You have to wonder what’s going on with Glenn Beck.

Beck’s fall from grace started when his site, The Blaze, falsely attacked James O’Keefe — to the delight of the very people who used to attack Beck. Then Beck, of all things, betrayed the Tea Party in the worst way any conservative could. I thought he’d hit bottom with that. After all, how much lower can you go than selling out to the mainstream media?

Well, yesterday, what I thought had been a rhetorical question was answered when The Blaze went full Andrew Sullivan, full Politico, full Wonkette, and and attacked Sarah Palin over a situation involving her family. 

The Governor’s sin? Composing what amounts to a touching article about her family’s life with Trig – Todd and Sarah Palin’s youngest son with Down Syndrome.

To understand how misleading the Blaze attack is, you first have to read what Beck’s writer, a piece of work named Eddie Scarry (more on him below), wrote:

What’s the first thing that came to mind when you heard that Rick Santorum‘s special needs child was in the hospital with pneumonia late last month? I bet all of Mitt Romney‘s money it wasn’t Sarah Palin unless you are Sarah Palin. …

Of the roughly 900-word article, 123 of them relate to Santorum and his daughter Bella who was born with Trisomy 18, a disability similar to Down syndrome.

It’s all downhill from there. For more perspective, the names “Rick” and “Santorum” appear three times total and are all found in the first paragraph. The word “my,” in reference to Palin herself, appears 15 times throughout the rest.

What the Blaze is intentionally doing here, is misleading its readers into believing Governor Palin was supposed to write a piece about the Santorum family and their daughter Bella. Moreover, The Blaze obviously wants their readers to believe that Palin selfishly exploited what happened to the Santorums so that she could write something all about herself.

That’s the only explanation for why the Blaze counts the number of times “Rick” and “Santorum” are used, or why there’s a count of how many words are dedicated to the Santorums. Why would those word counts matter otherwise?

The lie the Blaze tells here, is one of omission. But it’s a lie nonetheless, because the truth happens to be the COMPLETE opposite. Which leads me to a bigger question…

What are we to make of the fall of Glenn Beck when we’re forced to use the Huffington Post to correct his site’s misinformation … about Sarah Palin?

Yes, what just flew past your window was a pig, because today ”the truth has no agenda” at the Huffington Post:

[A] Daily Beast spokesperson says the Palin piece was assigned last week following the news that Rick Santorum’s daughter, Bella, had been hospitalized and he was briefly leaving the campaign trail.

“We asked Sarah Palin if she would like to share her personal story about life with a child with special needs upon learning about Senator Santorum’s decision last week to place his campaign on hold to be with his daughter,” the spokesperson emailed.

In other words, in the wake of what happened to Bella Santorum, Newsweek reached out to Sarah Palin — and I’m going to repeat this carefully for the Beck-impaired — to… share… her… personal… story… about… life… with… a… child… with… special… needs…

So what is Sarah Palin guilty of here? Writing the piece she was asked to write.

But what is The Blaze guilty of here? Again, telling a lie of omission and, just like Wonkette and Andrew Sullivan, using Palin’s family as a weapon against her. After nearly four years, this tactic is well-honed and easy to spot. Anytime the Governor writes about or speaks of or is seen with her family, some bottom-feeder weaponizes the event, weaponizes her own family, to beat her senseless with. And that’s exactly what The Blaze did.

And what kind lowlifes does Beck hire, anyway? When Stacy Drake, a Conservatives For Palin writer, challenged Scarry about his story via Twitter, he responded by calling her a “whore”:

—–

Scarry also writes for FishbowlDC , where degrading conservative women is a resume enhancer, so no surprise there. But it looks as though when Glenn Beck talked about, how did he put it again? — oh, yes,”Restoring Honor” — he must’ve meant other people’s honor.

From everything I’ve read, the only factor remaining in Governor Palin’s decision-making process about a 2012 presidential run is the impact the campaign would have on her family — which is why I think Bill Maher went here [emphasis mine]:

Now, I’m not saying that sexism doesn’t exist and isn’t real. And we can’t, but we can’t throw around the word “sexist” just to stop people like me from pointing out that Michele Bachmann, now running second for the Republican presidential nomination, isn’t a dangerous nincompoop. And when I point out that Sarah Palin is a vainglorious braggart, a liar, a whiner, a professional victim, a scold, a know-it-all, a chiseler, a bully who sells patriotism like a pimp, and the leader of a strange family of inbred weirdos straight out of “The Hills Have Eyes,” that’s not sexist. I’m saying it because it’s true, not because it’s true of a woman.

