Sarah Palin's 'Snuff Film' Gets Global Attention

Jason Deans, writing in the UK's Guardian:

West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin today gave Sarah Palin both barrels over her US TV reality show, accusing the contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination of shooting an animal "for political gain".

He described Palin as "deranged", a "witless bully" and a "phony pioneer girl". He also said The Learning Channel, the US cable network, "should be ashamed of itself" for broadcasting her "truly awful reality show".

Before the show, in what was likely an attempt to gin up controversy and boost the show's ratings, which failed, Palin tweeted: "Unless you've never worn leather shoes, sat upon a leather chair or eaten meat, save your condemnation." Palin also accused those whom she was trying to bait of hypocrisy.

Deans continues, quoting Sorkin:

"I eat meat, chicken and fish, have shoes and furniture made of leather ... I'm able to make a distinction between you and me without feeling the least bit hypocritical," Sorkin wrote in an incendiary comment piece posted on the Huffington Post website early today.

"I don't watch snuff films and you make them. You weren't killing that animal for food or shelter or even fashion, you were killing it for fun. You enjoy killing animals," he added.

"And you didn't just do it for fun and you didn't just do it for money. That was the first moose [sic] ever murdered for political gain. You knew there'd be a protest from Peta and you knew that would be an opportunity to hate on some people, you witless bully. What a uniter you'd be – bringing the right together with the far right."

Sorkin said he could not make a distinction between what Palin got paid to do in her show and "what Michael Vick went to prison for doing". Vick is an American football player convicted three years ago on dog-fighting charges.

Sorkin's post is receiving a lot of attention. The Washington Post's TV Column, written by Lisa de Moraes, covers it here.

Palin Family Circus News - November 15, 2010

Flippin' Geez!

The Washington Post's Alexandra Petri may have written the best review of Sarah Palin's Alaska. It begins:

If real life were like this, to paraphrase a member of the Palin clan, I would be outside 24/7 eating popcorn on a chair. But instead, I'm inside watching "Sarah Palin's Alaska" on TLC. In escalating order, here are the top moments of last night's episode. I would say "I watch so you don't have to," but, actually, I urge you to watch. It's better than Dancing With the Stars!

Ms Petri definitiely has some insights to offer. My favorite was her description of Sarah the hairless bear. At the end of her list of the show's high points, she closes with:

Before watching this, I would have likened Palin, the outdoorsy, folksy, big-stick-totin' country gal, to Teddy Roosevelt. But after watching her climb, I'd say she's more like Franklin.

"How do we get down?" she asks at the end. I hope the entire second episode is just her attempting to get down! If so, it will be riveting television!

Regardless, I can't wait. As Sarah says, " I don't think that I have been that scared or that challenged in a long time."

You can watch "The Five Most Ridiculous Moments from the Sarah Palin's Alaska Premiere" here.

After watching that, how can Palin's fans continue to call her "Madame President?" Karl Rove appears to have been prescient when he said, last month, “With all due candour, appearing on your own reality show on the Discovery Channel, I am not certain how that fits in the American calculus of 'that helps me see you in the Oval Office’.”

And, from ABC's The Note, quoting a New Yorker article about the show: “Why she [Palin] thought that [a reality show] was a good idea, considering that she complained regularly about the media’s intrusion into her family life when she was John McCain’s running mate in 2008 (while, at the same time, frequently putting her children on display), is a mystery,” Nancy Franklin wrote in the New Yorker. “Moreover, you might ask, how seriously will people take her as a political candidate – a Presidential candidate – once she has participated in a reality show?”

I might add that most voters expect candidates to have a much larger vocabulary than "flippin'" and "geez."


The post's photo came from a Mail Online article about the show. Sarah doesn't really mush dogs, but it isn't a bad photo.


Update: Apparently Sarah's Fox News colleagues got a few chuckles out of the show:

Via IM

Update: The Washington Post's TV Column has ratings. It may have been a big night for TLC, but some other shows did much better ... Family Guy and more ...

