Washington Post: Tenuous Links To Smear The Palins (Update)

The citizens of the progressive twin cities of Tenuous Links/To Smear Palin have been all a flutter this week about what they see as the hypocrisy of the Governor Palin’s opposition to socialized health care, knowing full well that more than 40 years ago her sister and brother were treated at a Canadian hospital in the Yukon Territory, at a time well before nationalised medicare existed there. (see here)

Given that their raison d’être is the unsubstantiated, it matters nought to the citizens of Tenuous Links/To Smear Palin that the future Vice Presidential candidate was only around 5 years of age at the time and was not herself the recipient of medical attention; that the decision to take their children to a foreign hospital was made by the then Sarah Heath’s parents; that the said hospital wasn’t at the time part of a national Canadian medicare programme; or that the health care received was paid for.

For those willing to entertain the absurdity, perhaps most puzzling in this sorry matter of the deliberate inflating of the ludicrously tenuous is the unusual failure of the citizens of Tenuous Links/To Smear Palin to fully exploit its potential by making further equally tenuous links.

For example, one might reasonably have expected the citizens of the twin cities to have remembered that in an interview conducted by Harry Smith of CBS on 9/29/08, Chuck Heath said this of the young Sarah,

“I could bend my other kids and have them do things and if she knew she was right I had a hard time convincing her there was another way of doing it... but she was usually always right and could justify what she wanted to do... very strong willed...”

Strong willed? A hard time convincing her if she knew she was right?

Chuck Heath, “You Lie!” cry the conspiratorial.

Isn’t it abundantly clear to the Palin Deranged that 40 years ago the 5 year old Sarah Heath failed utterly and abysmally to convince her father that he should not take her brother with the scalded foot to a hospital in a foreign territory, just in case years later that territory might join a nationalised health care system?

Many believe that this woman has pretensions to become President, but in the light of this evidence how can that be a serious consideration, Mr Heath?

Who in his right mind can trust that this woman will be capable of standing up for their nation against the intransigence of the Iranians or the North Koreans when at age five she failed singularly to persuade her adult father not to take his injured child to a hospital in foreign territory which years later did join a national medicare programme.

In fact, for all we know the five year old Sarah Heath didn’t even try to dissuade her father.

Well, it seems the notion that anti-Palin sentiments, however tenuous, are there to be exploited is a subject on which Washington Post web politics editor Garance Franke-Ruta has also been ruminating.

Surprisingly, Ms Franke-Ruta has seen fit (see here) to repeat the content of an article which originated at the notorious European blogsite Palingates on 3/3/10 - whose malicious authors attempted to make a link between Mr Palin’s Iron Dog sponsorship and the dictator Hugo Chavez - and in which Governor Palin was accused of “palling around with Communists”.

“That means in effect that Todd Palin is being sponsored by Hugo Chavez!”

Garance Franke-Ruta, how is it that as a web politics editor you don’t appear to know more about the bloggers at Palingates ? (see here)

They have convinced themselves that Governor Palin is not the mother of her fifth child. They promote the belief that Mrs Palin’s husband is not the father of the first born Palin child, and they seek at every opportunity to advocate conspiracies which aim to besmirch and destabilise the Palin family. They tell their readers that working on such conspiracies excites and inspires them as bloggers, and they plead with their readers for support in their conspiracy building and cyber bullying.

They do all of that from the relative safety of their homes in France and elsewhere in Europe, Ms Franke-Ruta. They are not Alaska bloggers. They are not Americans.

As indicated by the acrimony between Palingates and the Alaska Bloggers which emerged last weekend, even amongst the liberal progressive bloggers of Alaska (who are themselves persistent Palin critics), Palingates is an embarrassment, a pariah blog despised for the nature of its content and its irrational pursuit-to-destruction of a family of people living thousands of miles away, in a foreign country.

Perhaps, Ms Franke-Ruta, you’d consider the possibility that the link you made today to a European website site regarded commonly as a “cyber sewer” was a mistake?

I hope so, because it was the sort of tenuous link which no national media outlet can afford to encourage.

Update: Mystik Lubricants was the official lubricant sponsor of the entire Iron Dog event for the second year in a row. Mystik Lubricants was also the "presenting sponsor of the 2009 HYDRO-TURF APBA Watercross Nationals in Nashville, Tennessee" last September.

So in order for the argument to work, you'd have to claim that the entire Iron Dog for the last two years and Watercross Nationals was conducted at the behest of Hugo Chavez.