Matthew Continetti, associate editor at The Weekly Standard and author of a new book about Sarah Palin, says she’s been pilloried by the mainstream media since she first emerged onto the national scene as John McCain's vice presidential pick in the 2008 elections.
Yet despite the near endless attacks, the former Alaska governor is now one of the most formidable politicians in the Republican Party and the author of a staggering best-seller, "Going Rogue: An American Life."
“She became the target of just an endless sewer of myths, exaggeration, distortions and insults,” he told Newsmax.TV.
See Video: Author Matthew Continetti talks about the persecution of Sarah Palin - Click Here Now
“I felt it was necessary for someone to compile them all, and then take it a step further and say why is she the object of such acrimony?”
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That’s why Continetti wrote his book, “The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star.”
Continetti said the mainstream political media spread one falsehood after another about Palin including that she:
Had been a member of the separatist Alaskan Independence Party (New York Times) Had been a supporter of Pat Buchanan (MSNBC) Faked giving birth to Trig Palin, who was supposedly her grandson (Atlantic Monthly) In addition to spreading lies and distortions, the media treated Palin with such insulting condescension that it frequently lapsed into mockery. Palin was routinely ridiculed and vilified-and so was her family.
But Continetti points out that GOP politicians are accustomed to being mocked by the Washington press corps. In The Wall Street Journal this week he wrote that “other Republican politicians have profited when they exposed received wisdom about them as false. In 1980, Democrats portrayed Ronald Reagan as a dim-witted ideologue bent on starting a nuclear war.
“Then Reagan debated President Jimmy Carter. The public watched as a conservative pragmatist with a puckish wit unmanned a self-important, humorless liberal. Suddenly, Reagan was no longer the "dangerous" choice. He won handily.”
“The public is fascinated by Sarah Palin, both her supporters and detractors feel very strongly about her,” Continetti explains.
“They can’t look away. So there’s an incentive for big journalists like Oprah or Barbara Walters, not only to show that they’re open and can be sympathetic at times, but also to put her on the show because they know it’s going to get them big ratings.”
And, Continetti says, “The Democrats use Sarah Palin at every opportunity to raise money. They know that the liberal base of the Democratic Party hates this woman and will do anything, including donating generously to the Democrats, to stop her from ascending to any higher office.”
The former Alaska government and 2008 vice presidential candidate is held to a different standard than other politicians, he says.
“Barack Obama said during the campaign that my family is off limits. The media bowed . . . and followed his every word,” Continetti says.
“But when it was Sarah Palin’s family, they felt they had free license to go after them in any way possible,” including false accusations that she was having extramarital affairs and gratuitous attacks against her daughters.
And why is she the subject of such criticism? “Sarah Palin represents a threat to the status quo in Washington and the status quo in the media,” Continetti says.
“She enthused the conservative grass roots. . . . She’s connecting with the grassroots of the Republican Party in ways that no politician has done in many years. She has a way about her, a style of talking, that connects with ordinary Americans.”
See Video: Author Matthew Continetti talks about the persecution of Sarah Palin - Click Here Now
[Editor's Note: Get Matthew Continetti’s new book, “The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star” Go here now.]
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