The bridge is yours.
-Horse-racing fans, rejoice. You get another season of Luck.
-The best review I’ve read of Lana Del Ray’s album.
-The Smithsonian adds the Mexican Museum in San Francisco to its network.
-Great prints of classic pop-culture real estate.
-A first glimpse at Skyfall, the next James Bond movie.
-Sarah Palin accent fans, your fix is here:
NEWS FLASH
It’s Cold In Alaska, So Sarah Palin Asks: ‘What Global Warming?’ | In a post on her Facebook page, former Alaska governor and former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin noted that Alaska school children don’t get out of school until temperatures drop below -55 degrees fahrenheit. Putting up a photo of her son doing chores in -20 degree weather, Palin asks: “Global warming? What global warming?” Palin notes “the balmy 65 degree (above zero) weather in the Beltway today” — a record high. Nonetheless, Palin is making the common mistake of confusing weather with climate change. She might not notice it, but the pattern of warming is clear. Even the U.S.’s northernmost city — in Alaska — felt the effects last year with “a record-breaking 86 consecutive days at or above freezing, far more than the previous record of 68 days set in 2009.” (HT: Blake Hounshell)
Politics
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin defended Newt Gingrich ahead of the airing of a shocking interview tonight with his ex-wife, whom Gingrich cheated on, saying the news will only help the former Speaker’s chances of winning the South Carolina GOP primary Saturday. Palin and her husband have endorsed Gingrich.
Speaking on Sean Hannity’s radio show this afternoon, Palin played her typical game of conflating the “dumbarses” in the “lamestream media” and the political left, assuming that ABC News is airing the embarrassing interview in an attempt to derail Gingrich’s campaign. This will backfire, she argued, because voters don’t care about the fact that fact that Gingrich carried on an affair for six years while married, or that he asked his wife for an open marriage so he could continue the affair, or that he subsequently left his wife after she was diagnosed with a terminal disease:
PALIN: I call them dumbarses. They, thinking that by trotting out this old Gingrich divorce interview that’s old news — and it does feature a disgruntled ex, claiming that it would destroy his campaign — all it does, Sean, is incentive conservatives and independents who are so sick of the politics of personal destruction, because it’s played so selectively by media, that their target, in this case Newt, he’s now going to soar even more. Because we know the game now, and we just won’t put up with it.
So, good call media! Way to go to covertly hype this, even Gingrich opponents, for being so brilliant they sure are dumb.
Listen here:
In fact, the interview is not “old” but Marianne Gingrich’s first TV interview since her divorce from the former Speaker in 1999, and it does make news about how Gingrich — who often defends “traditional” marriage on the campaign trail — treated his wife of 18 years.
But Palin, who calls herself a feminist, completely ignores the substance of Gingrich’s actions to portray him as a victim of just another tawdry lamestream media smear. “I have a degree” in journalism, she reminded Hannity.
Politics
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), who has positioned herself as a voice for the populist wing of the GOP, defended some conservatives’ attacks on Mitt Romney and called on the presidential candidate to provide proof that his former company, Bain Capital, created 100,000 jobs as Romney dubiously claims. Palin told Fox News host Sean Hannity last night that attacks on Romney’s time at Bain from rivals like Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich are entirely fair, because the front-runner must be “held accountable”:
PALIN: I think what governor Perry is getting at is that governor Romney has claimed to have created 100,000 jobs at Bain and people are wanting to know, is there proof of that claim? And was it U.S. jobs created for United States citizens. … You know, own up to the claims that are being made. And that’s fair. That’s not negative campaigning. That’s fair to get a candidate to be held accountable to what’s being claimed. [...]
Nobody should be surprised that things about Bain Capital and maybe tax returns not being released yet and records not being as transparently provided to the public as voters deserve to see right now — don’t be surprised that that’s all coming out today, cause it would come out as an October surprise [by Democrats] had these GOP candidates candidates not brought them out today.
Watch it:
A number of conservatives have come to Romney’s defense on the Bain attacks and accused Gingrich and Perry of employing left-wing attacks — Rush Limbaugh even compared Gingirch Fidel Castro — so Palin’s stance should provide the GOP candidates some cover.
NEWS FLASH
Gingrich Would ‘Look At’ Sarah Palin For Vice President Or Cabinet Job | GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, who takes every opportunity possible to assure voters that he is the most serious candidate in the race, said he would be open to appointing Sarah Palin to a high level job in his administration. As Right Wing Watch reports, during a Wednesday night tele-town hall hosted by Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, a caller asked the former Speaker if he would consider Palin as a running mate. Gingrich responded that Palin “is certainly one of the people you would look at” and told the caller that he is “a great admirer of hers.” He also floated the idea of appointing her Secretary of Energy because, he said, “I can’t imagine anybody who would do a better job of driving us to an energy solution than Gov. Palin.” “Tell her that she would certainly be on the list of one of the people we would consider,” he added.