Really, Bill, this is “true?” Who has it in them to look at this photo of Tripp and Trig Palin, two beautiful and perfect children, and make jokes about “inbred weirdos?”

There was a lot of news, outrage and commotion over the weekend over Maher and his panelists ripping Michele Bachman’s husband, the appalling hate f**k comment directed at her, and Maher’s defensiveness when it comes to being called sexist. But from everything I’ve seen — including most of the paragraph quoted above aimed at Governor Palin herself — all of those comments were directed at adults perfectly capable of defending themselves. No one will argue that any and all of those comments were in poor taste, even for a HBO program proud of such things, but the real line that was crossed Friday night was Maher’s astonishingly obscene attack on Sarah Palin’s family — which obviously includes her children.

Read full post here.

Look, but no touch.

In a new interview with the London Independent newspaper, Flynt rambled from topic to topic until he settled on Palin, who is considering whether to run for the Republican nomination for president this year.

“Sarah Palin is the dumbest thing. But I made a fortune off of her. [He made a porn film called Nailin' Palin, based on her],” he said.

Yes, Flynt still made money off of Palin. In terms Flynt can understand, a strong conservative woman put food on the table of a progressive man. Emasculation. Rather awkward, yes?

Flynt wasn’t finished.

Then, he went after Trig, saying, “She did a disservice to every woman in America. She knew from the first month of pregnancy that kid was going to be Down’s Syndrome. It’s brain dead. A virtual vegetable.”

[...]

“She carries it to all these different political events against abortion, she did it just because she didn’t want to say she’d had an abortion. How long is it going to live? Another 12, 15 years? Doesn’t even know it’s in this world.”

“It?” Has Flynt ever met a child or adult with Down Syndrome?

“So what kind of compassionate conservative is she? I don’t think anybody will want her near the White House,” Flynt added.

I bet if I asked my family members who have Down Syndrome if they would rather be alive or nonexistent, I’m guessing that they would choose “alive.” Interesting how a progressive’s idea of “compassion” is to end someone’s life and how quality of life is subjective to their experiences.

Is this really an insult though, considering the source? The real life version of Burt Reynold’s character in “Boogie Nights” who lives in the past and is still trying to out-do Hugh Hefner?

The Palins have been insulted by better.

Writes Stuef:

All Wonkette editors leave you eventually. Today, it is my turn. So this is my last post ever. What a ride, etc.! I’ve enjoyed making fun of politics for this dumb little blog. But now it is time to move on. I came to this site a 21-year-old kid.

[...]

I live in New York now, and I came here to get back into stand-up comedy and take a shot at writing for television, but I just haven’t had the time.

Yeah, that’s what it is … time.

But get ready, because there’s a shooting-star-the-more-you-know moment in here that actually may be a gem in the rough:

I still loved it though, even though I found myself routinely burned out on politics, something I apologize for, as it clearly came out in posts at times and was probably not very entertaining to read.

[...]

At times, especially when I’m tired and have to somehow hit eight posts when there’s no real news happening, I’ve broken some of my own. I don’t like to make easy jokes. But I have. Kind of often. A few times I’ve made fun of people who really didn’t deserve it, and when it was pointed out to me, I apologized. This sort of thing happens, even when you make a point of trying to stay true to yourself as much as you can, because you’re human.

A part of writing well means knowing from where to draw your inspiration. It’s something Stuef is still learning, but here he writes a more honest assessment of himself than any admission I’ve seen from any other progressive. There’s a certain quality in being a navel gazer and your work echoing a sense of self-reflectiveness: it stops you from becoming another plasticized voice in the digital wilderness. It shows a cognitive ability beyond the trained behavior of hacking through the noise with snark hoping an audience will mistake it for wit. I hope he grows in his writing and wish him luck.

Some words of wisdom during the falling action portion of the controversy, from Big J contributor Kurt Schlichter:

Sometimes, in the heat of politics, we forget our common humanity.  That’s dangerous.  This kind of raw hate, besides being disgraceful, is poisonous, and the notion that there are no limits in dealing with one’s political opponents leads, eventually, to mass graves.  I know – I’ve walked through the ruins of a society that let its hate for the other side (or sides) burst its bounds in Kosovo.  We need boundaries in our battles, boundaries of decency; Stuef crossed them.

