The Kato Kaelin of American Politics

Sorry, gang. It turns out Sarah Palin isn’t THAT dumb. On the plus side, she refuses to go away, so at least we’ll have that trainwreck to enjoy for a little while longer. It’s amazing to think that Palin has been in the national spotlight for less than three months and she’s already gone from serious vice-presidential contender to the sort of “why won’t she go away?” level of fame that’s usually reserved for former reality show contestants.

UPDATE : My bad. It turns out I misread the article regarding the Plain hoax. She really is THAT dumb. Sorry folks. Blogging and NyQuil don’t mix.


posted by greg on November 13, 2008 @ 8:29 pm

12 comments »

  1. She actually may still be that dumb, regardless of whatever the Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence says.

    (the blogger who broke the hoax, as mentioned at the end of the NYT article) wrote:

    Let me just get this off my chest once and for all: Martin Eisenstadt was not the source for Carl Cameron’s Fox News story about “anonymous sources” telling him that Sarah Palin did not know whether Africa was a continent or country, threw temper tantrums, etc.

    Cameron spent the entire campaign with McCain. He knew everyone who worked there. He never spoke to Eisenstadt at all. The “anonymous sources” are still anonymous, and all they were doing was dumping blame on Palin to take the focus off the fact that those on McCain’s campaign were horribly, horribly inept.

    So for bloggers and others who now know that Eisenstadt is a hoax, yet now believe that somehow Eisenstadt tricked Cameron, well, you are equally guilty as MSNBC and others who fell for the original story from Eisenstadt.

    Danny Shea wrote in the Huffington Post:

    However, while MSNBC — which ran with Eisenstadt’s story, along with The New Republic — has retracted the story (that Eisenstadt was the McCain camp leak), Fox News won’t be retracting Carl Cameron’s original report about the Palin/Africa flap, because it did not come from Eisenstadt — which the Huffington Post was told on background earlier this week and which the filmmakers confirmed to TVNewser Thursday:

    “To be very clear, no, we were not the source for Carl Cameron and never spoke to him,” Mirvish tells TVNewser. “We took credit for his anonymous sourcing. If they were going to be cowards, then we figured we may as well step in.”

    Comment by Ereshkigal — November 13, 2008 @ 11:25 pm

  2. Sorry– HTML ate my homework.

    William K. Wolfrum is the blogger who broke the hoax.

    Damn elves stole the words with the code so they can build webpages for an old shoemaker.

    Comment by Ereshkigal — November 13, 2008 @ 11:29 pm

  3. The NYT article says nothing about whether or not the leaked rumor about Palin is true, only that the character Eisenstadt claimed to be the leaker.

    It explicitly says that this does not invalidate the claims and Palin’s own answer when queried about it was that it was taken out of context that she “could not distinguish between Africa the continent and Africa the nation”, which indicates to me that it’s quite true.

    Comment by JET — November 14, 2008 @ 12:01 am

  4. Argh, bad HTML formatting! I demand either a PREVIEW or an EDIT function

    Comment by JET — November 14, 2008 @ 12:03 am

  5. Actually, we don’t know whether Palin knew that Africa was a continent.

    We only know that a prankster claimed she didn’t.

    The hoax only made sense because of Palin’s painfully obvious ignorance. If someone told you, as a hoax, that “Bill Clinton thinks Africa is a country, not a continent”, it wouldn’t be a good hoax at all.

    I have met many people who confuse continents with nation states. Palin may well be one.

    Comment by harold — November 14, 2008 @ 6:15 am

  6. Actually, she is that dumb. You misread the article. Here’s the correct story:

    “For anyone who has not yet figured this out yet, here’s the story in a nutshell:

    The hoax in this case is Eisenstadt’s claim that he was the source for Carl Cameron’s report on Fox News. Cameron never spoke to Eisenstadt and did not use Eisenstadt as the basis for his reporting.

    Got it? If you’re still confused, read the above paragraph a second time, or a third time if you need it. If you still have any doubts, read the New York Times story carefully. Its wording is a little less clear than it ought to be, but it also makes the point I just emphasized. Carl Cameron is standing by his story, and apparently Sarah Palin really was confused about Africa.”

    Comment by Cervantes — November 14, 2008 @ 7:03 am

  7. “The pranksters behind Eisenstadt acknowledge that he was not, through them, the anonymous source of the Palin leak. He just claimed falsely that he was the leaker–and they say they have no reason to cast doubt on the original story. For its part, Fox News Channel continues to stand behind its story.”

    So it was someone else who claimed it to Fox. Eisenstadt said it was him who had said it–that was the prank, not saying it in the first place (because he hadn’t said it).

    Comment by james — November 14, 2008 @ 7:15 am

  8. Ahh, when are you going to correct your post? It’s still up on Tom Tomorrow as of 11:00 ET. Not good.

    Comment by Cervantes — November 14, 2008 @ 7:56 am

  9. I’m surprised you seem so lax to amend your post, considering that said amendment would basically be, “No, wait, my bad, Sarah Palin may actually be that dumb after all,” which most folks would relish the opportunity to write.

    Comment by Matt — November 14, 2008 @ 9:08 am

  10. I was going to point out that the hoax was in regard to the SOURCE of the story, not the story itself. The real source of the story has not been revealed by Cameron, the Fox reporter who broke the story. The Hoax is that “Eisentsadt” claimed to be that source. The hoax has been debunked, and we now know that Eisenstadt was not the source, but the story remains true — so far — and the real source has not been identified.

    Shooshie

    Comment by Shooshie — November 14, 2008 @ 10:55 am

  11. Perhaps we should call her Pato Palin.

    Comment by Doobie — November 17, 2008 @ 2:46 am

  12. So you use Nyquil all year long?

    Comment by Horace Fudpucker — November 17, 2008 @ 10:52 am

Copy link for RSS feed for comments on this post or for TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)