Jack Cashill: The Palin 'Glaring Gaffe' That Wasn't

A "glaring gaffe" suggests Joe Biden urging a wheelchair bound man to stand up
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American Thinker's Jack Cashill calls our attention to the Yahoo article headlined "Palin gaffe makes North Korea an ally." Author Saul Relative, engaging in the media left's favorite journo-listic pastime -- wishful thinking -- claims that Gov. Palin's remarks may have damaged her "credibility as a serious contender for a presidential bid in 2012." But as Cashill points out and is so often the case in the rush to destroy Sarah Palin, the corrupt media misses something important:

The seriousness of Palin's error hinges on the meaning of the word "sanction." Said Palin to Glenn Beck, "We're not having a lot of faith that the White House is going to come out with a strong enough policy to sanction what it is that North Korea is going to do."

Aha, says the Yahoo reporter, the United States almost never "sanctions" anything North Korea does. Rather, it "has issued sanctions" against North Korea.

A moment later, Palin did say, "Obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies." The reporter suggests that the two statements in combination testify to Palin's "ill grasp of important matters and even poorer grasp of geography."

This alleged "glaring gaffe" hinges, of course, on Palin's use of the word "sanction." Although the reporter scolds her for misusing it, she did no such thing. As is fairly common knowledge, and as my dictionary verifies, one of the two ordinary meanings of "sanction" as a verb is "to impose a sanction or penalty" upon someone.

As to the "ally" remark, Beck quickly corrected Palin, and she just as quickly corrected herself, elaborating that the U.S. and South Korea were allies by treaty and that we were also "bound by prudence to stand with our South Korean allies, yes." This was a slip of the tongue, easily erased, that would have gone unnoticed had any other politician made it.

If Yahoo wanted to do a little serious political reporting, it might have inquired as to how chief counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan, who was sitting with Clapper during his brain freeze, got his job.

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- JP