The Palin E-mails

With fervor and scrutiny they’ve not shown for anything related to Obama (his personal communications, the health care bill, budget spending, etc.), the media has pounced on the e-mails of a vice presidential candidate from 3 years ago who is, so far, not running for any political office. Yeah, and it’s a Republican they’ve saved their diligence for. Surprised? Yeah, me neither.

James Taranto, who’s column should be required reading, had a great take on the whole thing. It’s a non-issue, and the media just hates that.

The Left’s ‘Birth Certificate’
Lots of journalists spent lots of hours poring over Sarah Palin’s gubernatorial emails. What did they find? The best part of the Los Angeles Times’s ,1,300-word story is the list of contributors at the bottom:

[Matea] Gold reported from Washington and [Robin] Abcarian from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Maloy Moore and Ken Schwencke in Juneau, Ben Welsh in Los Angeles, Kim Murphy in Seattle and Tom Hamburger, Kathleen Hennessey, Kim Geiger, Christine Mai-Duc and Melanie Mason in the Washington bureau also contributed to this report.

What shocking revelation did these 11 reporters find? "Palin Closely Guarded Her Public Image, Emails Show."

Other headlines:

• "Sarah Palin Emails Provide No Big Bombshells"–Politico
• "Palin’s E-Mails Undercut Simplistic Views of Her, Both Positive and Negative"–New York Times
• "Palin Emails Don’t Contain Any Bombshell, ‘Gotcha’ Moments"–Anchorage Daily News
• "Search Shows Few Michigan References in Palin Emails"–Detroit News

London’s Daily Telegraph reports that Palin "received a barrage of abusive emails including death threats in the run up to the 2008 presidential race." Don’t expect to read that in the New York Times, which is heavily invested in the lie that political "incivility" is the exclusive province of the right.

The Times did, however, publish this hilariously oblivious observation:

Another near certainty whenever Ms. Palin is involved: a media spectacle.

In terms of the zeal with which they were demanded and the anticlimax of their release, the Palin emails are the left’s equivalent of President Obama’s long-form birth certificate. Except, of course, that sensible conservatives never took birtherism seriously. What we’ve learned here is that major news organizations are populated with the left-wing equivalent of Donald Trump and Jerome Corsi.

Our favorite Palin email bit is a hysterical–and hysterically funny–screed by Patricia Williams, a Columbia professor, in London’s Guardian, titled "Sarah Palin Emails: Banal, Hypocritical and Smug . . . We Already Knew That." Among other things, Williams is outraged to learn that Gov. Palin employed speechwriters and prayed for guidance:

One wonders if she isn’t going to come out ahead at the end because her correspondence is boring. This is playing against the backdrop of revelations that New York Congressman Andrew [sic] Weiner sent hundreds of salacious texts and photos to women who were not his wife. By contrast, Palin’s correspondence seems a paragon of virtue, as she is revealed fussing about her hair, wondering about dinner, and hiding the hootch from the kids. You could almost forget she’s an idiot.

Williams writes that she spent at least two hours "trolling" the Palin emails. There is no reason to think Palin would spend two minutes reading any of Williams’s writing. Who’s the idiot?

Filed under: Liberal • Media

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