Palin Family Circus News - Saturday, October 16, 2010

Meg Whitman, like several other nationally prominent Republicans, has evaded the question of Sarah Palin's qualifications to be President. The LA Times reports:

Asked whether she thought Palin was qualifed to be president, Whitman said: "Technically, she’s qualified to be president because you have to be a U.S. citizen and be in good standing. I think the voters of the United States are going to decide who's going to be the next Republican nominee and there's going to be a lot of competition for that."

There are millions of people just as qualified as Palin, using the "constitutionally qualifed" standard.

Sarah Palin has been in California, and she will appear at a Republican National Committee rally, today, in Orange County. But two of California's office seekers are staying away:

A Field Poll released last week found that 58 percent of the state's registered voters hold a negative view of Palin, although she remains quite popular among Republicans. In addition, two-thirds of independent voters would be less inclined to support a candidate endorsed by her.

That could help explain why California's two most prominent Republican candidates this year — gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman and Senate candidate Carly Fiorina — will be absent from Saturday's RNC rally in Anaheim.

San Jose Mercury News' article also describes Palin's appearance and speech, yesterday, alongside Howard Dean, in Sacramento, California's capitol. Palin tried to convince the audience that Republicans are on the side of the little guy, saying, "This election is about the little guy, the common man, independence, and the middle class — those forgotten and ignored for far too long, and now they're fighting back," but she then slipped-up by saying, "They — we — are saying enough is enough."



The LA Times' Top of the Ticket column has an article about Sarah Palin's Alaska. The column says, "I'd rather be doing this than in some stuffy old political office," Palin is heard saying while looking out on across a beautiful snowy vista. And how can you not agree with her? The show begins November 14, and a 30-second promotional video can be seen at The LA Times.



Any publicity is good publicity? Celebrity Cafe is reporting, "The porn actress best known for her parodies of Sarah Palin says she will not do films that require unprotected sex."

Palin Family Circus News - Friday, October 8, 2010

Delaware's Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Christine O'Donnell, is the latest to evade a question of whether Sarah Palin is qualified to be President. The NY Daily News reports:

Sarah Palin's finding out the Tea Party is a tough crowd.

Palin's mini-me, Delaware Senate contender Christine O'Donnell, ducked a question over whether Palin is qualified to be President, joining fellow Tea Party Senate hopeful Joe Miller in declining to comment.

Palin, the face of the budding Tea Party movement, is widely seen as a contender for the GOP nomination in 2012.

O'Donnell broke her boycott of national media Thursday and chatted with CNN reporter Jim Acosta. In response to his question about whether Palin was qualified to be commander-in-chief, O'Donnell said:

"Is she running for President? Again, hypothetical."



New York's "Nobody Wants to Say That Sarah Palin Is Qualified to Be President," tells us, in part:

Sarah Palin sure has some fair-weather friends. ...

Guess what's going to happen now, besides Todd Palin sending a sassy e-mail to Christine O'Donnell. Reporters are going to start asking every prominent Republican with electoral ambitions whether they think Palin is qualified to be president, hoping for another awkward dodge. Any such dodges, along with those of Miller and O'Donnell, will be reported in the media and contribute to the erosion of whatever viability Pain has as a presidential candidate. Palin has her friends Joe Miller and Christine O'Donnell to thank for that.

About one year ago, Mississippi's Republican governor, Haley Barbour, damned Palin with faint praise by saying that she is constitutionally qualified to be President. Guess what? Millions of others are also, too.



Salon's "America Hates Sarah Palin" has:

According to a new CBS poll, America really doesn't care for Sarah Palin. She is viewed favorably by 22% of Americans, and unfavorably by 48%. Those are not great numbers for a potential 2012 candidate. ...

... The polls also serve as a reminder that the Fox/Tea Party bloc of enraged older white people, for all their bluster about taking "their" country back, represent a sliver of the population. ...

The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart has the best palinsight around and wrote of a Palin candidacy:

Taking time out from bashing out-of-touch elites, Sarah Palin went to West Palm Beach on Wednesday to tape a webcast for newsmax.com and made a laughable pronouncement. According to Jose Lambiet's "Page 2 Live" blog at The Palm Beach Post, the former half-term governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee said that she would run in 2012 if "the American people" want her to.

