The Other 'Naughty Monkey' Never Dropped

The anti-Palin hate bloggers in Alaska have attracted a great deal of attention nationally. One of those who has been watching them is Marc Ambinder, columnist for The Atlantic. His August 4 piece calls attention to a fact of political life that has been overshadowed in all of the uproar over the "Splitsville" hoax perpetrated by hate bloggers Jesse Griffin and Dennis Zaki and propagated by the rest of their "community" of bloggers.

When Sarah Palin announced on July 3 that she intended to resign her office of governor, the hate bloggers assured their readers that it was because of an impending Palin scandal. One of the members of the circle of bloggers, Shannyn Moore, is also a Huffington Post contributor, and on the day of the announcement she posted:

"For weeks the rumors of a criminal investigation against the governor have been brewing. They are rumors, but are swirling fresh again with Palin's resignation. I'm holding my breath for the other 'Naughty Monkey' to drop."

Ambinder notes that the Palin-haters had fabricated a web of deception that even went so far as to allege embezzlement:

Anonymously sourced reports alleged that nothing less than federal indictments of Palin over embezzling money from her days as Wasilla mayor were in the offing. All the talk was of an 'iceberg scandal' that was huge but undercover."

Indeed, since April, Dennis Zaki had been promising impending doom for the then-governor, conjuring up images of the Titanic:

"An iceberg is heading toward the Palins. Can it be stopped? I don't think so. Will it sink the ship, all signs say yes. Stay tuned..."

Zaki's teaser headline, which was displayed prominently on his blog for months, has recently been scrubbed.

When one Alaska hate blogger posts something which he or she hopes will be damaging to the Palins, the others spread it around, sometimes changing the details slightly, like a mutating virus because, as Griffin put it:

"I have shared some of the more sensitive information with my fellow bloggers so do not worry that I am in any danger or that this information will not be made public at some point, it will. That is what makes us such a formidable community of bloggers."

Now that "community of bloggers" is not looking so formidable. Their web of prevarication is crumbling. Not only has Griffin been exposed as a liar, but as Ambinder reminds us:

"Thirty days later no criminal investigations or indictments have surfaced. Nor has there been any news reported about such pending matters. It's hard to believe this is for a lack of finding out from the news media that has made her the most talked about woman in America all year. There are days where she leads the news, not President Obama, or even a posthumous Michael Jackson."

"Investigations and indictments can take months to be made public after they are unearthed, but again, there's been no credible reporting that Palin is under the aegis of the feds or state prosecutors."

The "formidable community of bloggers" made a fatal error, one which undermined their campaign to destroy the Palins even more so than Griffin linking to his blog from his MySpace page or Zaki outing his fellow hate blogger by publishing a letter without having the presence of mind to black out information that gave away the true Gryphen identity. No, their tragic mistake was one made as a collective, and all must share in the blame.

They committed the sin of pride. The Alaskan bloggers harbored a hatred for Clan Palin of such intensity that they allowed their wishful thinking to become their reality. They imagined themselves as more than merely formidable, but rather invincible, or nearly so. Dreams danced in their heads, not of sugar plums, but of Sarah Palin languishing in a jail cell. They hate her so much that they just knew she had to be guilty of something sinister. When one would make something up about the Palins and publish it, all the others became instant believers in the lie and republished it without question. Egged on by a gullible cast of commenters to their blogs, these usual suspects allowed themselves no internal oversight and thus became their own victims.

We wonder if any of them are even starting to get the message at this late date. In the end, the  reality is not like a scene from "The Titanic" -- the scenario they dreamed of for Sarah Palin and her family. We are reminded instead of a scene from "The Hunt for Red October" in which the captain of the attack submarine Konovalov unleashes a torpedo with which he is confident he will destroy the Red October. But things go terribly wrong, thanks to a brilliant gamble by the first officer in temporary command of the USS Dallas, and when the torpedo homes in on the very vessel which had launched it, the first officer's last words are to the captain:

"You arrogant ass. You've killed us!"

In this case, it was the entire "formidable community of bloggers" shouting "Fire torpedo!"

- JP