Politico Again Slaps Bad Vanity Fair Palin Attack

-By Warner Todd Huston
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As we discussed here yesterday, Vanity Fair published a badly sourced attack piece on Governor Palin. But the piece is even worse than first thought.

As Politico's Ben Smith discovered, the Vanity Fair piece contained yet another lie passed off as "journalism."

Smith highlighted the part of the VF piece that led the reader to think that the Palins used son Trig as a political prop at the rally held in Kansas City.

Smith excerpted this section of the VF piece:

Backstage in the arena, a little girl in Mary Janes pushes her brother in a baby carriage, stopping a few yards shy of a heavy, 100-foot-long black curtain. The curtain splits the arena in two, shielding the children from an audience of 4,000 people clapping their hands in time to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The music accompanies a video “Salute to Military Heroes” that plays above the stage where, in a few moments, the children’s mother will appear.

When the girl, Piper Palin, turns around, she sees her parents thronged by admirers, and the crowd rolling toward her and the baby, her brother Trig, born with Down syndrome in 2008. Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd, bend down and give a moment to the children; a woman, perhaps a nanny, whisks the boy away; and Todd hands Sarah her speech and walks her to the stage. He pokes the air with one finger. She mimes the gesture, whips around, strides on four-inch heels to stage center, and turns it on.

But he found out that the whole story was bunk.

The problem: Trig wasn't at the event, according to its organizer, Karladine Graves, a 61-year old Kansas City physician and who, in 2009, founded one of the wave of new local conservative groups, this one called Preserving American Liberty. The "woman, perhaps a nanny," was the boy's mother, St. Louis talk radio host Gina Loudon, according to the event's organizer, Graves.

Ah the lies of this VF piece continue to amaze, don't they?

-WTH

Warner Todd Huston is editor of Publius' Forum and a contributor to Texas for Sarah Palin as well as Big Government, Right Wing News, and a number of other websites.