NRO's The Corner: Another progressive denounces VF's hit piece on Palin

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Katrina Trinko at NRO's The Corner blog reports that yet another prominent progressive has denounced the Vanity Fair smear job:

What this piece has generated — well, besides incredulity that a magazine of Vanity Fair’s caliber would run a character assassination piece almost entirely based on anonymous sources — is a bipartisan backlash. Not against Palin, but against Vanity Fair.

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And, via Ben Smith, former John Edwards aide and feminist/progressive blogger Melissa McEwan wrote:

Gross’ article, however, amounts to very little but “Sarah Palin is the worst because she’s in politics…and is A WOMAN.”

Sure, it’s covert sexism.

[...]

What makes this article the worst thing I’ve read all day is the fact that most of what’s in it is the sort of s*** that is considered (rightly or wrongly) the mundane business of doing politics, and yet is somehow OMG SHOCKING when done by Sarah Palin. …

I will continue to defend Sarah Palin against misogynist smears not because I endorse her or her politics, but because that’s how feminism works.

But I’d prefer not to be obliged in the first place.

For those who weren’t satisfied by 10,000-plus word screed against Palin, VF also published an online-only bonus article going over (again!) how much the McCain campaign spent on clothes for the Palin family. But when you’ve got even Meghan McCain — who’s admitted to being “conflicted” over what she thinks about Palin — taking Palin’s side on the wardrobe malfunction, that says something about how way overblown the hysteria is. From Jay Newton-Small, blogging for Time about McCain’s new book:

But McCain also sympathizes with the wardrobe debacle. “That’s what it costs to outfit seven or eight people in designer clothes,” McCain wrote. “Other candidates had spent just as much, or more, but kept those kinds of expenses under wraps – sunk into promotion and advertising costs. What surprised me was that our campaign couldn’t do the same.”

The debate over Palin’s policies and role in the Republican party will no doubt continue. But when you’ve got liberal feminists defending her, it’s clear that the level of vitriol toward her is long past acceptable boundaries.

But some in the leftist lamestream media don't seem to have the intellectual honesty or journalistic integrity that McEwan has demonstrated. NewsBuster Kyle Drennen reports how the CBS Early Show is promoting Vanity Fair's lies, just as they have promoted the many lies of Levi Johnston.

- JP