How do I know in my bones that the coverage of the 2012 US election will be total crapola, not just from the card carrying rainbow and unicorn lefty luvvies at the BBC but also from the “official” so called right wing media?

Like any sane, well balanced and nuanced English conservative populist I hardly ever bother to get my information about US politics from the established UK media.. BBC (MSNBC in drag), Telegraph (Country Club GOP), Mail (National Enquirer)…or the right wing blogosphere.. ConservativeHome (Douthat/Brooks/Frum), Spectator Coffee House (Frum/Brooks/Douthat)

Why should I bother with yesterday’s stale bread when I can go to Hot Air, Stacy McCain, Dan Riehl and Prof Jacobson to get the just baked bagels? Or fly around the Twitterverse with @SissyWillis, @pepper_10, @ginthegin and other wild Tea Partiers/Palinistas

It was from Hot Air & Co. that I first learned about the Tea Party as early as February 2009, long months before it appeared on UK media radar. It was also from those sites, articulating a fierce anger, not just against the Obama stimulus and healthcare plans but also against the Douthat/Brooks/Frum nexus of GOP choirmasters that I began to realise the strength of the fireball that hit Washington in the 2010 mid terms.

Until well into 2010 the UK media and blogs were following the Brooks line of working with Obama and the Democrats because they had won so overwhelmingly in 2008. Avoid outright confrontation and maybe, in 2016 or 2020 an Obama- lite GOP figure might be able to slip into the White House – the Huntsman scenario.

Palin, of course, was sniffily dismissed as an airhead. Herman Cain was blanked when he was an outsider and still is being relatively ignored even though he is currently pushing out Perry in the polls. Neither of them passed the David Brooks trouser crease test.

At almost every stage the UK media and “official” blogosphere has got it wrong about the US political scene.

Which is why I am dreading the forthcoming coverage of the 2012 primary and presidential campaign

We could really do with a UK website that totally ignores comments from NYT, WaPo and the official newsletter of the DNC, Politico, and the legions of lobbyists, consultants and seedy academics paraded by Rentaquote.

There has been progress – the relatively new Commentator isn’t interested in what David Frum opines, Spiked is wildly anarchic poking it’s rapiers from both the left and the right into the pompous and self serving political/cultural media elite and Biased BBC continues its never ending crusade against the smug, arrogant North London dinner party cartels that run the BBC. But it’s an uphill battle against a powerful network of establishment quislings who rely on the collective mental inertia of a an intellectually disenfranchised population more easily seduced by watching the degrading antics of publicity seeking clowns and charlatans and being politically masturbated by the politics of greed, envy and ignorance…..

We are beset by snakes – why isn’t there a mongoose around when you need one……

I suppose I can always dream….

Why am I creepy? I’m hardly pro Palin, if that’s your insinuation.

What sort of person would use that as a defence?

But let’s begin at the beginning.

Perusing the UK Daily Telegraph online, yesterday (I refuse to put a portion of my hard earned pension into the wallets of the Barclay brothers for the dubious pleasure of reading the latest trillings from Bryony Gordon printed on a dead tree) I came across this review of Nick Broomfield’s documentary on Governor Palin by the DT’s film critic, Tim Robey.

Now as I am on a fixed income and therefore have to count my pennies I must confess that I don’t usually read Mr Robey’s pieces because I can rarely afford the luxury of a visit to the cinema or the renting of a DVD – it would be like pressing my nose against the toyshop window lusting for the £50 robot dog with my 25p clutched in my hand. But I understand in the world of the cultural media elite he is highly regarded by the great and the good (including that arbiter of all things artistic, Guy Lodge) and, on the few occasions I have read his musings, I have no reason to dispute the contention that his place in the higher levels of London’s Culture Heap is richly deserved.

So, having a passing interest in the world of US politics, I linked onto his Broomfield article to find out his opinion of the film.

To be fair to Mr Robey he wasn’t particularly impressed with it either technically or artistically. Of course he was rather sniffy about the Governor’s parents (“all homespun pieties” with “an impressive mountain of antlers in their yard”) and ended up with the usual stuff about the significance of “approval ratings” more than a year before an election but hey…what do you expect – he’s a film critic and it’s the Daily Telegraph for crying out loud….par for the course…

But then I read this..