We’re redemptive people and Steuf likely won’t pick on kids again, more so I hope, because the prospect of a child reading that about himself and internalizing it tugs at Steuf’s soul more than the thought of the child’s defenders yelling at him on Twitter.

Wonkette, on the other hand, is a lost cause, a website past its time. Changes are coming, they say. Interestingly enough, Steuf unintentionally summed it up. Oftentimes what makes something funny is the truth:

I’ve enjoyed making fun of politics for this dumb little blog. But now it is time to move on.

Previously:

Wonkette Makes Fun of Trig Palin, Calls Him “Retarded”

Wonkette Removes Writer’s Name From Trig Hit Piece UPDATE: Wonkette Deletes Comments

Papa Johns, Huggies Pulls Advertising From Wonkette After Trig Taunts *UPDATE Holland America Line Drops Wonkette *UPDATE #2: Nordstrom Drops Wonkette *UPDATE #3 Two More Companies Pull Ads *UPDATE #4 DealSwarm, Coldwell Banker Drops *UPDATE #5 More Drop

Wonkette Removes Trig Post

Wonkette’s Jack Stuef ‘Apologizes’ For Trig Smear

Trig’s Crew: Wonkette Unifies Right and Left to Declare Children Off-Limits

First, a little background…

Why the Media Whips Up the Palin-Fury

Watching the MSM react to Governor Palin over the last few years has been an illuminating crash course in Alinsky 101. Like elite, elbow-patched community organizers, the media collectively targets, polarizes, demonizes and intentionally creates a perpetual storm of personal drama around the Governor in the hopes of exhausting even those of us who support her. I call it whipping up the Palin-Fury.

This is a common tactic from the Left, but one we usually see played out in the streets with the idea being to so toxify the atmosphere that decent people give up the fight and go home just to get away from the awfulness of it all. The last few months of ugly and relentless pro-union protests in Wisconsin — though a failure for the left — were a textbook example of this. However, when it comes to Governor Palin, what we’re seeing is this tactic practiced by almost every so-called “objective” news outlet in America.

Unfortunately, though an important part of it, this goes beyond reporting everything Levi Johnston says and does. A more visceral example is what we saw unfold in the wake of those awful January murders in Tucson. While the country wanted to come together to mourn for the victims and an attack on our democracy, the craven MSM saw an opportunity. I don’t know of any decent person who didn’t sit back in horror as they watched our media attempt to lay an awful crime at the feet of a mother of five who was probably minding her own business at home in Wasilla at the time. Worse still, after days of demanding Palin tell us when she stopped beating her wife, the MSM then collectively mauled her for daring to speak out.

Again, this is all part of a coordinated political psy-ops tactic to program everyday people to wince every time Palin dares pop her head out of the ground. And in the case of Tucson, the MSM reached down and pulled her out against her will. No matter what it is, her wardrobe, a tanning bed, joke tweets sent from an aide’s personal twitter account, a two-year-old video of a turkey, her family, perceived mistakes or mispronounced words, to undercut Palin’s seriousness, this is always what the media intentionally explodes into their ongoing Palin-Fury narrative. Moreover, on top of exhausting us, the bonus effect of this Leftist tactic is to drown out Palin’s ideas, policies, and criticisms of Obama — all of which are fair game for criticism but rarely rate serious consideration.

After all, one way to keep the Palin-Fury brewing is to never take her seriously.

What we’re seeing at work here are the politics of personal destruction waged by the Left and their media allies in a way we haven’t since Clarence Thomas. However, unlike that reprehensible and racist campaign against another liberal apostate, the one against Palin has only intensified. For starters, she’s tougher and more resilient than any public figure in recent memory and secondly, her effect on the 2010 mid-term elections can’t be over-stated. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Palin did her best while the media did their worst.  Unfortunately, and as is always the case with the media, there is no bottom when it comes to their behavior and the dog-whistles I’m hearing tell me they’re gearing up to create a Palin-Fury unlike anything we’ve seen so far — especially if the Governor should decide to run for president.

And it all begins with Andrew Sullivan.

A Vicious Campaign to Destroy a Family Disguised as an Eccentric Obsession

If the greatest trick the Devil ever played was in convincing us he didn’t exist, the greatest trick the MSM ever played was in convincing us that other than his “eccentric” Trig Trutherism, Andrew Sullivan is some sort of thoughtful, considered, erudite thinker. What this ploy allows the media to do is to mainstream Sullivan and keep him in the fold even as he heartlessly roots around Sarah Palin’s womb in an effort to investigate who Trig’s true birth mother is. But this is a con. Sullivan’s Daily Dish ambitions are much darker than advertised.

