Canadian Columnist Clobbers Palin

[Dee]

This is better than that SNL skit. Much better! :p

http://ca.yahoo.com/s/691577

I had to wipe the spit off my screen after that Fox announcer finished ranting.

[Bat]

She calls CBC 'obviously far left'...as if that's a bad thing, compared to FOX which is so far to the right as to be fascist. Sauce for the goose, and all that rot....:D

[Dee]

It amazed me that Blondie was surprised to learn a lot of people are thinking the same things about little miss gun-toting cheerleading perky-till-ya-puke Palin. Maybe she just needs to get out of the studio once in a while. :p

[Bat]

It's still amazing to me how insular this country of ours still is...boggling.:(

[Chet]

Slightly off-topic here, but still about the moose woman ...

I saw a Larry King show this morning which discussed whether her popularity is waning. He had 4 women on the panel - 2 Republican supporters, and 2 Democrat supporters, including the author Naomi Wolf.

I was impressed with how gracious the two Democrat supporters were, while the 2 Rep women raised their voices to cut in while the other 2 were speaking, and it occurred to me that when one has no substance in the content, one tends to raise one's voice.

At one point, Naomi Wolf commented that it scared her to think that Americans would vote based on popularity and nothing else.

[Dee]

Yup, it's rather pathetic all right. I'm not sure the US can survive another four years of a Republican dictator, wearing lipstick or not. Seriously.

[DaveM]

The thing I find most peculiar is the tendency by advocates of both parties (though the Republicans have a near-monopoly on it) to believe that attacking the other candidate makes your candidate somehow better. I'm astonished at how many people swallow it.

Just at the moment, I "know" (or at least, have heard) all sorts of things about various candidates personal and professional lives, attacks on their ability to tell the truth or stick to one position, their marriages, their homes, and what kind of shoes they wear. I know next to nothing about what either Presidential candidate stands FOR (they both seem to talk about "change" a lot), or how he would accomplish whatever it might be.

Truly a sad state of affairs.

John McCain gave a speech in Minnesota yesterday in which he stated that voters have a choice between Obama and "country". I don't think he meant the music.

[Dee]

The column that set Blondie off on her tirade is still up on the CBC site if you want to read the whole thing. It's all so very silly.

A Mighty Wind blows through Republican convention

Last Updated: Friday, September 5, 2008

Heather Mallick, special to CBC News

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.

A Mighty Wind blows through Republican convention (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/09/05/f-vp-mallick.html)

[coffeegyrl]

and the gal on fox is OUTRAGED, it's just UNBELIEVABLE what some people in the media will say. Will they let the Canadian journalist get away with that?

Oh please, blondie, you do it every day.

thanks Dee, it was hilarious!

[DaveM]

Okay, this is supposed to be a non-issue, and please correct me if I am wrong, but there is supposed to be documented proof that Sarah Palin's youngest child is hers and not her daughter's as a number of rumor-mongers have claimed. That said, I spent quite some time this afternoon trying to run down something resembling "proof" on the Internet (admittedly, not the best of sources). What I did find was a couple of photos supposedly taken of Governor Palin while she was 7 months' pregnant with her 5th child compared to one taken while she was 7 months' pregnant with her first....they barely look like the same person and she doesn't appear to be pregnant in the former(she's not wearing "slimming" clothing, either). There are allegations that medical records from the pregnancy as well as the baby's birth certificate are missing or were altered, and nothing to rebut either claim. There are claims that Gov. Palin's water broke before she was to give a speech--and that she not only gave the speech, but spent 11 or 12 hours flying home before entering a hospital to give birth (this almost seems impossible).

And from the Republican side, I was only able to find: "the liberals lie about everything. Everyone knows that only older mothers have Down Syndrome babies". Which, as it happens, is not true.

None of these comments appear to have any factual support or supporting information of any sort. And while the idea that Sarah Palin is "pretending" to have given birth to her daughter's "love child" smacks of weird conspiracy theory crap, how is it that, when so much ado has been made of it, there has been no rebuttal (at least that I could find) from the Republican side which could easily have laid the whole thing to rest with a few medical documents and perhaps a few family photos and interviews with people who knew Gov. Palin during the 9 month period in question?

