Strike three! You're out, Sarah Palin!

In writing and in speech, Sarah Palin has a problem with citations. She cites others' work, out of context, to support whatever she's chosen to write or talk about.


Strike One

Defending 'Death Panel' Claim, Sarah Palin Misleadingly Quotes Op-ed That Criticizes Her

In a September 8, 2009 Facebook note, Sarah Palin posted her written testimony for the New York State Senate Aging Committee. In her testimony, she defends using the "death panel" phrase and insists "its accuracy has been vindicated." To support this false claim, Palin cites a piece written by the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson. She doesn't mention that Robinson's very next sentence calls her "death panel" claim outlandish and false. ...

Strike Two

Palin Advocates War With Iran After Apparently Misunderstanding Buchanan Column

Citing a column by Pat Buchanan that clearly argues against conflict with Iran, Sarah Palin on Sunday suggested that a war with Iran would be good policy and a boon for President Obama's 2012 reelection hopes. ...

Strike Three

Palin Takes the Easy Road on Climate Change

... Palin's post [on climate change] is a prime example of such an attempted diversion. She writes, "The IPCC’s supposedly definitive report proving the theory is riddled with serious errors," while bulldozing over the fact that those errors don't speak at all to the core of climate science. In reality it's a perverse sort of ad hominem attack on the IPCC and the 620 scientists who authored the 4th assessment report. The argument goes: they've made these errors, therefore everything they've said must be an error. But, in reality, none of these mistakes undercuts at all the scientific consensus that greenhouse gases have raised and will continue to raise global temperatures, a belief held by nearly all climate scientists.

She then tries to back herself up by suggesting that the former head of the IPCC, Greenpeace UK, and the Natural Environment Research Council are in her corner. They clearly are not. They have attacked the IPCC because they believe, rightfully so, that these petty errors can be used by opportunists to distract from the central and unwavering truths of climate science. Alan Thorpe says as much in the article to which Palin links:

We open ourselves up to trouble if we start getting into hearsay and grey literature. We have enough research that has been peer-reviewed to provide evidence for climate change, so it is concerning that the IPCC has strayed from that. ...

There you have it. Sarah's out. Time to retire the side?

Don't Be Taken For A Ride

This video is an excerpt of an interview that Greta Van Susteren conducted with Sarah Palin. Greta tells us that we're riding on the Going Rogue tour bus. But is the bus really moving?



Watch. Something is wrong. The video's frames are moving around. No, it's not about the cuts between Greta and Sarah; it's not about the cuts to out-of-the-bus scenes that were spliced-in after the interview occurred; it's about how the frame moves while the camera is pointed at either Greta or Sarah. My first thought was that that must be a very bumpy road, but, no, that wasn't the explanation. There is side-to-side as well as up-and-down motion. Then it hit me: the bus wasn't moving; the camera was being wobbled aboard a stopped bus! Why? For the sake of cinéma-vérité. To create the impression that we're not just on the bus, but that the bus is moving.

A longer on-the-bus video, in which Greta starts by telling us, "Now you are taking a ride on Governor Palin's book tour bus as it rumbles across the country. We hopped on the bus with Governor Palin after a book signing at Ft. Bragg," can be found in Gryphen's Sarah Palin in her own words with Greta Van Susteren post. In the longer video, you can watch the wobble for about nine minutes as Sarah Palin tries to explain why she resigned the governorship of Alaska. Warning: watching that could make you nauseous. We have watched the whole thing and can assure you that the frames are wobbly whenever a camera is pointed at either Sarah or Greta as they converse.

What do you think? Are we imagining this? Are we "makin' stuff up?" If you think we're imagining this or making stuff up, please explain why you think the bus was actually moving.

Was the bus moving, Sarah Palin? Were you "rumbling across the country" during that interview?

Inteview With Sarah Palin is a transcript of the interview aboard the bus.