Andrew Sullivan

Personally, I don’t believe for a second Sullivan thinks anyone but Sarah Palin is Trig’s mother.  This is not a dumb man we’re talking about here, just an uncommonly cruel one. For going on three years now, Sullivan has consciously used this silly conspiracy theory as a partisan stalking horse in an attempt to viciously pound away at a political foe’s family. Because a direct attack against a politician’s family simply wouldn’t work, Sullivan created Trig Trutherism as a toxin delivery device that attempts to turn — through the most malicious and sadistic kind of rumor-mongering — a very normal and attractive family into some sort of freak show.

Moreover, what Sullivan is practicing is a form of “critical theory,” where you intentionally and ruthlessly de-legitimize something with a relentless stream of questions. And so, effectively, what Sullivan is attempting is to delegitimize is an American family, to toxify them into a political negative.

This isn’t just bottom feeding and character assassination; it’s an outright act of evil.

Obviously, by laughing this evil off as an eccentric blip on sweet Uncle Sully’s otherwise mainstream radar, the MSM willfully legitimizes what he’s doing — because they love it. In this respect, even as the Daily Beast/Newsweek gives Sullivan a high-profile perch, they effectively wash their conscience of it all with a chuckle and a wrist-flick. 

Sullivan Shifts Tactics to Weaponize Palin’s Own Children against Her

Once the Trig Trutherism string had pretty much played itself out, Sullivan very effectively turned the defense of his womb policing into something even more sinister.  Here’s an example from Politico in November of 2009. Read the last sentence carefully:

In fact, my blog never stated anything about Palin’s pregnancy and took her at her word. That’s why she decided not to sue me. She had no basis for any kind of suit. I simply asked her and the campaign to provide easily available proof that she indeed was the biological mother of Trig after her bizarre and incredible stories about her pregnancy and labor. She has failed to produce any such evidence. And she clearly never will. If she hadn’t used the baby as a central political argument in favor of voting for her, I would not have cared.

Politico challenges Sullivan on his Trig Trutherism, which is exactly what he wants.  It allows him to pivot and sucker-punch Palin with the astonishingly obscene suggestion that she would use her own child — a Down Syndrome baby — as a political prop. As with his mission to freak-show Palin’s family, Sullivan can’t just come out and accuse Palin of this, but to do so from a defensive crouch allows him to get away with it.

Naturally, Politico didn’t challenge him. It’s all part of the game, all part of the Palin-Fury narrative.

Track, Willow, and Trig Palin

Just last week, Sullivan eagerly pounced again, only this time he turned the Wonkette scandal into a fresh opportunity. Read closely:

Whatever may be the truth behind all the Palin pregnancy stories, even if the zaniest theory is true, Sarah Palin is taking care of a child with Down Syndrome who deserves respect and privacy even if his own mother refuses to give them to him.

Did you catch the poison pellet?  Very deftly, very matter-of-factly, very calmly, Sullivan launches his cruel assault against — not Palin the politician, but Palin the mother. His venomous accusation again is that Palin exploits her own child as a political prop and I would bet money that the whole point of his column was to write that single line, to once again plant that seed into the narrative.

Trig Trutherism isn’t Sullivan’s cause; it’s a hustle, a shield he developed to undermine Palin’s womanhood and motherhood — a base Obama can’t afford to lose even a percentage point of. In addition, don’t think the media doesn’t eat this all up. It all adds to that artificial soap opera of Palin-Fury they’re so determined to keep alive.

Sullivan’s Poison Spreads to the Mainstream

For some time now, Legal Insurrection has done a superb job documenting the Trig-as-prop meme. However, until recently, Sullivan’s venom had mostly been contained to the left-wing fever swamps. However, as you’ll see below, some mainstream outlets have heard Sullivan’s dog-whistle and are now using the Wonkette story as an excuse to attack the former Alaska Governor, her children, and her fitness as a mother in unprecedented ways.

If, however, you’ve been paying attention, this Trig-as-prop narrative is nothing more than the Left and their media allies engaging in the dark art of projection. They’re the ones using Palin’s children as political props. They’re the ones who document and amplify every move Bristol’s ex makes, they’re the ones who legitimized turning ”Dancing with the Stars” into a political issue, they’re the ones who turned a 16 year-old acting like a 16 year-old into a national news story – and as you’ll see below, they’re the ones giving the stamp of approval to the worst kind of gossip-mongers and conspiracy theorists. A new mother holding her baby is only seen as some sort of unnatural act among leftists. Furthermore, if Palin wanted to “prop” any of her children for political advantage, wouldn’t it be the son who went off to war?

