The quote actually belongs to actress Tina Fey, who used the line while impersonating Gov. Palin in a Saturday Night Live comedy sketch. What the governor actually said, "You can see Russia from Alaska," is a statement of fact. U.S. and Russian territory are in such close proximity in the Bering Strait that an Alaskan island and a Russian one are within sight of each other.
The failure to recognize this simple fact of world geography by the governor's critics, rather ironically indicates a lack of intellectual curiosity on the part of those leftists who love to criticize Gov. Palin for what they claim is intellectual incuriosity. That one could gather the actual facts in just seconds with a web search matters not to the liberati. They believe what they believe, the facts be damned, because they so very much want to believe it. I think this is what Ronald Reagan was getting at when he said that the trouble with liberals is not that they are ignorant, but that they believe so much that isn't so. Their need to believe what they choose to believe without bothering to look it up in an actual book or something compels them to believe it. What's scary is that Reagan's famous quote comes from 45 years ago, and nothing has changed in the intervening period of nearly a half century. Learning from mistakes of the past is not a liberal strong suit, especially when the mistakes are their own.
The latest example of PFDS (Palin Fact Denial Syndrome) by the Left comes from the environmentalist website Red Green and Blue in an op-ed by Alan Smith titled "Sarah Palin on Energy: What a Switch!" Reuters picked up Smith's piece from the site and reproduced it on their wires verbatim. It seems the Watermelon Wing (green outside, pink inside) of the liberati is no better acquainted with facts than any other leftist, which is curious because they talk about "science" so often. Smith's op-ed attempts to contrast Gov. Palin's energy plan with the "Drill, baby drill" rhetoric from the 2008 campaign. Actually, an "all of the above" approach to energy means drilling now is not incompatible with planning for the use of more renewables in the future. The "switch" Smith perceives is not a switch after all. Early on in his opinion piece, Smith says this:
"But what didn’t get as much press during ‘08 was Sarah Palin’s dubious claim that her stewardship of Alaska means she 'knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America.'"Had Smith bothered to check, he may have learned that Sarah Palin never made such a claim. It rolled instead off of the lips of Sen. John McCain, in an interview with television station WCSH in Portland, Maine. Perhaps that's one reason why it didn't get much press, Mr. Smith.
Despite getting this all wrong, Smith was quick to highlight a error made by Gov. Palin when she said that the U.S. gets 20% of its energy from Alaska. Never mind that the governor obviously meant to say that her state accounted for nearly 20% of U.S. domestic oil production, which it did at its peak, according to Alyeska, the company that operates the Trans Alaska Pipeline System. Today that percentage is down to about 17 percent, but the point is that Gov. Palin, using information that came from Alyeska, misspoke. If you can't cut her some slack on that, they you have to believe that the United States has at least 57, perhaps 58, states, as the Senator who is now president once said when he - like Gov. Palin when she said "energy" instead of "oil" - was in campaign mode.
Such slips of the tongue are common on the campaign trail, and they are understandable. Saying that there are 57 states or saying "energy" instead of "oil" is no big deal, but the media, if it chooses, can make it so. The media chose to give Barack Obama a break, not so much Sarah Palin. That's par for their course.
But wrongfully attributing a quote to someone is a big deal. It matters because writers, unlike tired politicians weary from the campaign trail, have the luxury of being able to verify their claims before they publish them. It requires no more effort than moving a mouse and pushing its buttons. The problem is that the writer has to want to get the facts straight. He or she has to care about the truth more than any political means or ends. And that's where the Left and its scribes fail. Their political agenda means everything, so they could care less if they are truthful. President Obama has ushered in A New Age of Alinsky where the means is justified by the desired ends. Wouldn't Trotsky be proud?
- JP
You see the Tina Fey quote all the time in comments about Palin. Even now I see people posting comments on Palin stories that trot out the old "charge for rape kits," "banning books," "troopergate," and all the old tired discredited rumors and lies that circulated and were debunked during the campaign. It won't surprise me a bit that if Palin runs in 2012 or even 2016, the same old lies will be paraded around, and spread by a willing media. The good thing about it is that fewer and fewer people are buying it, and Palin's upcoming book will reintroduce her to the American public, and that is what the media are so upset about, their web of lies is about to be exposed for millions of people to see, and in Palin's own words.
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