Rob Port: McGinness never directly asked Rice ‘the question’

"Nothing like manufacturing your own conclusions."
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Your editor has asked a number of writers for several media outlets, including major "conservative" sites, if they even bothered to contact Rice and ask him if McGinness' allegation is true, and if they did not ask him, why not? Not a single one among them would answer the question. Not a one. Now Rob Port addresses the same question at The Say Anything Blog:

Author Joe McGinnis, whose hit-piece on Sarah Palin called The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin has been causing a stir of late, talked with Newsweek about his book and claims that it is (as the New York Times put it, “caustic, unsubstantiated gossip.”

McGinnis was asked about the most salacious claim in the book, that a young Sarah Palin had sex with basketball star Glen Rice, and it’s revealed that McGinnis apparently never asked Rice directly if he and Palin had a romantic relationship. Rather, he just extrapolated that conclusion from Rice’s ambiguous answer to an indirect question.

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Nothing like manufacturing your own conclusions.

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I find it to be nothing short of staggering that conservatives have been railing against the "liberal media" for years now, and it turns out that the "conservative media" appears to be no more interested in getting the truth (or at least doing basic, fair reporting) than their counterparts on the left. At least there are a few bloggers willing to go where "journalists" don't dare to tread.

Hannity is right. Journalism is truly dead.

- JP

Rob Port: Can Sarah Palin Win A National Election?

Conventional political wisdom holds that Palin can’t get elected. But she’s not conventional.
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Newsweek's cover story on Sarah Palin in which she told the magazine, “I believe that I can win a national election,” has created quite a stir in political circles. At Say Anything, North Dakota based blogger Rob Port opines:

So can she win? I think she can, but I didn’t always feel that way. There was a time when I thought she was too polarizing, and too awkward in handling a media establishment that hated her with a caustic sort of unfairness. Conventional political wisdom holds that people who evoke such a strong reaction from the public can’t win national elections. You need someone more malleable, and one thing Sarah Palin is not is malleable.

But my attitude has changed, and a lot of it has to do with The Undefeated. I got to see an advanced screening of the film at RightOnline last month (my review here), and even though I’ve been following Palin on the national stage for some time and even though I was born in Wasilla and knew some of the details of her early political career better than most, my eyes were opened.

This is a woman who won her first election for Mayor while campaigning against the sexist jabs of the male incumben who suggested she was a dim-witted barbie doll. This is a woman who walked away from a six-figure job as an oil-and-gas regulator for the State of Alaska in order to blow the whistle on cozy quid pro quo relationships between the oil industry and the state’s politicians, most of them Republicans. She got elected to be governor by defeating an entrenched Republican incumbent who was perceived as corrupt by the public.

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Port is convinced that Gov. Palin "may well be that once-in-a-generation candidate" who can not only defy the conventions, but change their definitions. The best way for Sarah Palin to back up the self-assessment of her chances as a presidential candidate, Port points out, is for her to get into the race and debate her record and policy positions with the declared candidates. But he warns not to write off simply because she doesn’t fit the political template or because conventional "wisdom" says she can’t win. "Because she can."

- JP

Quote of the Day (September 24, 2010)

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Rob Port at SayAnythingBlog.com:

"Sarah Palin’s political action committee, SARAHPAC, has endorsed North Dakota House candidate Rick Berg as part of her 'Take Back the 20' initiative... That ought to give Berg a boost, both financially and politically. Now, the question is, will Sarah be visiting North Dakota to make the endorsement in person? I’ll admit, I’ve heard rumors…"

- JP

Say Anything: Is Sarah a Socialized Medicine Hypocrite? Not Really.

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Rob Port on the latest Palin non-scandal:

The Washington Post reports, as though it were news, that Palin refers to an instance where her brother was, in the 1960’s, once taken to Whitehorse (in Canada’s Yukon province) to get a burned foot treated.

This is supposed to be news because Sarah Palin is an outspoken opponent of government-run health care systems including Canada’s. So, you know, how could she.

Well, here’s the most immediate problem: Sarah Heath, who was to one day become Sarah Palin, was born in 1964 in Idaho. Her family moved to Skagway, Alaska while she was an infant. At the most, she would have been 6 years old when her brother was taken to Canada to get treated for his burned foot.

I don’t think the six-year-old Sarah was calling the shots on where her family got health care.

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Once again, the media’s hatred for all things Palin trumps logic, reason and fact.

Read Rob's full post at the Say Anything Blog.

- JP

Quote of the Day (November 4, 2009)

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Rob Port:

"What’s happening is that a group of people who believe that the GOP should stand for and adhere to a set of limited government principles are rejecting the notion that we have to compromise those principles for political expediency. Put another way, the tea party movement and people like Sarah Palin believe that rather than trying to win elections by being more like liberals we should win elections by converting people to conservatism."

- JP