There’s something creepy, for sure, about the fierce guarding of Palin’s reputation in town

…and I thought creepy? He thinks it’s creepy for people in Wasilla to treat Broomfield like something unpleasant stuck on the sole of your shoe?

So I looked up Mr Robey’s profile at the Telegraph, couldn’t get that word out of my head and took off for Planet Twitter

TheAgedP The Aged P The creepy @trim_obey at UK Telegraph creepily predictable on Broomfields Palin film (which bombed even with US left)tgr.ph/olVclY

Which prompted a reply which I initially regarded as hilarious but on further reflection seemed to be rather sad….

trim_obey Tim Robey @TheAgedP Why am I creepy? I’m hardly pro Palin, if that’s your insinuation.

He had assumed, I fancy, that I was some sort of lefty wingnut who had felt he was being too soft on her. Did he suddenly have visions of being cold shouldered at the next North London dinner party or struck off the BBC Newsnight invitation list for being a crypto Tea Partier or, even worse, another David Starkey?

Worrying….

What had triggered my response, however, was the fact that, although he had regarded the film’s technical and artistic values as rather shallow, Mr Robey had appeared to accept, at face value, Broomfields presentation of “the facts”

Gradually, though, the gossip they dig up from erstwhile friends and campaign managers – giving the lie to popularity-boosting Palin myths about her sports prowess and family life – prompts the communal cold shoulder.

I thought that was a sloppy piece of journalism, especially when I recollected what The New York Magazine had said about Broomfield in their review

• Broomfield wants to show what a superficial individual Palin is, so he includes a sequence about her alleged plastic surgery and Bump-it hairdo. Ah, sexist and inconsequential! Point: Palin!
• Broomfield attempts to highlight the suffering Palin caused others by introducing scandal after scandal, then cutting to a shot of its victims trashing Palin. The result: Regardless of the viability of their grievances, her enemies just look like spurned brats. Point: Palin!
• To try to paint a compelling portrait of Palin’s two-faced, evil nature, Broomfield regurgitates just about every blog post from the last three years, throws in clips of the Katie Couric interview (which at this point would put even Rachel Maddow to sleep), and digs into the revelation that Palin wasn’t actually nicknamed “Barracuda” because of her intensity on the high school basketball court, but rather because she liked the Heart song of the same name. Point: Palin!

The NYM is the newssheet of anyone who is anything in the hip cultural elite of US media, more Tina Brown than Tina Brown herself, light years from Wasilla and as Palin unfriendly as you can get – yet even they smelt something fishy about Broomfield.

Which is why I tweeted this

TheAgedP The Aged P @trim_obey a more honest review from a source that could never be described as Palin friendly http://bit.ly/r6LvKb

This obviously touched a nerve.

trim_obey Tim Robey @TheAgedP Perhaps that’s me being credulous, which you’re more than welcome to argue, but I don’t see how it’s dishonest.

There were further exchanges between us of a similar nature but I hope you get the drift of the debate, such as it was. There was, of course, no resolution. Mr Robey could obviously not accept my point that anyone who gets paid, probably quite generously, for writing in the public prints, needs to do a little of what R S McCain calls shoeleather on a topic or, at the very least, employ that golden “get out of jail” card of every hack – the word “alleged”

Should I have bothered? Was it worth all the hassle? I think it was. People like Sarah Palin, Herman Cain, Margaret Thatcher and other conservatives unafraid to challenge the assumptions held dear by a media/academic elite overwhelmingly imbued with the ideas of the liberal left will always have to endure the prospect of death by a thousand cuts – phrases, comments slipped so often into discourse that, Lysenko like, they become accepted as truisms. The beauty of the internet is that, at last, the journalists can be held to account. With a much smaller megaphone, of course, but at least something can be heard – though Mr Robey might not agree

trim_obey Tim Robey @TheAgedP Yes, I’m sure my media career is finished. Good luck with yours.

Heh – as Prof Reynolds would say – how about that Army of Davids?

PS…..I am distraught – I have been crucified by Guy Lodge himself…..