There’s a lot of talk about the quality of Julianne Moore’s Sarah Palin impersonation in the trailer for Game Change, the adaptation of the juicy-if-thinly-sourced 2008 campaign chronicle (my take: she’s fine, if no Tina Fey). But I think the real question is whether HBO’S is telling the right story in focusing on Palin:
Ultimately, McCain’s selection of Palin only changed the game in that it made McCain look like a gambler. The selection didn’t actually chane the dynamic of the race, and Palin has essentially retreated into the small-town Alaska from whence she came in the years since. The selection of her didn’t even stem from particularly novel thinking, unless playing women and people of color off against each other counts. Not to go all Slim Charles on it, but the game was the same–it just got more fierce.
The story I’d really like to see out of that book, actually, is the one about John and Elizabeth Edwards, Rielle Hunter, and the fact that he went ahead with the 2008 campaign despite the mess in his personal life. Hubris and denial aren’t emotions that can be fit into rationality, which makes them particularly interesting. What happened behind the scenes in Palin’s brief, dizzying ascent has been done to death. The Edwards’ follies and tragedies are still somewhat inexplicable. And in a country where we’ve only ever had one divorced President, the idea that you could totally escape the expectations Americans have for the private lives of presidential candidates (Clinton, at least, only ever had Chelsea with Hillary) is a kind of magical thinking.
NEWS FLASH
Fox & Friends Deride Sarah Palin’s Decision Not To Run: ‘It Was So Circuitous’ |
The curvy couch was not a comfortable place for fellow Fox employee Sarah Palin this morning, as the hosts of Fox & Friends “openly chuckled” at Palin’s decision not to run. “Is that what she said? It was so circuitous,” said co-host Brian Kilmeade. After others noted that it was getting too late to run anyway, host Gretchen Carlson defended Christie over Palin by stating that “there were tons of people publicly asking Chris Christie to run for president” as opposed to Palin. On Fox’s On The Record, Palin said she didn’t make a Christie-type announcement because she did “not want to make a big darn deal about it because this isn’t about me.” Watch it, via Politico:
NEWS FLASH
Top Campaign Advisor Admits McCain Team Discussed Constitutionally Questionable Plan To Keep Palin From Being Sworn in As VP | Former George W. Bush aide and John McCain’s 2008 campaign adviser Nicole Wallace has written a novel. In It’s Classified, the vice presidential character is “mentally ill” — an inspiration Wallace says came directly from her observations of Sarah Palin. Like the character, Palin “was often withdrawn, uncommunicative and incapable of performing even the most basic tasks required of her job as McCain’s running mate.” Wallace even noted that “there certainly were discussions — not for long because of the arc the campaign took — but certainly there were discussions about whether, if they were to win, it would be appropriate for her to be sworn in.” This certainly is a shocking admission, in no small part because the Constitution does not provide any process short of impeachment to remove a vice president. The statement also shows just how much McCain’s team distrusted, disliked, and wanted to ditch Palin as the vice presidential pick.
Media
In an interview with the AP out today, Fox New chief Roger Ailes says he hired former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) “because she was hot”:
From the start, Ailes has steadfastly denied any such political bias or agenda on the part of his network. Politics, schmolitics: “I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings,” he declares.
Ailes’ quote is stunning in its own right, but it’s worth noting that were it coming from a progressive figure, he would likely be immediately tarred and feathered by conservatives as a sexist. Since Palin was picked to run for vice president, conservatives have bristled at any reference to Palin’s looks or suggestions that her appearance has contributed to her popularity.
Take conservative media criticism site Newsbusters, for instance. When Fox News contributor Juan Williams called Palin a “centerfold” and said her attractiveness contributed to her success, Newsbusters cried “double standard,” writing that Williams’ “demeaning” comment reflects liberals’ “need [of] some way of dismissing her without addressing the issues.” When comedian Bill Maher made a similar suggestion, Newsbusters cried that Maher had “denigrated Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann as merely ‘attractive.’” When Newsweek magazine ran an article mentioning the “supposed hotness of Republican women,” including Palin, Newsbusters cried “sexism.” When the hosts of the entertainment show The Talk called Palin “hot,” Newsbusters questioned their “intelligence.”
Now, the head of the country’s most popular cable news network, to which Palin owes a good deal of her success, is making the same insensitive assertions as Williams and Maher, and essentially confirming them; will Newsbusters and other conservatives speak out? Of course, Ailes’ network happens to be an ideological ally of Newsbusters, and one that regularly features its president.
NEWS FLASH
New Sarah Palin Movie Brings In Just $7,000 In Opening Weekend | The Undefeated, the much-anticipated documentary about former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) was an abject flop when it premiered this summer, and the latest Palin biopic doesn’t seem to be doing any better. The new documentary, Sarah Palin: You Betcha took in just $7,000 in its opening weekend, getting about 40 viewers per day across all six locations it played in, the U.K.’s Daily Mail reports. Unlike the glowing The Undefeated, Sarah Palin: You Betcha is a “gotcha” portrayal of the former vice presidential candidate, but the lackluster turnout suggests people of all political persuasions are losing interest in Palin.
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