Earth to Palin: they don't. ...

... Now, this might difficult for Palin or her legions of fans and admirers to accept, but "the American people" have consistently said they don't think she is qualified or should be president. You will recall that last month I said Sarah Palin is everywhere -- and going nowhere. A CBS News poll released on Oct. 6 shows nothing has changed. ...

... Palin told her Palm Beach audience that she wasn't sure if voters were ready for her "unconventional," "out-of-the-box" style. As the polls have shown since late 2008, they're not.

"Earth to Palin?" Let me go all palingates here and offer "proof" that the Palins are from another planet:

Palin Family On Their Home Planet

Click the photo to enlarge it

More photos from TLC's "Sarah Palin's Alaska" can be seen here.



Celebrity Cafe's "Bristol Palin Hasn't Noticed Weight Loss From Grueling 'Dancing with the Stars' Workouts," quotes Bristol: "I haven't really noticed a change in [my body] ... I think most people lose weight [on the show] because they're too stressed out to eat. I haven't had that problem!"



The NY Daily News has "Sarah Palin: 'Dancing with the Stars' asked my husband Todd to be on ABC show before Bristol joined."

Todd must have sloughed it off onto Bristol, because he can't dance, right?

A bird is about to bite the hand that feeds it

In Steve Almond's article at Salon, we're informed:

It’s not exactly a shocker that Sarah Palin loves to tweet. Indeed, Twitter seems to have been invented expressly for the former Alaska governor, a public figure whose prodigious need for attention is matched only by her microscopic attention span. ...

... Palin has every right — even an obligation, as a possible presidential candidate — to critique Obama’s positions on vital issues such as immigration. But her tweets don’t do that. On the contrary, they offer up talking points meant to shift the focus from an honest debate of policy to public recrimination. ...

Twitter, like Facebook, is ideal for Palin, because it's a one-way medium. Is it any wonder that it's a demagogue's preferred medium?


Sarah Palin will appear with Kate Gosselin in a special episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska." Is that going to be any different than "My Alaska" or "Your Alaska?" The show is set for eight episodes, beginning November 18th on TLC. It will be interesting to see whether Gosselin can get along with Palin well enough to be Palin's running mate in 2012. Here is a Fox story about the show.


From an LA Times article: "We examined whether money given to a [California State University, Stanislaus] charitable foundation was handled appropriately, but found no violation of law," [California Attorney General] Brown said in a statement. "However, the foundation board has agreed to make changes to improve oversight of its funds."

The LA Times' article has a picture of Sarah Palin wearing a halo and monster pearls. The same picture, credited to Debbie Noda of The Modesto Bee, can be seen here. It was used in a post on June 26th, and is one of this blog's most downloaded pictures.

Speaking of The Modesto Bee, that paper published a story about the investigation, too, and their story may be more informative than the LA Times' story.


I am not sorry that there isn't more Palin news.

Kate Gosselin Being Considered As Palin's Running Mate

Here, we see Kate Gosselin arriving for a meeting with Sarah Palin. The planet's buzzing with rumors that Palin is about to give Gosselin the VP nod.

Officially, it's just a coincidence that Gosselin has been seen in Alaska while Palin is filming her own reality show there, and it's just a coincidence that they're both TLC properties, but no one is denying that Gosselin would bring a lot to the ticket.

As Palin's children age, they will become less effective with the press. It's thought that Gosselin's brood, being younger, could prolong a Palin administration's good relations with the press.

So far, the lamestream media hasn't caught on and is only reporting that Palin and Gosselin will appear on each other's show. They say that Gosselin's children are going to learn some science from Palin's father, Chuck Heath, when they appear on Palin's show. There is no word yet about what Palin, possibly accompanied by her children, will do on Gosselin's show.

Here are the lamestream media reports from: ABC News, NY Daily News, and The Washington Post. As usual, they don't have the full story.