-By Warner Todd Huston
As many tongues on both sides of the political divide wagged yesterday Vanity Fair published a badly sourced attack piece on Governor Palin. But the piece is even worse than first thought.
As Politico’s Ben Smith discovered, the Vanity Fair piece contained yet another lie passed off as “journalism.”
Smith highlighted the part of the VF piece that led the reader to think that the Palins used son Trig as a political prop at the rally held in Kansas City.
Smith excerpted this section of the VF piece:
Backstage in the arena, a little girl in Mary Janes pushes her brother in a baby carriage, stopping a few yards shy of a heavy, 100-foot-long black curtain. The curtain splits the arena in two, shielding the children from an audience of 4,000 people clapping their hands in time to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The music accompanies a video “Salute to Military Heroes” that plays above the stage where, in a few moments, the children’s mother will appear.
When the girl, Piper Palin, turns around, she sees her parents thronged by admirers, and the crowd rolling toward her and the baby, her brother Trig, born with Down syndrome in 2008. Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd, bend down and give a moment to the children; a woman, perhaps a nanny, whisks the boy away; and Todd hands Sarah her speech and walks her to the stage. He pokes the air with one finger. She mimes the gesture, whips around, strides on four-inch heels to stage center, and turns it on.
But he found out that the whole story was bunk.
The problem: Trig wasn’t at the event, according to its organizer, Karladine Graves, a 61-year old Kansas City physician and who, in 2009, founded one of the wave of new local conservative groups, this one called Preserving American Liberty. The “woman, perhaps a nanny,” was the boy’s mother, St. Louis talk radio host Gina Loudon, according to the event’s organizer, Graves.
Ah the lies of this VF piece continue to amaze, don’t they?
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.
Hit Vanity Fair where is hurts – do buy their garbage magazine – They should be boycotted. Their main reason for hitting on Palin is sell their failing magazine. The people who buy this garbage are no to smart to being with.