Sarah Palin is like the little town of Whittier, Alaska. I lived in Whittier, Alaska for over seven years. One thing I observed near the end of my sentence there (we actually had T-shirts made back then, that read POW on the front and Prisoner of Whittier on the back), was that Whittier doesn't bring the best out in anyone. So it seems to be with Sarah Palin.David Weigel, who writes at Slate.com, first came to Sarah Palin's defense after he was one of the prime victims of the JournoList fallout in June-July, 2010. He wrote then that he had learned to "stop worrying and love Sarah Palin" (a reference to the entire title of Stanley Kubrick's 1964 masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove - Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb):
Over the first churning forty-eight hours of this whole mess, I resisted — and then accepted — a new sympathy for a politician I'd never pretended to admire much: Sarah Palin. A political celebrity who raises money and appears on TV needs the media in a way that a reporter doesn't. But damn if I didn't feel sorry for the way every utterance Palin ever makes is taffy-pulled and inspected for lies. During the trial of a boy who hacked into Palin's private e-mail account, I debunked a rumor while appearing on MSNBC — where I am now a contributor — that she had "perjured" herself on the stand. She hadn't. She'd spoken correctly, if clumsily, about some of her old e-mails. Like I said: screwed, and then a new sympathy. (Of course, journalists would have had an easier time reaching me than Palin, who is notoriously difficult to get a comment from unless you happen to be a Fox News host.)Weigel not only tried to identify with Palin in that Esquire column, through the empathy he described above, he aligned himself with Palin in the rest of the column too, no doubt unintentionally, by showing how pathetically narcissistic he is.
I don't have a lot of time to waste on this pimply, baby-fat saddled kid's tripe today, but one of his least satisfactory statements (or quotes - one can't quite be sure) in his story today, about calling the Mat-Su Regional Health Center earlier in the week regarding TriG Palin, was this:
Why'd I call the hospital? One of the original concerns Sullivan had with the Trig Palin story -- one that's based on an absent fact, and not on innuendo -- was that Mat-Su Regional did not list Trig Palin's birth on its website. There's a portion of the web site, the baby nursery, where newborns are listed. Trig, born on April 18, 2008, is not there. And that's somewhat curious. So: Is every baby born at the hospital listed on the web site?"Yes, this is where the Palins come -- this is their family hospital."
"No, it's not automatic," said the clerk. "Truth be told, we do take security photos of all the babies, but if the parents want their babies listed on the web site, they can request it. We're really sensitive about it, though. I think the hospital took up the policy not to publish names automatically because of possible baby kidnapping issues."
The clerk, realizing that Washington, D.C. reporters don't typically cold call her hospital, asked me if this call was about "our former governor." It was. Was Trig Palin born there?
"Oh, that's not even a question," she said. (If my reception was better I could have heard her eyes rolling at this point.) "Yes. Everybody here remembers that. Yes, this is where the Palins come -- this is their family hospital."
Ideally, I would have gotten the family birthing center's director on the phone and gotten more confirmation with a name to go with it. But is anything preventing Andrew, or one of the Daily Dish's assistants, from making that call?
How sweet - "their family hospital." Perhaps it is, but had Weigel done the level of research he claims is Sullivan's inherent obligation, he could have discovered that the statement he uses to support his case, is wildly inaccurate and useless to back Weigel's claim.
The quote is used in a a way to make it seem that TriG was merely the latest Palin to have been delivered at "their family hospital." That would be impossible. TriG was born in 2008. The Mat-Su Regional Medical Center was finished in January, 2006. Piper Palin, youngest of the brood save for TriG, was born in 2001. At that time, the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center was a vacant, wind-swept field behind the Mat-Su Visitors Center and Veterans Wall of Honor.
Dave - you owe Andrew an apology.
I'll have more on Weigel soon. Suffice it to say, his rep from his Alaska trip last summer was way beyond Cheechako-ish. More like "fucking ingrate, don't let the door hit you on the way out."
10 comments:
Phil, THANK YOU for nailing Weigel for the Palin Pandering Putz that he is!!
When I first saw Dave Weasel on Countdown about the Kernell trial, he was VERY misleading, and I was choking at the fact that Keith did not know enough about the circumstances to recognize the SPIN he used. Weasel belongs on FOX, with the other liars.
Look what Dave Weigel just tweeted:
http://plixi.com/p/96852559
One of the e-mails that was released to MSNBC et al and found at the Crivella West website is this:.
http://www.crivellawest.net/palin/default.html
It is dated 17 Apr 2008 and refers to a Chocolate Lab being offered for sale to the Palins and was ready for adoption on 15 April.
It is one of those oddities as the Palins apparently went many years with no dogs, then suddenly they are going to acquire one, knowing a DS baby is being added to the household and will require massive care and attention. Apparently the Palins did have a dog at some point, but it didn’t work out and if I remember correctly, the dog went to the Menards. Whether it was the same dog that was offered in the email or not, I couldn’t say.
The timing is just weird, DATED THE SAME DAY AS HER SPEECH IN TEXAS. It just keeps nagging at me, like it is some coded message relating to Trig being ready for the Palins to take home. I've done some googling on Daniel Hahn, the person offering the dog, but was not able to come up with anything.
A reverse lookup of the telephone number listed in the email reveals that there is someone named Daniel Hahn with an address in Anchorage.
Typical weasel words from Weigel.
Their family hospital. Right.
Except that they all receive free health care through AK Native Hospital, and my sister, who is a doctor there, says that she had - prior to the election -- seen them there many many times.
Is there no lie too small to tell for those losers?
Phil, you know as well as any other Mat-Su resident that the Mat-Su Regional Hospital took the place of Valley Hospital. Valley Hospital closed when Mat-Su opened. Most of the Valley Hospital staff moved to Mat-Su Regional. So for many of the people who worked at Valley and then at Mat-Su it would be the same hospital. Hence it makes sense to say that "it is their family hospital"
On the other hand, they may go to other hospitals, but from the point of view of the staff member, it was a reasonable statement. All my kids were born at Valley Hospital and I still consider Mat-Su our family hospital.
I would really try to avoid calling any hospital "my family hospital." It sounds really lame.
As to some employee at said hospital commenting on any Palin affiliation to said hospital: This also sounds really lame.
Hospitals are something one hopes to avoid. I have never imagined me or any person in my family alluding to any hospital as a "family hospital."
anon @ 1:38:
Both our kids were born at Valley Hospital. I had two surgeries there, my son had a couple too, and we visited the old place's emergency room for stitches, animal bites, eye cuts and glass shard removal more times than I can remember right now.
I've had two surgeries at the Mat-Su Regional Health Center All our experiences at both sites were satisfactory, except when a doctor at the old place ripped the dozens of stitches from my stomach out in one swoop (it was infecting) without telling me ahead of time.
Although the staff was largely transferred in the change, it wasn't merely a move. Services quickly became far more steep and complicated - lotsa extra tests. The new place is a new organization in many ways, few of the changes were positive.
And the new corporation has sucked hundreds of millions out of that building and out of the state.
There's a Dan Hahn in Anchorage who is a paving and landscaping contractor:
http://commerce.alaska.gov/occ/OccSearch/Detail.cfm?board=CON&LicType=S&LicNum=29249
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