Several comments have appeared to the effect that Gov. Palin was concealing her pregnancy in public....why would a happily married woman who already had four children feel the need to do so? And there are allegations that Bristol Palin was out of school for 4-5 months during the period in question with a vaguely-described illness which again are unsupported by medical records.

Why would the campaign leave so many obvious open questions when the blogosphere and other realms have made so much hay with it? Sen. Obama, to his credit, says it's none of our business, but we all know that others do not believe so. Is there some reasonably reliable source of information on this matter, one way or the other?

Surely the truth is a "traditional value", to be honored as such. Or is it?

[aabram]

Love it, Guys!!!!! Let's hope this wind is strong enough for Palin to think again??? :rolleyes: (or maybe not) David Warren is lost for words??? Blondie is a star!!! :)

Annabel

[Dee]

Surely the truth is a "traditional value", to be honored as such. Or is it?

Call me cynical, but I really don’t believe honesty and politicians go together most of the time. Well not at all actually.

[DaveM]

Will Rogers had that wonderful remark to the effect that the best way to tell if a politician was lying was to see if his lips were moving.

[Dee]

Canadian columnist's diatribe against Palin stokes anger in U.S. http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k267/deemark/Emoticons/miniroflmao.gif

Sunday, September 21, 2008 | 3:40 PM ET

Canadian journalist Heather Mallick is facing an ugly onslaught from the U.S. right-wing media and its fans for an online column she wrote mocking Sarah Palin as "white trash."

The Sept. 5 column on CBC.ca, entitled "A Mighty Wind blows through the Republican convention," had already been on the receiving end of vitriol from some Canadian news organizations.

But Fox News picked up on it this week, and unleashed its full fury on Mallick for stating that Palin, the Republicans' vice-presidential nominee, appeals to "the white trash vote" with her "toned-down version of the porn actress look."

Mallick says those comments pale in comparison to the abuse that's come her way in the wake of the column. She's been called a "pig" by Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren, has been branded an insane Pakistani Muslim by commentators on Fox message boards and has received violent and threatening e-mail, some of which include anti-Semitic slurs — despite the fact that she's neither Jewish nor Muslim.

"I'd love to punch you right in your chops and knock every tooth out of your head. Come see me bitch, I have something for you!" someone named Dave Jones wrote in an e-mail to Mallick.

Messages left on the Fox News website also contain a lot of anti-Canadian sentiment.

One wrote, "Those morons up north just can't keep their ignorant mouths shut when it's really none of their socialist business … the People's Republic of Canada is no friend of the USA!"

The Toronto-based Mallick admits she's been shaken by the violence suggested in hundreds of e-mails similar in tone to Jones's, but adds the messages have simply served to underscore her point about the bigotry and small-mindedness of some Republican supporters.

"The responses to my column proved me correct about the extreme right in the United States: they have a great misogynist rage in them," Mallick said in an interview from Toronto on Saturday.

"The violent and obscene threats against me were one thing — it's easy to filter those — but the anti-Semitic hate mail was very troubling. I am not Jewish but I am honoured to be taken for one. I consider it a great compliment."

The CBC said Saturday it had no plans to remove Mallick's article from its website despite the criticism.

"She's an opinion columnist, she expresses her opinion. Her opinions don't represent the views of CBC in general or CBC News in particular," said spokesman Jeff Keay.

"The people who object to her opinions have an opportunity to comment on the website as they've done," he said.

Mallick was certainly not alone in attacking Palin in the days following John McCain's surprise pick of the Alaska governor as his running mate.

Salon website also takes aim at Palin

Among many others in the mainstream media and in the blogosphere, Salon.com's Cintra Wilson had a column about Palin that was in the same vein as Mallick's.

"Ideologically, she is their hardcore pornographic centrefold spread," Wilson wrote. "She's such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty, it's easy to write her off and make fun of her. But in reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism."

The rage of women about Palin in the so-called blue states — those that routinely vote Democrat in presidential elections — has, in fact, been well-documented.

"All of my women friends … were on the verge of throwing themselves out windows," author and political activist Nancy Kricorian told the New York Sun earlier this week.

"People were flipping out. Every woman I know was in high hysteria over this. Everyone was just beside themselves with terror that this woman could be our president — our potential next president."

But the woman-versus-woman slurs haven't just focused on Palin. Van Susteren levelled some Mallick's way when she repeatedly called her a pig while discussing the controversy with the Ottawa Citizen's David Warren on her Fox News Channel show Thursday.