@GuyLodge:@TheAgedP @trim_obey What’s creepy about this back-and-forth, if I may, isn’t anyone’s stance on Palin, honestly influenced or otherwise…. It’s that you’d use a fairly coolly argued review as a springboard for a personal attack on someone you don’t know.

..as distinct from “a fairly coolly argued review” which implies that someone he doesn’t know who has a political background with which he appears to be totally unfamiliar has not discouraged untruths about herself for political gain, Mr Lodge?

Heh….

This and this show a side of George W Bush that appears not to have been reported by the BBC…..I wonder why? Surely they cannot have an agenda…..after all didn’t they do a massive highlight on this report about Katrina, debunking many of the myths? I’m sure they did….

Yesterday was as gloriously sunny as it was last week when we went here but with a cooler autumnal edge. Walking up the hill to post a letter my boots were crunching thousands of acorns and their cups, dropped onto the grass from the line of oaks gracing the road’s boundary.

This time last year, I reflected, I was looking forward to my trip to Chicago for the C4P meet up and the chance to socialise with a cross section of those extraordinary ordinary Americans supporting Sarah Palin including some who, at times, commented upon my own irregular posts.

But now I was feeling rather flat after the week’s news, partly in myself but more so for those good people I met in Chicago as well as all the other C4P regulars and a whole host of friends I have made in the Twitterverse.

As an invited guest in the barbarian encampment I could only, of course, be an observer. My country has its own political travails which naturally have a greater impact on my life and the lives of those I love. But US politics have always been of great significance to me for our two countries are bound together by historical, cultural and linguistic ties that are too strong to be broken asunder by the odd family disagreement. So I have been a great watcher of the American scene and enjoyed the cut and thrust of your politics as a kind of spectator sport.

But Sarah Palin struck a different chord in me, as she did with all of you. This charismatic lady came from out of the blue generating a feeling of trust and hope for the future at a time when many could only see darkened clouds on the horizon. I rejoiced at the impact she made upon millions of ordinary people – but also found myself burning with anger at the highly orchestrated attempt to denigrate her with lies, calumnies and disdainful sneers – not so much from the left for that is their stock in trade but from the so called right, the Frums, the Parkers and the Sullivans. Like all of those I met in Chicago I wanted to do something even though I lived 3,000 miles away across the ocean. So I wrote this and subsequent blog posts and eventually got invited to post on C4P by Rebecca Mansour.

Which is why, of course, like so many of you I am feeling disappointed – and as I watch her enemies dance and gloat that sadness becomes compounded, just as it did on November 22nd, 1990. But please don’t be downhearted for long. Who knows what surprises the future might bring for Sarah Palin or her supporters. Only time will tell. As for her enemies they should savour the moment while they can for some time in the future fate will surely deliver their come uppance…

One thing, however, is certain. None of you will forget her and, hopefully, many of you will use that memory to continue a commitment to political activity – and one day an American President might well walk into the Oval Office for the first time, put a photo of Sarah Palin on his or her desk, give it a nod of thanks then begin to clean up America.

So, I have just poured myself a tankard of honest English ale to raise a toast to all my Palin supporting friends across the ocean…

Cheers…….Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

Cheers…..thanks for the ride

Cheers……now, what’s next on the agenda?

Oh yes – shove a sharp stick up the anterior orifice of the odious Mark Mardell, the BBC’s man in Washington….

Now – where’s that other bottle……

Mark Mardell, the BBC’s man in the USA, lets the mask slip in a rather unpleasant piece on Governor Palin’s decision not to enter the 2012 Presidential race.

Shriekily filled with venom against a president she branded a socialist and suggested was un-American, in love with guns, God and the unborn, apparently ignorant of the outside world, indeed not fully clued up on the lower 48 (the USA outside Alaska)

What a perfect example of well informed, deeply researched political analysis – paid for, I might add, by a poll tax on everyone who owns a TV set in Britain.

Holding true to the definitive snake oil salesman’s code of practice that the best way to present an untruth is to baldly state it as a fact, Mardell goes for broke.

Sarah Palin’s decision will have disappointed some.
Not the American people who clearly didn’t like her as John McCain’s running mate in 2008.

