Ruth Marcus' Distorted Commentary on Sarah Palin

Today is just another day, which means another day for the media to lie, spin, and distort anything Sarah Palin does or says. Our shinning example for the day would be by Washington Post Columnist, Ruth Marcus in an article she wrote titled "Sarah Palin's fact-free commentary on Paul and BP."

Ruth claims that an interview Governor Palin gave to Chris Wallace on FOX last Sunday "pushed" her "over the edge." I certainly hope she can recover from that... Marcus had a good cranky rant about Rand Paul, which I'm not going to get in to here. Rachel Maddow's "gotcha' moment with Dr. Paul has been discussed ad nauseum by others and I wholly agree with Governor Palin that one shouldn't have theoretical discussions with "TV character's" that want to harm them, politically.

Ruth Marcus then went on to attack Governor Palin for mentioning the obvious. That being the fact that IF President Obama were a Republican, the Lamestream media would most likely have a different narrative playing on the pages of their publications and on their news programs in regards to the administrations response to the Gulf oil leak. At the very least, they would have mentioned the fact that Obama received the largest sum of campaign cash from the oil company responsible for the leak, British Petroleum, in the last twenty years. Marcus said:

Then there was Palin's best-defense-is-an-untrue-offense response to questions about the oil spill in the Gulf. The cheerleader for "drill, baby, drill" suggested that President Obama was in the pocket of Big Oil:

She then attempts to quote Governor Palin:

"The oil companies who have so supported President Obama in his campaign and are supportive of him now -- I don't know why the question isn't asked by the mainstream media and by others if there's any connection with the contributions made to President Obama and his administration and the support by the oil companies to the administration. If there's any connection there to President Obama taking so doggone long to get in there, to dive in there, and grasp the complexity and the potential tragedy that we are seeing here in the Gulf of Mexico."

Marcus quite obviously left some keys words out of the quote. What Governor Palin actually said in full context:

I think that there is perhaps a hesitancy to — I don't really know how to put this, Chris, except to say that the oil companies who have so supported President Obama in his campaign and are supportive of him now — I don't know why the question isn't asked by the mainstream media and by others if there's any connection with the contributions made to President Obama and his administration and the support by the oil companies to the administration.

If there's any connection there to President Obama taking so doggone long to get in there, to dive in there, and grasp the complexity and the potential tragedy that we are seeing here in the Gulf of Mexico — now, if this was President Bush or if this were a Republican in office who hadn't received as much support even as President Obama has from B.P. and other oil companies, you know the mainstream media would be all over his case in terms of asking questions why the administration didn't get in there, didn't get in there and make sure that the regulatory agencies were doing what they were doing with the oversight to make sure that things like this don't happen.

I take it Ruth Marcus didn't bother to do much research before writing this article because Governor Palin reinforced this point that her criticism was actually directed at the media more so than Obama when she wrote the following on her Facebook page:

In the course of discussing the administration’s failure to get to grips with the oil spill, I pointed out that the media was rather silent on asking if there was a connection between the White House’s hands-off response to the spill and the undisputed fact that Barack Obama was BP’s top recipient of both PAC and individual money for the last 20 years. Please note that I never claimed there was a conspiratorial connection; rather, I was saying that it’s odd that so few in the media have asked that question. In fact, I believe Major Garrett is one of the few reporters to pursue the issue. You can be sure that if this were a Republican administration, at the very least the media would be asking that question nonstop.

I had no trouble interrupting what Governor Palin said at the time. I knew she was criticizing the media for taking it's current day role as administration lapdog, instead of an objective press. Perhaps Ruth has journalist blinders on that inhibited her view of the point that was being made. I really don't think that is the case however. The truth is that Governor Palin was right and I think Ruth Marcus knows it.

I sat in a news room through the entire Bush presidency. I witnessed the media try to frame almost everything that man did during his term as some sort of 'payoff' to his "oil buddies." From the wars we were in, to Hurricane Katrina, to the nation's energy policies... The media had a 'Bush is a corrupt oil man' meme going and they ran with it for eight long years. The meme is no longer in play during an Obama administration.

Did Ruth Marcus just miss the point, or did she try to distort the premise of the argument? I think the answer to that question is pretty clear.

Marcus self-righteously declares in the article that"Facts are stubborn things." Indeed they are and I couldn't agree more, Ruth! Fortunately for the rest of society, we have access to them outside of the dinosaur press.