NY Times invents Palin 'enthusiasm' for birtherism

The paper of lies and distortion
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NRO's Matthew Shaffer catches the New York Times grossly distorting Gov. Palin's take on birtherism:

Yesterday, the editors of the New York Times wrote:

Yes, Sarah Palin, who was an enthusiastic “birther,” has decided that the supposed issue of Mr. Obama’s citizenship is, as she put it the other day, “a distraction.”

The editors imply that Sarah Palin was backtracking from prior birther advocacy during her speech on Long Island on Thursday, in which she said, “It’s distracting. It gets annoying. Let’s stick with what really matters.”

But, as Shaffer points out, Gov. Palin's previous comment on the birther issue, in a December 3, 2009 appearance on the Rusty Humphries show, was hardly "enthusiastic" support for the birthers:

Humphries: Sarah Palin here on the Rusty Humphries Show. One of the questions Jason asks is would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?

Palin: I think the public rightly is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bothered to make it an issue because I think there are enough members of the electorate that still want answers.

Humphries: Do you think it’s a fair question to be looking at?...

Palin: I think it’s a fair question just like I think past associations and past voting records. All of that is fair game.

The day after the Humphries interview, Sarah Palin made it clear that she's no birther in this Facebook note:

"Voters have every right to ask candidates for information if they so choose. I’ve pointed out that it was seemingly fair game during the 2008 election for many on the left to badger my doctor and lawyer for proof that Trig is in fact my child. Conspiracy-minded reporters and voters had a right to ask... which they have repeatedly. But at no point – not during the campaign, and not during recent interviews – have I asked the president to produce his birth certificate or suggested that he was not born in the United States."

So where, exactly is the "enthusiasm" for the birthers' claims that the Times attributed to Gov. Palin? The New York Times has never let actual facts on the record get in the way of promoting the leftist narrative. The Times is not "the paper of record." It's the paper of lies and distortion.

- JP