Sunday, November 15, 2009

Lies and the Lying Sarah Palin who Tells Them

Once Jennifer and I had time to settle in to our morning and drink a requisite amount of coffee, we discussed an article in the Oregonian about Sarah Palin's newly-release memoirs. The article is originally by Calvin Woodward at the Associated Press, and you can read it here.*

Woodward's article does an exceptional job of providing a clear and concise outline of the ways in which Palin's book is saturated with lies.

I fear that we're going to be hearing Palin's name for years to come. Perhaps by the 2012 election she'll be in the running for president. Woodward's article in-and-of-itself should be enough to derail a bid for the presidency, let alone a bid for membership on the local PTA. I fear, however, that clear and unambiguous examples of Palin's inability to be truthful--some (i.e., me) could also say propensity to lie pathologically--just won't register on a certain section of our population.

This "certain section" I define as the following:

1) People who are not devoted to uncovering facts but, instead, prefer to live in a world where the only information they receive supports whatever opinion they already have;

2) People who vote for the Republican party no matter what.

Illustrating these populations graphically wouldn't create a completely overlapping Venn diagram, but what percentage of the population is represented by these criteria, do you think? Oy yoy yoy, it scares the bejeebees out of me to consider these numbers and how close Palin 2012 could be to becoming president. At times I don't have a lot of faith in the current political system that we have. (I'm getting to the word count in this entry where I'm realizing that I need to write another few entries on all of the tangents I've brought up thus far, but, before I do, to return to the basic idea of the review of Palin's book that I cited above . . .)

The likelihood of me reading Palin's book is pretty close to zero, so the critiquers can critique away at me on that--I have a limited amount of time to devote to all of the things I absolutely have to read for my book project and my career and for fun, so I have to draw the line somewhere. So, in lieu, I rely on sources I can trust to summarize things for me. I readily recall Palin being proven to be a liar on the campaign trail, and I distinctly recall the farce that was her abdication of her governorship, and these things color my opinion of her veracity. So, reading a review of her book in which further lies and politically-motivated obfuscation are brought out, I can only shake my head in the manner of "my goodness, here we go again . . ."

If there's anyone out there with some actual facts to contradict Woodward, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, then I'm absolutely open to hearing it.


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* Before correcting this link, this sentence read: "The article is originally by Calvin Woodward at the Associated Press, so I'm linking it here."
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3 comments:

  1. Unfortunately your link to Woodward's article seems to be broken. I appreciate your input on this topic.

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  2. Thanks for pointing that out, Grace. When I went to check up on it it, the link was gone -- looks like the AP takes their links off after a few weeks.

    I found another link for the article and changed it in the text.

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  3. The Dead Fish Wrapper cites a rather weak attempt to discredit the AP reporters who helped Woodward with his article on Palin's lies.

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