Here’s the New Yorker’s Amy Davidson, April 21:

My feeling is that a lot of Palin’s baffling behavior—getting on a plane without telling flight attendants she might be in labor, for example—can be explained, simply, by a matchless level of reckless narcissism. That is relevant, too, and why I am glad to know all of the points in the narrative. The timeline is dismaying, not because a fake pregnancy would Explain It All, but because I don’t want someone who thinks that her own small drama is worth disrupting (or even endangering) the lives of a plane load of people to be my President. (In a way, it is charitable of Sullivan to think that there ought to be a better explanation, beyond a careless tendency to smash things up, for her behavior.)

The New Yorker isn’t some crank publication, it’s the NEW YORKER. But now Sullivan’s womb-obsession has allowed the seeds of a monstrous narrative to be planted there that says Palin endangered the lives of everyone on a passenger plane.

Megan Daum in the LA Times, April 17:

Why don’t you point out that the cohort that bemoans the demise of the nuclear family and the debased, disaffected nature of popular culture is the same one that embraces a woman who exploits her daughter’s out-of-wedlock motherhood, communicates chiefly through Facebook and Twitter and puts herself on reality TV?

And here’s something Andrew Malcolm of the LA Times dropped into a column just the other day that was advertised as an examination of Palin’s sharp, thoughtful criticism of Obama’s Libya policy:

Perhaps peeved about yesterday’s news that Levi Johnston, the father of her grandson Tripp, is scheduled to release a tell-all book about her family, Palin took it out on Obama and his recent fundraising around the nation.

You starting to see how this works?

Unlike any other politician today, only Palin is forced to deal with watching her private family matters, her very own children, dragged into the political arena and weaponized as political bludgeons against her — even when it comes to discussing and debating serious issues such as Libya. Again, it’s an intentional political tactic meant to keep this Palin-Fury of exhausting personal drama swirling, meant to keep us from taking the MSM’s Public Enemy Number One seriously.

Even Alex Alvarez at Mediaite — a site that was righteous in their coverage of Wonkette’s attack on Trig — dropped this in the closing paragraph of a column:

Going after Palin for (arguably) using her son’s condition to her advantage is one thing, but the post wasn’t simply insulting to Palin.

Arguably? When I asked Mediaite’s editor, Colby Hall, about “going there” on Twitter, this was his response [Twitter shorthand cleaned up, original here]:

Putting kids in “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” is worth discussion and critique. If she runs for president, one can reasonably and fairly infer some political prop-dom.

Well, Governor, you can’t say you haven’t been warned.

An 800-Pound Gorilla Named Politico Steps into the Ring

One rancid-souled Daily Dish columnist and a few other mean-spirited media outlets does not exactly warrant sounding the alarm, but on Monday this high-profile feature piece written by Politico’s Ken Vogel made very clear that the whole of the mainstream media is apparently ready to climb aboard Sullivan’s wicked bandwagon.

Out there in the left-wing fever swamps, you’ll find a small but dedicated group of discredited Palin-haters who have made a cottage industry out of Palin-hating, and in his 2600 word piece that premiered at very top of Politico’s front page, Vogel intentionally amplified and mainstream their ideas und upcoming tell-alls. This is Kitty Kelly stuff on steroids, but now these Palin-hating Kitty Kellys enjoy Politico’s stamp of credibility.

Once again, Palin’s record, policies, background and ideas are all fair game for criticism by anyone,  but the theme of these upcoming tell-alls written by notorious Palin-obsessives (including the creep who moved in next door to the Palin family), is highly personal and aimed at a place we’ve always been told is off-limits: the family. A few examples:

This self-styled anti-Palin movement — whose members span the globe and are mostly but not exclusively liberals — has been behind some embarrassing revelations about the former Alaska governor, her family and allies. But some of their leading theories have been thoroughly discredited and earned them widespread criticism.

“Thoroughly discredited,” “embarrassing revelations about … the family,” and yet given the credibility of a major Politico profile. More from Vogel:

[Joe] McGinniss, who said his publisher wouldn’t let him do interviews, has compared the Palin family’s life to a soap opera and signaled that his book will focus on the mother of all Palin conspiracy theories: the long-simmering, though widely rejected, allegation that Palin’s daughter Bristol or someone else entirely is actually the mother of Palin’s youngest son, Trig.