"There's no part of me that thinks this woman published this as part of a grand motive to expose others. I think she just wrote it for selfish reasons and because, as I noted, I think she's a pig," Van Susteren said.

One lone participant on Van Susteren's blog, amid the many cheerleaders, took her to task for the remarks.

"It seems particularly ironic that you decry Mallick's lack of tact/professionalism, etc., when she name-calls by doing precisely the same thing: what sort of journalistic integrity is there in calling someone a pig?" wrote someone named Hope.

The media blog Media Bistro also defended Mallick.

"We kind of think Heather Mallick has some balls to be that snarky in a country that tries to legislate politeness," it wrote.

Mallick was unapologetic about the column Saturday, adding the CBC has been supportive of her right to expression.

"Columnists have been opinionating since newspapers were invented," she said. "And now journalism is online, which makes reaction even more hyper than it used to be. I'm a confident writer and some of this new audience is not used to that."

The Canadian Press (http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2008/09/21/mallick-palin.html)

[DaveM]

Amusing that self-styled "conservatives" are fond of sarcastically referring to Barack Obama as "The Messiah". But if anyone should question their Chosen People, the immediate response is a threat of violence. How democratic of them.

The next President may well preside over the economic collapse of the United States. Which of the two major candidates is "qualified" to handle that one? Could I see a show of hands?

[Wildflower Fever]

Here's a great clip compilation from Robert Greenwald's "OutFoxed." Pretty much sums up the interview technique employed by "Blondie." :rolleyes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3kI8LNTqNo This is what they are trained to do, they are the most scripted "news" organization ever.

[Dee]

Well LOL three minutes of that video was all I could stomach and none of what I heard came as any surprise to me. The stupidities of Fox News with their amateur schoolyard antics are not even close to journalism. It’s trash tv.

Nice to know Blondie isn’t just another victim of Peroxide poisoning as I thought tho. :p

[DaveM]

"Outfoxed" is both hilarious and terrifying. Anyone who even remotely believes Fox is "Fair And Balanced" because they say so should watch it. Except, of course, that they've all been told it's just "more liberal propaganda".

Rupert Murdoch, who created the Fox network and most of the trash TV trend, knew full well that the fastest way to get wealthy in America is to cater to the lowest common denominator--the "white trash", basically. He's made his billions. It will cost far more, however, to repair the damage wrought by those who swallowed his product without first taking a good look at what they were eating. And Rupert Murdoch won't be footing the bill.

[hoops]

i kept looking and looking for the unrepeatable slurs that...whoever the blonde woman is...talked about with such overacted anger. it looked to me like another opinion column, with it's cracks and raps that come in an opinion column. what was this woman so upset about? it didn't scream blame or over react. maybe if it was spoken word, it would have, bit it certainly didn;t have the feel of hatred that the fox reporter obviously had.
peace
hoops

[Dar]

Oh my GOD! That blonde! Talk about obnoxious and shocking.
I love how a Fox News person refers so disdainfully to the FAR LEFT.

[Dee]

The more disturbing part to me is that there are people who actually watch Fox News. Spooky.

[Judy]

My, but blondie is an excitable little thing, isn't she? She would have blown a gasket if someone had thrown Ronald Reagan Jr's comment at her regarding Palin's baby at the Republican Convention: "They passed that baby around like a bong at Burning Man"(...to me one of the funnier things that's been during this entire campaign.)

And Dar...Haven't you noticed that along with "Far Left" the word "feminist" draws the same sneering disdain?

[hoops]

oh, and another thing, if this is the worst our fox lady thinks is coming...she is a weakling. and if sarah can't take the heat she should get a better maid, suck it up and go back to bed.
peace
hoops

[DaveM]

Should the backlash against Palin become strong enough, I expect her to step down and be replaced by a good ol' boy, at which time all the "conservatives" will pop back out of the woodwork to cry: "see, you didn't want a woman in office after all!" We'll probably hear some "barefoot and pregnant" remarks as well.

An observation which probably means little, since I only have a rural area from which to drawn on, but I note that there are plenty of "Obama-Biden" signs all over the place, while the Republican signs only mention "McCain For President" or the like. A hint that perhaps the VP position is not entirely cast in stone?