'Boobgate' was never about breasts

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The big news this weekend is that Sarah Palin, in her appearance on Greta Van Susteren's "On The Record" program Friday night, put an end to "Boobgate" -- the flap driven by the false rumors that she had undergone breast enhancement surgery. These rumors had bubbled up from the blogosphere into the mass media. But most everyone is missing the point. "Boobgate" was never about breasts. It was simply a diversion, one of the oldest tricks in the political playbook.

The real news last week was that Sarah Palin, via Facebook and a couple of appearances on cable television, had backed President Obama into a corner over the Gulf Oil Disaster. First, she pointed out that the administration is culpable for its own part in the tragedy playing off the southeastern Gulf coast because the Interior Department granted BP an exemption from a detailed environmental impact analysis. Three reviews by Interior's MMS fatefully concluded that a massive oil spill was unlikely. So for all the president's demonization of BP, it was his own administration that served as enablers for the giant oil company's malfeasance. Not to excuse BP in an any manner. It cut costs and corners to the point where it was literally playing with fire, and the consequences speak for themselves.

Gov. Palin did an excellent job of explaining how, as governor of Alaska, her administration had to ride herd on BP and hold its feet to the fire to force it to drill responsibly. In doing so, she drew a clear contrast between her effective stewardship of Alaska's energy resources and Obama's reckless and dangerous failure to manage resources responsibly in the Gulf, as his administration matched BP short cut for short cut. She was demonstrating not only her effective record as a manager, but her considerable knowledge on energy matters. Gov. Palin was demonstrating yet again that she is no lightweight, but rather a serious and proven leader who had valuable executive experience where it counts.

Further, she pointed out that the president had let two months go by without even lifting a finger to talk to BP's CEO Tony Hayward. Talking about kicking backside is just talk unless you call someone to the carpet to confront him. Obama's lame excuse that Hayward would just tell him what he wanted to hear anyway rang hollow, even to the president's vest pocket media. So now he was put in the position of being forced to publicly stage a meeting with Hayward after Sarah Palin had criticized him for failing to do so early on in the disaster. There was no way to save face. What could those charged with protecting the president's public image do?

A diversion was clearly called for. Knowing the rabid appetite of the leftosphere, infotainment sites and mass media for juicy morsels about Gov. Palin, the silly rumor that she had acquired breast implants was fed to the pack, and the more they devoured it, the more raw meat was produced to keep the feeding frenzy going. All of a sudden there was nothing else being talked about by the nutroots left but a woman's bust. It is important to remember here that Obama had been drawing heavy criticism over his ineffective handling of the Gulf disaster from some sources on the left -- including Salon, Rolling Stone, and others -- that had traditionally been among his staunchest defenders. Their voices of protest against the very man they had previously elevated to godhood were all but drowned out in the tsunami of trivia regarding Sarah Palin's chest.

This is how Spillgate was morphed into Boobgate, at least for a short time. By the time Gov. Palin went on Greta Van Susteren's program to take the hot air out of the rumor balloon, it was well past the Friday deadline for grafting legs onto news stories. Boobgate had served its purpose. It got a lot of people to take their eyes off of the ball for the better part of a week. More importantly, is dampened the momentum of the negative fallout from Obama's incompetence. It was the tourniquet which slowed the rate of bleeding of the president's image through the week long enough for his triage team to catch a weekend break to cook up another red herring to continue to divert attention away from the complicity and incompetence of Barack H. Obama.

So as Boobgate fades from the national train of thought, it turns out that the only actual "boobs" involved were the rubes who fell for the scam. Diversion may be one of the oldest political tricks in the book, but it works like a charm nearly every time.

- JP