Vogel again:

[Geoffrey] Dunn last week wrote a 2,700-word piece for Business Insider in which he questioned Palin’s account of Trig’s birth, asserted “Palin has never provided sufficient concrete evidence to put the conspiracy theories to bed” and acknowledged he “spent a considerable amount of time and resources trying to sort out the facts of Trig’s birth” while writing his book.

This is Andrew Sullivan’s malevolent dream come true. His freak-showing of an attractive, decent and obviously very close family has not only created a cottage industry but earned the attention of a major MSM outlet like Politico. And of course Vogel throws a nice shout-out to Levi Johnston’s upcoming book which — purely by coincidence, I’m sure — was announced the very same day this Politico story ran. So what’s Politico up to here? Let me count the ways:

1. Stirring up the Palin-Fury. Keep the exhausting personal drama swirling in order to undercut Palin as a serious candidate.

2. Piling on. I lost track but Vogel appears to be helping to pimp out as many as five anti-Palin books that apparently intend to attack her family.

3. Setting time-bombs. The only thing more effective than the Palin-Fury is including with it the promise that it will never, ever go away – unless of course Sarah Palin does. We now know that over the next year or so (over the 2012 campaign season), almost a half-dozen bombs of Palin-Fury will drop.

4. This is a warning to Palin to stay out of the race. Obviously if she’s not campaigning for president these attacks on her family will not make as much news.

5. This is also a warning to Palin supporters that nearly a half-dozen trip wires have already been set to derail any potential run for the presidency. Better we back “someone who can win,” right?

In other words, the MSM is telling Sarah Palin, “That’s a nice family you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.”

How the MSM Will Justify Using Children as Political Weapons

In his Politico piece, Ken Vogel lays down the cover fire for anyone else in the media eager to sacrifice Palin’s family on the altar of Barack Obama:

Today, most of the attention is focused on her personal life and that of her family, in part because Palin has been out of government since her 2009 resignation as governor and also because she and her family have embraced the trappings of celebrity, complete with frequent appearances on television — the family in a reality series and daughter Bristol’s appearance as a contestant on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.”

Ahh, I see.

Gore & Co. enjoying a stroll on the celebrity Red Carpet

If I’m following Vogel’s reasoning here, because Palin did a perfectly innocent reality series/travelogue and her grown daughter chose to appear on “Dancing with the Stars,” that makes gossip, innuendo, relentless criticism of her family and the questioning of her motherhood all within bounds. Somebody help me out here, I’m a little confused, because I don’t remember anything close to this standard being dropped on Al Gore after he starred in a big Hollywood film and then started his own cable network. Furthermore, let’s not forget that like Bristol, Al Gore’s grown daughter embraced celebrity and has had some relationship problems of her own.

Finally, does anyone want to get me started about the MSM willfully ignoring the sleazy soap opera that was Mr. John Edwards while he was running for president? It was only after the National Enquirer did the MSM’s job for them and Edwards dropped out that the media could no longer ignore it.

Nevertheless, Vogel isn’t done. In a fit of cruelty only an Andrew Sullivan could appreciate, the Politico writer goes here:

The Palin fixation more closely parallels the tabloid rumors and scandals that dog controversial Hollywood personalities like Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen than the ideologically motivated attacks on politicians, said Michael Kazin, a Georgetown history professor[.]

See what Vogel did there? He “some sayed” someone else in order to get away with comparing Palin’s loving, close-knit and very normal family to a couple of drug-addled, jailbird, narcissistic celebrity train wrecks.

Just when you think they’ve hit bottom.

Of course, some personal soap opera-issues spring up from time to time with every candidate through the media, but never anything like what we’re seeing with Palin. We’ve never seen the Left and their media allies weaponize children to delegitimize, defame, and attempt to define a politican before.

And we all know that the bottom line here is that on close examination, everyone’s family has all the trappings of a soap opera and even a opportunistic creep like Levi Johnston willing to peddle dirt.  The choice of whether or not to explode all of this into the media narrative of a political figure’s life is up to the media, and in the case of Sarah Palin the media has chosen to do this.

Moreover, if you listen closely, you’ll hear a dog whistle that says the media campaign to Alinsky a mother with her own children has only just begun.

What Can You Do?

1. See The Matrix.

2. Become activists, especially online.

3. Spread the word. Politely and publicly hold these outlets accountable via Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of social media.

