Fail Quote: Palin says she’ll stop whining about the media

Sarah Palin

If you take Sarah Palin’s latest declaration seriously, then my advice to you is to stop replying with interest to all those Nigerian princes in your inbox:

"I'm through whining about a liberal press that holds conservative women to a different standard, because it doesn't do any good to whine about it," Palin said. "When a shot is taken at me, it is water off a duck's back because I know the important things we need to concentrate on in life — especially the national and international issues that are so important in our country."

Of course, that’s pure bullshit, every word of it. There is nobody in the US political scene who takes criticism less in stride than does Sarah Palin, the woman whose made her entire reputation as the conservative base’s political superstar off of bitching and moaning and throwing tantrums at the media’s oft-amused (and increasingly exasperated) examination of her many canards and tall tales. Whenever an anchor or pundit does so much as casts doubt on her latest fabrication, you can always set your watch to the notion that she’ll be appearing within hours on Fox News (or Twitter if she’s feeling eloquent and Facebook when she’s feeling erudite) to snootily proclaim how she’s above all these “attacks” and “smears” – as if correcting her falsehoods were a bad thing, or as if taking every moment available to declare how she’s not affected by criticism weren’t, in itself, the most revealing sign possible that she has skin that’s practically see-through.

It’s also a typical canard of Palin’s to claim that the amount of blowback she receives is somehow indicative of conservative women supposedly being held to a different standard. The fact that conservatives in general (which forcibly includes women) get flak for saying so many ignorant, stupid and dishonest things on a daily basis does not mean they’re being treated any more harshly than they deserve. It means that when you say something false and misleading, you have to expect to get corrected, oftentimes without sympathy. There’s no secret or conspiracy going around liberal circles to besmirch those poor right-wing women (by which Palin apparently means her co-airheads on Fox News). It’s just that they keep saying the sort of stupid shit that merits a constant hammering from those who actually reside within reality.

In the end, though, Sarah, if you really want to stop whining about the mythical “liberal media”, then here’s all I can tell you:

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)