Ziegler: The real story behind Kathleen Parker’s bizarre Palin boast

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In a Daily Caller opinion piece, documentary filmmaker and author John Ziegler tells the story behind his recent appearance on CNN's ratings-challenged "Parker Spitzer" program in which he managed to get faux conservative Kathleen Parker to boast that she "led" the media assassination of Sarah Palin:

The only reason anyone cared that I went on the show was that, for some inexplicable reason, I was apparently the first person to ever confront Kathleen Parker, who is billed as a “conservative” on the show, about how and why she could have possibly endorsed Barack Obama for president while also allowing herself to be used by the left-wing media to help destroy the VP candidacy of Sarah Palin. This in itself is truly stunning to me and an indication that conservatives do an incredibly lousy job of enforcing even a meager amount of accountability on those who betray the cause for no substantive reason and with the obvious motive of augmenting their elite television and dinner party invitations.

Frankly, the only reason I agreed to even do the appearance was to get the chance to finally confront Parker about her obvious sell out.

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Most of the focus has been on Parker responding to my attempts to get her to admit the treason she committed in 2008 by going in the other direction (in what I perceived at the time as a knee-jerk “fight or flight” response) and actually bragging that she “led” the “assassination” of Sarah Palin 1.0 (which is a term I have used to describe Palin’s pre-Fox News persona, which I see as fundamentally different than the one she was forced to create due to the media’s unfair targeting of her).

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While Parker’s admission about “leading” the “assassination” of Palin (1.0) was both bizarre and shocking (and elicited a rather perfect tweet from Palin herself), almost totally lost in that skirmish is that Parker blatantly lied when she denied ever endorsing Obama as a presidential candidate. A simple look at Charles Krauthammer’s evisceration of Parker’s Obama folly reveals that this was really the most remarkable revelation of my appearance.

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Ed Morrissey points out that Parker attempted to walk back her braggadocio only 24 hours after Ziegler pushed her "truth" button:

After asserting that she “led” the charge againstSarah Palin in 2008 the day before, Kathleen Parker revisited her comments and the greater media bias against Palin last night, adding a few revisions. For one, she didn’t really lead the charge against Palin– “the liberal media” did– and did treat Palin, in some instances, “cruelly, and partly because she’s a woman.” She and co-host Eliot Spitzer further explored the relationship between Palin and the media with Mediaite founder Dan Abrams.

Parker modified her earlier statement about “leading” the assassination, toning it down to being the first on the right after Palin’s damning interview with Katie Couric to question her qualifications.

Can that actually be walked back? After proclaiming oneself to be the leader of a media assassination movement, can one credibly backtrack to a position of sadness over its success? I’d say that either Parker realized that she had crossed a line — or CNN did. John’s point is validated in this retreat.

Too late, Ms. Parker. You've already demonstrated to the entire world that you're a jealous harpy, a Vichy Republican and not by any stretch of the imagination a "conservative."

- JP