Full of Corn: Lefty Journo Attacks Sarah Palin in Wake of JournoGate

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Leftist journo David Corn unleashed an attack on Sarah Palin from his perch at Politics Daily Friday, apparently in retaliation for comments the governor made or was presumed to make in a Daily Caller interview. Gov. Pain was asked for her reaction to Thursday's release of JournoList emails, in which the leftist listserv members had discussed various avenues of attack against her only hours after she was named as John McCain's 2008 running mate.

Corn's attack piece includes a disclaimer that he was a JournoList member, but he tries to downplay his part in the online cabal:

"(Membership declared: I was a mostly nonactive member of Journolist; I haven't used it in years.)"

Corn doesn't bother to explain what "mostly nonactive" means in this contact. Nor does he say how many years it has been since he "used" the list, nor exactly what "use" he made of it. But even though Corn felt the need to back away from JournoList in his disclaimer, he nevertheless attempts to defend the lefty listserv and his comrades who were members.

Corn argues that the Journolisters were liberal writers for liberal publications, a distinction he tries to draw from those who write for more mainstream media outlets. But the lines between the two are at best blurred. It has been documented that the media overwhelmingly votes Democrat and that most journalists who will admit their personal political leanings (at least 20 percent of them refuse to do so) describe themselves as liberal. Further, a 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center reported that two-thirds (67 percent) of Americans say the press is biased, and in April, 2010, Rasmussen reported that a majority (55 percent) of U.S. voters think that media bias is an even bigger problem in politics today than big campaign contributions.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the avenues of attack cooked up on Jounolist managed to inundate "mainstream" media reporting. Indeed, one does not have to read between the lines of the JournoListers' comments with a looking glass to see that it was their intention to influence press coverage of Sarah Palin, and in this respect, at least, they succeeded.

As The New Ledger's Ben Domenech explains:

"Essentially, we’re learning that Journolist functioned as a gigantic lobbying shop, providing liberal bloggers and academics with unprecedented and near-constant access to leading media figures—pairing those who work to persuade America of their rightness with those who still possess the largest megaphones—empowering ideologues to pass along their activist take on news (dismiss this, highlight this, call this fellow racist, this pick sexist, etc.) to those who loudly and continually proclaim the fairness of their reporting."

But Corn is one of those diehard liberal media elitists who continue to try to make the case that the media is not biased. That train left the station a long time ago. No one buys it anymore, except for the minority in this this country who still consider themselves liberals, or in their new-old-speak, "progressives." Here is Corn's other big argument:

In responding to The Daily Caller piece, though, she conceded a major point about herself: She does not posses a hardy enough constitution to be president. In that interview, The Daily Caller reports, Palin

said the media became a key reason she decided not to finish out her term as governor.

Consider that for a moment. Eight months after the grueling 2008 campaign was over, Palin, by her own admission, was not tough enough to handle the media and had to quit her job as Alaska governor. After confessing that, how can she possibly present herself as presidential timber?

Notice that Corn is not directly quoting Sarah Palin here, but rather the Caller's Jonathan Strong, who paraphrases what Gov. Palin told him. As the left argues in the recent Shirley Sherrod flap, context, context context is critical. Here's the relevant portion of Strong's article, one which Corn's attack piece ignores:

Palin says the feeding frenzy culture of the media galvanized her political opponents in Alaska. “The media incentivized political opponents to file false ethics charges and expensive, wasteful, frivolous lawsuits against me, my family and my staff, in an obvious attempt to destroy us,” Palin said.

When those lawsuits — which Palin said she won, but the media didn’t cover — caused legal costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, Palin had finally had it, she said.

“I said, ‘Enough. Political adversaries and their political friends in the media will not destroy my State, my administration, nor my family. Enough.’ I knew if I didn’t play their game any longer, they could not win. I would not retreat, I would instead reload, and I would fight for what is right from a different plane.”

Parsing the Strong sentence that Corn chose to use as his killer quote reveals it to be lacking in firepower:

"She said the media became a key reason she decided not to finish out her term as governor and faults, in part, the McCain campaign for failing to vigorously defend her."

Notice Strong's wording that the media became "a key reason" -- not the key reason Gov. Palin resigned. As she has made abundantly clear, the key reason she resigned as Governor of Alaska was the series of frivolous lawsuits and bogus ethics complaints filed against her, and all other considerations were consequences of those cases, not her resignation's raison d'être.

The media rather gleefully reported on the suits and complaints, details of which were leaked to the press in many cases in violation of Alaska statute. Even though nearly every one of the cases has been dismissed, the perception drawn from such reporting undermined her administration, which was already diverted from effectively governing because it had to devote more time, human resources and taxpayer money to deal with the phony charges than to actually run the state. Corn also rather conveniently omits any mention of the more than a half million dollars in legal fees Gov. Palin became responsible for as a result of such legal harassment. This was before she signed a book deal and at a time when she could not legally collect speakers fees, and her family, though hardly destitute, did not have the financial resources available to pay her attorneys.

The bottom line is that Corn, like some of his fellow JournoList travelers, is just angry that the online safe house was exposed as the Obama campaign war room that is was. Their exchanges speak for themselves. Which are you going to believe, Corn and the other left-listers or your lying eyes?

- JP