Charlie Sheen bests Sarah Palin on Twitter

We're told, in "Charlie Sheen Passes Sarah Palin On Twitter," at myfoxphilly.com:

Charlie Sheen is adding Twitter followers at a record pace, but he has a long way to go to catch Lady Gaga and other Twitter superstars. But he has already passed Sarah Palin.

Link: Twitaholic Top 100 List

Sheen added 600,000 new followers in the first 14 hours he was on Twitter, which has stunned observers of the microblogging Web site. It took Palin 19 months to get about 430,000 followers. ...

At our main blog, Blogging towards Bethlehem, I wrote about Sheen's rant on a radio call-in program. Since then, Sheen has been interviewed everywhere and appears to be unapolegetic. The most recent news is that his estranged wife has obtained a restraining order, so the authorities have taken their children away from Sheen.

To follow this story or to catch-up, just go to Google->News and type sheen into the search box.

The Press Begins to Question Its Coverage of Sarah Palin

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank has written "I'm declaring February a Palin-free month. Join me!"

New Yorker magazine's Amy Davidson responded with "No Pledge on Palin."

Andrew Sullivan says, "No surrender" in "A Palin-Free February?"

Rather than debate whether Palin should be covered, it might be better to decide what is worthy of coverage.

A tweet? That's 140 characters, max. Can anyone address a foreign policy question, domestic legislation, taxation and a host of other issues in 140 characters? Probably not. But things like a meeting with a newspaper's editiorial board or an in-depth interview would be worth covering. So would an announcement that she's going to run for the Republican nomination. So would a news conference.

A Facebook post? Probably not, because, like a tweet, there isn't an opportunity to ask questions, to clarify what she means.

The one thing that distinguishes Sarah Palin's interaction with people is that it's all one-way communication. Perhaps nothing Palin says should be covered unless it involves some dialog, a little give and take. Let her meet the press and face the nation, then what she has to say may be worth covering.

For a long time now, this blog hasn't covered Sarah Palin's tweets and only rarely her Facebook posts, and, in the aftermath of Tucson, there may be fewer posts. There aren't as many things to blog about anymore; for example, the Palin Family Circus News may never appear again, because there no longer seems to be anything amusing about Sarah Palin. We even started Blogging towards Bethlehem, our Palin-free space, so we could continue to blog about important, interesting, even fun things.

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.