4. Don’t allow the media to tell you how to vote.

5. Fight the power.

Mr. Guzzardi writes:

…population control [is] the ultimate green practice. As long as the most environmentally enlightened Americans ignore the relationship between population growth and environmental sustainability, then America will lose the green fight. In the 1970s, reducing population was so mainstream that biologist and Stanford University Professor Paul Ehrlich regularly appeared on the Johnny Carson Show as an advocate. Today, it’s rarely mentioned…

[A] solution to slowing America’s population… advocate for limiting family size. Having two or more children is not an obligation.

In a stunning display, Mr. Obama echoes Guzzardi’s “solution” in a recent town hall appearance. During the question-and-answer, Mr. Obama singled out for Alinsky-ridicule at least two attendees for their dissent in driving “Big SUV/Monster Trucks,” and having too many kids:

Obama has also championed abortion and callously mocked the Special Olympics and “water heads.”

The Urban Dictionary defines “water head” as “a person with mental health problems, i.e. downs syndrome, or retard.”

Paul Erlich’s Malthusian indoctrination, taxpayer-funded Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger’s targeting of the “feeble-minded,” or maybe even daddy issues, during these men’s formative years likely explains their eugenicist synergy.

Coincidentally arises the vile “humor” of Jack Steuf at Wonkette, a website that is to internet satire as Westboro Baptist is to churches.

Stuef targeted for ridicule three-year-old Trig Palin — whose mother, Sarah, is a political enemy of Stuef and Obama. Stuef called Trig “retarded,” “born somewhat alive,” and incapable of dreaming. Wonkette is now reaping the moral and financial consequences of the Stuef publication.

While the term “retarded” itself is not a cause for offense, as pointed out by K. J. Adan in her Open Letter to Jack Stuef, his assertion that retarded people cannot dream is an unwitting admission of ignorance. Adan points out, “The new politically correct term is ‘mentally challenged’ or ‘intellectually disabled’, but mentally retarded is a correct way to describe [her brother],” so “The issue is that you don’t know what retarded people can and can’t do.”

Stuef “apologized” on his blog, apparently in shame for the use of a non-PC term, but not the degrading things he said about a Down Syndrome toddler, his family who loves him, or the images he used before Adan’s post went up. He later sent a tweet of thanks for her perspective, so an outreach for understanding at least made his radar.

Why Leftists feel compelled to dehumanize their fellow man in order to make political hay is easily explained. They need control over others to perpetuate their anti-humanitarian ideology. An ideology whose own intellectual disability agitates for, and all too often has achieved the prior restraint of centralized population control, economic control, even thought control (i.e., Political Correctness “hate crime”).

As much as Leftists covet other people’s money, they seem to detest other people’s children — unless of course those children can be exploited as political props; human shield victim-mascots used in pursuit of narcissistic political ends.

Although many Leftists detest children altogether, those who do have children of their own proudly hold them up as an example of the proper family. The Obamas have their two, and that fits into the Leftist paradigm of the intellectually responsible family. Obama, Erlich, Sanger, Stuef et al. ridicule and denounce the natural family — which may or may not include the intellectually disabled — as irresponsible.

One can read the subtext plainly. Smart (i.e., socially conscious) people ought to perpetuate their genes, while the stupid (bitter clingers to guns, God, and individual Liberty) ought to be limited. Genetic diversity is forsaken for the leftist code word “diversity,” which means “You idiots wouldn’t know a balsamic reduction if it dripped on your can of Bud.”

History proves how truly evil governments must be to limit genetic diversity.

And, as per Greg Gutfeld, if you disagree with them, you’re fair game to be demonized as “unsustainable,” “retards,” or worse… aborted before ever having the chance to learn about and fight against Leftism’s retarded, bankrupt, anti-humanitarian creed.

Best of all, and contrary to Andrew Sullivan feeling all “queasy,” this was not a “Palinista” uprising. (Heads up: When it comes to Trig Palin, Sullivan is nothing more than Wonkette with professorial elbow patches.) Decent people of all political stripes, including some in the media, put partisan politics aside over this — and it was a beautiful thing to behold. Better still, organized under their hash tag, a group of citizen activists discovered the small “d” democratic wonder of Twitter and effectively learned how to politely, firmly, and publicly fight for something they believed in.