Excuse me? If that was the case why was it that the only time that the McCain ticket led Obama in the polls was in the first half of September after Palin joined it? After September 15th, of course, the ticket was dead in the water – not because of Palin but due to McCain’s deer-in-the-headlights reaction to the Lehman Brothers collapse.

Naturally Mardell ignores policy positions and goes for the personal…

As a result we have Michelle Bachmann in the race. Herman Cain in the race. Rick Perry in the race.
They are all more authentic, more intelligent, more acceptable than Palin

Hmmmm….Mr Mardell – are you saying Camille Paglia is is just some dumb broad?

No evidence to back this up, of course. Indeed what is fascinating is how Mardell is trying desperately to portray Palin as some sort of X Factor “celebrity” without any connection to the world of serious politics. No reference to her years of executive experience in Alaska as a successful city mayor or popular governor. No reference to her fight against corruption in her own party or her triumphant battles against the big oil companies.

But then why in the world would any rational person be at all surprised at this bucketful of poisonous bile?

It’s Mark Mardell..

For years he was paid by the BBC to pimp the EU as their man in Brussels. Then, when the they began to believe their own hope&change crapola about a totally unvetted Chicago Daley machine hack with zero executive experience, Mardell’s bosses decided to send him to Washington as a kind of court correspondent to wax lyrical about the new Camelot. He must have been delirious with joy, foreseeing an eight year stint pimping for Obama.

But it has all gone horribly wrong. The Obamacare shambles, the ever swelling deficit, the lobbyist rewarding stimulus that has failed to dent unemployment, the ATF guns scandal, the Democrats losing control of the house in 2010, the emergence of the tea party (which, characteristically, Mardell ignored for well over a year )…..

Mardell could even be characterised as the Comical Ali of the Obama regime

a cult figure thanks to his wild claims and colourful language

Obama is crumbling and there is precious little reward in pimping a failure. Hence the vitriolic attack on Palin. When the Brooks/Douthat/Frum axis of appeasement was advocating accomodation with Obama and Huntsman seemed the future Palin was the only leading light of the GOP who was calling him out. Her predictions have been vindicated. She was right about Obama – Mardell and his ilk were wrong – and how it must hurt to be outsmarted by someone “apparently ignorant of the outside world, indeed not fully clued up on the lower 48”

Here’s a suggestion for the BBC, supposedly in cost cutting mode. Why not save money by getting rid of Mardell and just giving White House spokesman Jay Carney a few dollars extra to blah blah blah about the Potemkin villages of Obamaland.

The song will be the same as Mardell’s but the price will be much lower…

BTW…he predicts it will almost certainly be Romney v Perry, ignoring the latest polls about Cain. Time for the Race Card, methinks…

Sarah Palin could be set to lose both her marriage and her political career after the release of the explosive biography on the Tea Party darling.

warbles airhead hackette Rachel Quigley ( @rachelq82 ) at the UK Daily Mail, referring to the recently published “book” about Palin written by Joe McGinniss. Quigley proceeds to list several of the allegations mentioned in the book and also references articles from the “National Enquirer”, an American supermarket tabloid.

With McGinniss being spit roasted even by such Palin unfriendly sources as The New York Times and Michael Smerconish one might fairly ask of Ms Quigley why she wasn’t a little more curious about the author’s credibility and motivation.

But then elsewhere the Mail publishes a vomit inducing puff piece which essentially allows McGinniss to offer a weasel defence against the criticism of the unattributable nature of his “sources” and you then begin to realise why a third rate scribbler like Quigley was wheeled in to pen such unmitigated rubbish.

She was probably ordered to write it (most likely in crayon on a large sheet of drawing paper) by the mysoginistic editor Paul Dacre who believes that women are best suited to be in the Mail’s right hand side bar to be ogled or derided for their appearance while the chaps do the heavy lifting of running the world.

Unlike the Mail, which has ever been a rag, the UK Daily Telegraph has always claimed to be a serious paper of repute. But the DT has consistently and gleefully treated Palin with a degree of contempt and disdain that almost rivals that shown by the liberal left media of the USA. So they have put their own third rate scribbler, Nick Allen ( @nickallen789 ), on the McGinniss beat with instructions to keep the pot boiling.

