by Nicholas | First, you see, there was a report setting forth allegations concerning Palin which, IF TRUE, would demonstrate that she holds attitudes which even the GOP (well, most of them) would consider unacceptable in a VP.
But is the report true? Personally, I would need more and harder evidence to feel sure enough even to suggest that it might be true. I've no way to assess the credibility of the people who repeated the statements imputed to Palin.
And here at IDLYE, we assume that if these reported "whisperings" have any basis in fact, further evidence will be forthcoming. If not, we don't want any part of it.
There are actually already enough Palin negatives (e.g., here, here, here, here) to scare off anyone except the hardcore wingnuts and the evangelical Christians. Even my wife's 80 year old Republican mother in South Carolina thinks the Palin pick was "wacky."
But GOP timeserver Michelle Malkin couldn't just dismiss the piece with an airy wave. She went into full-on panicky bug-eyed mode. Here's the nutshell version:
"Groundless left-wing smears circulating among moonbats! Laughable! Untrue! Ludicrous! Hahahahahaha, the real racists are the Lefty Moonbats! PASS IT ON!"
Naturally, seeing Malkin's screechy assertions that this is just a smear, and therefore not true, one starts pondering how she can know this.
Has she flown to Alaska, tracked down the couple of named sources, and persuaded them to recant? Has she interviewed the entire population and determined that there ain't a racist among 'em? Is Sarah Palin a close personal friend with whose opinions and habits of speech the Malkin is intimately familiar?
Not exactly. You just need to take her word for it and trust to the McCain campaign's "meticulous" "vetting" of the candidate. (Andrew Sullivan: "He winged this. That's the critical, unavoidable, devastating point.")
Anyway, I'm not going to link to the article....but Malkin does. No wonder it's garnering so much attention.
And of course, as soon as the Malkin starts trumpeting in her SCREEE-SCREEE-SREEEE RED ALERT!!! way that a statement on the internet is false, people who are capable of thinking for themselves are going to think, "Huh. Malkin says it's a smear. Wonder if there's something in it."
Of course, the other part of the population---those who share her views and read her bilge, er, blog: I meant blog---consists of authoritarian types who need and want Malkin to tell them what to think, so she's just doing what she always does: inoculating them in advance of any facts that might subsequently develop and organizing them to debunk a rumor as a rumor.
But the punchline is this:
For every nutball blogger who spreads it, there should be 50 to defuse, debunk, and beat it down. (Malkin)
She has no self-awareness, has she? Count me amongst the 50 then, at least as to the "defusing in default of further and harder evidence."
But then what does that make Malkin?
UPDATE. Now these guys are compiling a list. And the nutballs roll on....
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Usually, the way it works is that the person making the statement has to prove the statements veracity before it is accepted as true. You're basically adocating the position that everything is true until disproven. So, in the spirit of this new paradigm,
I say you are a fucking idiot.
Posted by: Peter | September 07, 2008 at 08:32 AM
You can say anything you like, mate. But if you think that's what I was saying, you're either one of those yourself or illiterate. One or the other.
Posted by: Nicholas | September 08, 2008 at 01:17 PM