which she admitted to wrongly telling her pregnant teenaged daughter to get married. Palin suggested that her humility came from Christ’s “being born in a manger and not as some lofty king who came down amongst privilege and in-your-face kind of lecturing of everybody else in the culture in which he was a part of.”
Van Susteren, of course, accepted Palin's "humility" as genuine and legitimate. Van Susteren did not even note, much less challenge, that her supposedly expert pundit on the subject of Robertson had just lost all credibility. Instead, she moved on to probe Palin’s thoughts on the reactions of Cracker Barrel to the Duck Dynasty controversy.
Videos of both segments below.
Here’s a cartoon for you!
http://www.truthdig.com/cartoon/item/sarah_palins_ghostwriter_20131113
I have no problem whatsoever believing that the writer who came up with that went to high school in Wasilla, at the same time as a certain ex-governor…
This aging beauty queen is full of it. We expect her new reality show to tank-again. This broad’s 15 minutes of fame is up.
Did YOU buy one? I sure didn’t.