A few days ago Mr Allen was as high on his McGinniss crack as Rachel Quigley, prophesying that the book would destroy Palin’s political career. But sadly even the myopic Allen had to weave an element of truth into his National Enquirer musings when he was forced to admit that there was some evidence that support for her was growing rather than crashing.

We now await with bated breath how ace reporters Quigley and Allen react to the latest evidence which tends to buttress the belief, widely held outside the medieval chambers of the Mail and Telegraph, that McGinniss is merely pimping the delusions, lies and unfounded rumours being constantly recycled along the wilder shores of the blogosphere by a group of dysfunctional misfits…..

Is that crickets I hear?

But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out and those styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot, what exactly is our opponents plan?

Remember someone saying that in 2008? Who was it…just remind me…

Well Rex Murphy at Canada’s National Post remembers – and he also recalls the scorn heaped on that person because she dared to wonder if indeed there really were any clothes on a certain emperor.

Three years later those columns are safely back in the studio lot – and the man with the plan?

Under Obama, America’s foreign policies are a mixture of confusion and costly impotence. It is increasingly bypassed or derided; the great approach to the Muslim world, symbolized by the Cairo speech, is in tatters. Its debt and deficits are a weight on the entire global economy. And the office of presidency is less and less a symbol of strength.

Murphy believes that a reckoning is due – with the media

American journalism will have to look back at the period starting with Barrack Obama’s rise, his assumption of the presidency and his conduct in it to the present, and ask itself how it came to cast aside so many of its vital functions. In the main, the establishment American media abandoned its critical faculties during the Obama campaign — and it hasn’t reclaimed them since.

But if the media went easy on Obama, transforming an inexperienced Daley machine hack from Chicago into a demigod no punches were pulled for anyone else

The media trashed Hillary. They burned Republicans. They ransacked Sarah Palin and her family. But Obama, the cool, the detached, the oracular Obama — he strolled to the presidency.
Palin, in particular, stands out as Obama’s opposite in the media’s eyes. As much as they genuflected to the one, they felt the need to turn rotweiler toward the other. If Obama was sacred , classy, intellectual and cosmopolitan, why then Palin must be malevolent, trashy, dumb and pure backwoods-ignorant.

Read the rest here. You and I know the truth of it and it’s a message that is beginning to seep into the ivory towers of the panjandrums of punditocracy themselves. But it bears repeating and it needs to be broadcast loud and clear into all the newsrooms, not just in the US but also across the globe because hacks everywhere took their cue from America’s network and newspaper bosses who clearly turned a blind eye to the airbrushing of Obama’s past.

Don’t ever let them avoid responsibility for the way they abused their power – so here, courtesy of one of the comments on Murphy’s piece, is a list of some of the guilty parties, exposed to sunlight after the “Journolist” debacle. It doesn’t include all the weasels – but it’s a start….

