palin derangement syndrome continues

Todd Purdum from Vanity Fair just wrote an article about Sarah Palin, and I can’t decide if he wants to take her down, or get down with her.

“Sarah Palin is still the sexiest brand in Republican politics….she is by far the best-looking woman ever…the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs….she looks like a beauty queen….When she chooses to reveal herself….Palin is at once the sexiest and the riskiest brand in the Republican Party…Palin turns her debate with Joe Biden into a winkathon…nailing…knockout…she was a fresh-faced reformer…”

“It Came from Wasilla” is an idiotic hit piece, filled with anonymous sources, and a revival of Trig trutherisms. “Complete with a slew of juicy, negative quotes from insiders and a smoothly crafted narrative that demeans and diminishes Palin’s accomplishments.”

Real Clear Politics says it best:

Todd Purdum pulls down the black ski mask and whips out the sawed off shotgun for this utterly predictable hit piece on Sarah Palin in the August issue of Vanity Fair.

To be clear, there are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and the elitist MSM’s contract-killer journalism against political figures with whom they disagree – which, more often than not means conservatives.

Purdum’s piece is an absolute classic of the genre, complete with a slew of juicy, negative quotes from insiders and a smoothly crafted narrative that demeans and diminishes Palin’s accomplishments and portrays her as an ignorant white trash whack job who stumbled her way into the governorship of Alaska through a combination of raw ambition and blind luck.

What the hell is Vanity Fair doing running this crap? A womans magazine that takes down succesful working women and mothers?

I thought this was a great discussion, from Hannity:

The Campaign Spot was nice enough to read and mock the article, so you don’t have to. Here are a couple of highlights:

Whatever her political future, the emergence of Sarah Palin raises questions that will not soon go away. “What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded?”

I’m still looking for any quote from Palin at any time where she expressed pride in what she does not know. The closest we come to in the article is an anecdote in which she tells a gubernatorial rival that she’s amazed at his command of “facts, figures, and policies” but then looks into the audience and wonders whether any of it really matters. We don’t know which “facts, figures, and policies” she’s referring to, but we have all seen detail-heavy speakers incapable of communicating a core message. Keep in mind that the current president was elected on a core message of “hope,” “change,” and “yes we can.”

What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life?

Again, four years in the Senate, two of which were spent campaigning, is considered proper preparation for the presidency; two years as governor is somehow scandalously little experience to be vice president.

Her first trip to Washington since the election was to attend the dinner of the Alfalfa Club, an elite group of politicians and businesspeople whose sole function is an annual evening in honor of a plant that would “do anything for a drink.”

Ah. How the group got its name is very important to this story; otherwise it might that Palin appeared at a traditional get-together of prominent political figures, instead of the insinuation that she’s hanging around with a bunch of lushes. The fact that President Obama spoke to the group* is strangely omitted.

Palin worked hard, and the results were adequate. Palin’s winking “Can I call you Joe?” performance against Biden was nothing like a disaster.

In this kind of a profile, this is an admission that she won the debate.

I think Bill Clinton best summed up Todd Purdum (responding to the hit piece Purdum wrote about Bill):

“He’s a really dishonest reporter…. But he’s a real slimy guy.” When Fowler reminded Clinton that Purdum is married to his former press secretary, he responded: “That’s all right – he’s still a scumbag” and later added “He’s just a dishonest guy – can’t help it.”

Clinton went on to observe: “It’s all politics. It’s all about the bias of the media for Obama. Don’t think anything about it. But I’m telling ya, all it’s doing is driving her supporters further and further away – because they know exactly what it is – this has been the most rigged coverage in modern history – and the guy ought to be ashamed of himself. But he has no shame. It isn’t the first dishonest piece he’s written about me or her.”

Bill Clinton also said about Purdum:

“The editor of Esquire— he sent us an email yesterday and said it was the single sleaziest piece of journalism he’d seen in decades. He said it made him want to go take a shower and he was embarrassed to be a journalist when he read it.”

“You know he didn’t use a single name, cite a single source in all those things he said. It’s just slimy. It’s part of the national media’s attempt to nail Hillary for Obama. It’s the most biased press coverage in history. It’s another way of helping Obama. They had all these people standing up in this church cheering, calling Hillary a white racist, and he didn’t do anything about it. The first day he said ‘Ah, ah, ah well.’ Because that’s what they do— he gets other people to slime her. So then they saw the movie they thought this is a great ad for John McCain— maybe I better quit the church. It’s all politics. It’s all about the bias of the media for Obama. Don’t think anything about it.”

Eerily similar isn’t it? So, perhaps it isn’t Sarah Palin that Purdum is obsessed with, but Obama…. Watch out Dee Dee!

Purdum also wrote:

“Several [people in Alaska] told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—“a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy”—and thought it fit her perfectly.”

That is SO funny, because several people told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the Henry Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body, and confirmed that Purdum is an asshole.

It’s true. People told me. And I read it on the internets machine.