Personally, I’m not a boycott person, but that’s my right. Others have a right to boycott, and brother, did Trig’s Crew put on a boycott. All on their own, they organized a list of Wonkette advertisers, tweeted them directly with a request that they pull their ads, and kept track of those who did and didn’t. Within hours, it was obvious a tidal wave was brewing and by the next day it was just as obvious that it had hit. As of this writing, over 30 advertisers agreed with Trig’s Crew and pulled their ads from Wonkette. Seemingly, and in record time, the dismantling of a fairly mainstream, left-wing snark-site seemed probable.

Like the Tea Party, Trig’s Crew has represented the very best of mainstream America as they engaged in an inspiring First Amendment online debate with dignity and decency. So commendable is their behavior, that Slate’s Dave Weigel obviously had to dig pretty deep to come up with this single tweet — one of thousands — in order to manufacture something (which required some back-filling in the form of a later update) that might tarnish the whole movement as “jumping the shark.” Obviously, this is the MSM-Alinsky-Tea Party-Playbook all over again — where a single and unique negative out of an ocean of positives is intentionally amplified to unfairly brand the kind of grassroots campaign elites always find so threatening.

Whatever.

Let me encourage you to root around #TrigsCrew. Though the trolls are starting to show up (uncharacteristically late), what I think you’ll see is what I do: A group of people who would immediately attempt to reproduce the last few days if Barack Obama’s daughters were politically weaponized against him by one of his online critics. Not that they would have to. As we saw with their outrage over that appalling chimp email and the near-unanimous ignoring of Wonkette, the MSM finds some righteous causes more equal than others.

But isn’t that the beauty of what happened last week? Trig’s Crew didn’t need the MSM to lay down a reckoning. Thanks to the miracle of social media, We the People no longer need them to send a message.

Ideas, positions, policies, and voting records are all fair game, all on the table.  But other than the most craven among us, Wonkette has brought many together in agreement that the use of a child as a partisan political bludgeon is not.

I feel as queasy about this flexing of Palinite muscle as I do about the original, disgusting, asinine story. In some ways, I see a legitimate come-uppance for a tacky site that published a simply inexcusable piece of mean-spirited dreck using a child who cannot defend himself, treating him as if he were subhuman, which he most definitely isn’t. But I also recoil from mob action like this, for the impact it has on fearless free speech and the chilling effect it will have on an already cowed and defensive MSM when covering the truly tough stuff about Palin.

Do you mean this mob, birther Andrew Sullivan? Or this mob? Or this mob? Apparently mothers and fathers standing up for a special needs child is a “mob,” according to Sullivan. Birther Sullivan calls mocking a toddler “fearless free speech?” No, it’s cowardice asinine rhetoric. You cowards pick on the toddler because you’re outmatched by the child’s mother.

*UPDATE: From bcthomas on Twitter: @DLoesch Funny Sullivan sticks up for Wonkette’s free speech, yet in 2007 celebrated the Imus boycott/firing. http://t.co/884p8uu

Attacking Sarah Palin’s “Retarded” Son:

Note: No adult film stars were actually hired for the making of this video.

First Wonkette deleted comments, then they deleted Stuef’s byline. Now this:

UPDATE: I regret this post and using the word “retarded” in a reference to Sarah Palin’s child. It’s not nice, and is not necessary, but I take responsibility for writing it. For those who came and are offended by this post: I’m sorry, of course. But I stand by my criticism of Sarah Palin using her child as a political prop.

–Jack Stuef

I appreciate that Stuef realizes how many people his post hurt – not political outrage, but actual hurt from moms and dads of children with special needs, family members of those with special needs, etc., and the children themselves. I have three family members who have special needs and let me tell you, they don’t need someone putting a target on their back and calling them “almost human” in a zealous fit to take shots at a political figure.

Jack Stuef made Trig Palin a political prop. Period. This post published two days ago and for two days it sat until we got a few emails, wrote about it, raised awareness on Twitter, and watched as citizen media participants held Wonkette accountable and even complained to advertisers. Only then was remorse felt from anyone at Wonkette.

It’s BS for Stuef to piggyback another idiotic potshot onto an attempt at an apology. Get the hell over yourself, Jack Stuef. You don’t need to dig a deeper hole and fashion some halfwit complaint onto what should be a massive mea culpa for the offense caused by your all zeal no knowledge political asshattery. I’m at the point where Steuff doesn’t deserve the courtesy of kind words. Stand by your “criticism” all you want to, but there’s a time and a place to take a stand so pathetic, and it’s not while you’re apologizing to a child for calling him a “retard” on his birthday.