1. Spencer Ackerman – Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect

2. Ben Adler – Newsweek, POLITICO

3. Mike Allen – POLITICO

4. Eric Alterman – The Nation, Media Matters for America

5. Marc Ambinder – The Atlantic

6. Greg Anrig – The Century Foundation

7. Ryan Avent – Economist

8. Dean Baker – The American Prospect

9. Nick Baumann – Mother Jones

10. Josh Bearman – LA Weekly

11. Steven Benen – The Carpetbagger Report

12. Jared Bernstein – Economic Policy Institute

13. Michael Berube – Crooked Timber (blog), Pennsylvania State University

14. Lindsay Beyerstein – (blogger)

15. Joel Bleifuss – In These Times

16. John Blevins – South Texas College of Law

17. Sam Boyd – The American Prospect

18. Rich Byrne – Playwright and freelancer

19. Ta-Nehisi Coates – The Atlantic

20. Jonathan Chait – The New Republic

21. Lakshmi Chaudry – In These Times

22. Isaac Chotiner – The New Republic

23. Michael Cohen – New America Foundation

24. Jonathan Cohn – The New Republic

25. Joe Conason – The New York Observer

26. David Corn – Mother Jones

27. Daniel Davies – The Guardian

28. David Dayen – FireDogLake

29. Brad DeLong – The Economists’ Voice, University of California at Berkley

30. Ryan Donmoyer – Bloomberg

31. Kevin Drum – Washington Monthly

32. Matt Duss – Center for American Progress

33. Eve Fairbanks – The New Republic

34. Henry Farrell – George Washington University

35. Tim Fernholz – American Prospect

36. James Galbraith – University of Texas at Austin (professor)

37. Todd Gitlin – Columbia University

38. Ilan Goldenberg – National Security Network

39. Dana Goldstein – The Daily Beast

40. Merrill Goozner – Chicago Tribune

41. David Greenberg – Slate

42. Robert Greenwald – Brave New Films

43. Chris Hayes – The Nation

44. Don Hazen – Alternet

45. Michael Hirsh – Newsweek

46. John Judis – The New Republic, The American Prospect

47. Michael Kazin – Georgetown University (law professor)

48. Ed Kilgore – Democratic Stategist

49. Richard Kim – The Nation

50. Mark Kleiman – The Reality Based Community

51. Ezra Klein – Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect

52. Joe Klein – TIME

53. Paul Krugman – The New York Times, Princeton University

54. Lisa Lerer – POLITICO

55. Daniel Levy – Century Foundation

56. Alec McGillis – Washington Post

57. Scott McLemee – Inside Higher Ed

58. Ari Melber – The Nation

59. Seth Michaels – MyDD.com

60. Luke Mitchell – Harper’s Magazine

61. Gautham Nagesh – The Hill, Daily Caller

62. Suzanne Nossel – Human Rights Watch

63. Michael O’Hare – University of California, Berkeley

64. Rick Perlstein – Author, Campaign for America’s Future

65. Harold Pollack – University of Chicago

66. Foster Kamer – The Village Voice

67. Katha Pollitt – The Nation

68. Ari Rabin-Havt – Media Matters

69. David Roberts – Grist

70. Alyssa Rosenberg – Washingtonian, The Atlantic, Government Executive

71. Alex Rossmiller – National Security Network

72. Laura Rozen – Politico, Mother Jones

73. Greg Sargent – Washington Post

74. Thomas Schaller – Baltimore Sun

75. Noam Scheiber – The New Republic

76. Michael Scherer – TIME

77. Mark Schmitt – American Prospect

78. Adam Serwer – American Prospect

79. Thomas Schaller – Baltimore Sun (columnist), University of
Maryland, Baltimore County (professor), FiveThirtyEight.com
(contributing writer)

80. Julie Bergman Sender – Balcony Films

81. Walter Shapiro – PoliticsDaily.com

82. Nate Silver – FiveThirtyEight.com

83. Jesse Singal – The Boston Globe, Washington Monthly

84. Ben Smith – POLITICO

85. Sarah Spitz – NPR

86. Adele Stan – The Media Consortium

87. Kate Steadman – Kaiser Health News

88. Jonathan Stein – Mother Jones

89. Sam Stein – The Huffington Post

90. Jesse Taylor – Pandagon.net

91. Steven Teles – Yale University

92. Thoma – The Economist’s View (blog), University of Oregon (professor)

93. Michael Tomasky – The Guardian

94. Jeffrey Toobin – CNN, The New Yorker

95. Rebecca Traister – Salon (columnist)

96. Cenk Uygur – The Young Turks

97. Tracy Van Slyke – The Media Consortium

98. Dave Weigel – Washington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Independent

99. Moira Whelan – National Security Network

100. Scott Winship – Pew Economic Mobility Project

101. Kai Wright – The Root

102. Holly Yeager – Columbia Journalism Review

103. Rich Yeselson – Change to Win

104. Matthew Yglesias – Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly

105. Jonathan Zasloff – UCLA

106. Julian Zelizer – Princeton professor and CNN contributor

107. Avi Zenilman – POLITICO

Sarah Palin, the former Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, has been hit by lurid allegations that she had a fling with a basketball player just before she got married and took cocaine while out snowmobiling.

Thus burbles ace reporter Nick Allen, the UK Daily Telegraph’s Los Angeles correspondent.

But then we get a clue about how much shoe leather the intrepid Mr Allen expended in his quest for the truth

According to reports in the United States the claims will be contained in a highly critical book by author Joe McGinniss which is due to be published next week.

“According to reports” – in other words Nick had a few spare minutes over breakfast, trawled Google News then regurgitated stuff he picked up from a publisher’s PR blurb and a hit piece from the New York Daily News.

Lurid allegations by a serious author….please Mr Allen…I think you might have been snorting something white and powdery yourself. The “serious author” has concocted his “book” from a collection of quotes from anonymous sources garnered via conversations with a group of rumour mongers and liars from the fringe left blogosphere in Alaska, most of whom began to spew forth this rubbish after she was nominated for VP in August 2008….coincidence? Ask Pete Rouse at Team Obama.

For a better informed viewpoint on this heap of garbage go to the New York Times, a paper that could never be in a million years described as friendly to Palin. The author has not only read the book but has also done a little research into Alaskan politics. Suffice to say even the liberal NYT reviewer suggests the rubbish bin as the appropriate destination for the McGinniss epic.

Mr. McGinniss explains that he was shocked, just shocked, at the angry response his presence in Wasilla provoked. But “The Rogue” makes the Palins’ widely publicized anger understandable, even to readers who might have defended his right to set up shop in their neighborhood and soak up the local color. Although most of “The Rogue” is dated, petty and easily available to anyone with Internet access, Mr. McGinniss used his time in Alaska to chase caustic, unsubstantiated gossip about the Palins, often from unnamed sources like “one resident” and “a friend.”

Come to think of it there would probably be room in the bin for the Daily Telegraph as well. It used to be an informed and serious paper until taken over by the secretive Barclay twins who proceeded to fire all the experienced staff in order to replace them with malleable hacks like Mr Allen who are quite happy to scribble PR puffs for the Barclays masquerading as news reports.

You know, methinks Joe McGinniss would fit into the Barclaygraph rather well…..especially after reading this from Robert Stacy McCain and this from Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection.

A “reasonable rant” from PolitiJim

Who appointed Erick Erickson as Conservative Electioneering Sheriff?

Or even Anne Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Charles Dickens or The Incredible Shrinking Man for that matter….but then I don’t think Charles Dickens ever let his publishers change the ending of one of his novels…can’t really say about TISM…

First it was the Jamie Radtke thing. By virtue of his admitted betrayal to her campaign on behalf of his employers (i think he wrote he would ‘gladly’ accommodate their request to pull back on his support to her) and the obvious contrary evidence by RS attendees of his portrayal of her – Erickson is quickly loosing credibility.
Now Erick has decided that he decides who should run, and when. If they don’t do it when it is convenient for him – to hell with them. Or her.”At some point, I decided Sarah Palin could not defeat Barack Obama”

It’s not that Jim dislikes Erickson (or Coulter) but he’s beginning to wonder if they are not morphing into something similar to those figures of the GOP elite they have often mocked and derided who think they are “smarter than regular people” (echoes of Orwell’s “Animal Farm”?)

So, for Erick, a reminder…

And this whole idea that Palin HAS TO get in now. That somehow she “owes it” to the GOP movement …………………….. I’d say you owe her much more than she owes you. Did you forget it was PALIN who helped galvanize and garner the conservative movement in 2008? Have you not read the citations of those of us who started with Santelli and were empowered with Palin who….ended up as ‘the tea party?’ When the ‘big government’ republicans and pretenders forced us onto McCain – Palin was a sign of hope. And she also continued the attack during her own withering assault against Obama, no thanks to you.

She has done far more for the conservative movement than RedState or Erick Erickson could possibly think.

…and, just in case his message remains a little unclear. this self declared non Palinista suggests a post it note that should be attached to the keyboard, microphone or teleprompter of every self proclaimed “conservative” pundit/pontificator/consultant/strategist in the USA.

For what Sarah Palin has done, and continues to do, she has a right to do WHATEVER she wants and still receive the thanks from conservatives – nay, AMERICANS – everywhere.

Read the rest here – it’s interesting stuff.

Cross posted at C4P

h/t from my ever nuanced twitter friend Sissy Willis