Monday 13 September 2010

Sarah Palin's speech in Missoula, Montana: Falsely accusing "media moles" of having "sneaked" into the venue - Montana editor objects


After her big 9/11 exploitation party in Anchorage, Sarah Palin, de-facto leader of the GOP and likely Presidential candidate for the GOP in 2012, headed straight to Missoula, Montana on Sunday. The funny thing is that one of our readers was by coincidence on the same plane (again!) as Sarah when she departed from Anchorage on Sunday, on a flight to Portland.

Funnily, Levi Johnston was at the same time at the airport as well. Our reader was in the check-in line behind Levi Johnston. He was going on a different flight.

Our reader reported that Sarah had a female handler with her and didn't speak to anyone. Our reader saw it coming: "I just had this creepy feeling she was on the flight...and she was!" I guess our reader could feel the dark cloud approaching... ;-)

Sarah was heading to Missoula, Montana, where she gave a speech at a Christian "Teen Challenge" fundraising event, to a crowd of 1600 people. Here is another report about the event.

"Teen Challenge" is a Christian non-profit organization with a pentecostal background, as they explain on their webpage. They are part of the pentecostal "Assemblies of God", which was also Sarah Palin's church for many years in Wasilla.

There were also protesters in Missoula against Sarah Palin - here is a report.

Videos from the speech and the protests can be found here and here.

Missoula is apparently called "Griz Country", and you can see why:

Big air grizzly pic

The caption to this picture reads:

Congratulations to Missoulian photography editor Kurt Wilson, whose photo of a black bear falling from a tree in downtown Missoula was recognized as one of the top photos of the week in MSNBC’s “This Week in Pictures.”

So you have about 5 seconds to guess what Palin's opening line in the speech was. ;-)

It was another memorable speech by the Quitter Queen, but it seemed a little bit more extreme than usual.

Sarah Palin is now at a point where she doesn't even try to conceal her contempt and hatred for the media any more - these evil people who dare to report critical things about her, and who in her opinion shamelessly try to distort her godly message.

But let's take a look first at the live twitter by the "Missoulian", which gives a nice overview of some of the highpoints of the speech:


tweets - overview


The "Missoulian" afterwards published a comprehensive and very detailed article about her speech.

So, the speech was all about God again - but it's not Washington D.C. who is "whack" - very sorry, Your Majesty Queen Quitter!


"God and family and country - take a stand in that order and things fall into place," Palin told a sold-out crowd of 1,600 at the Hilton Garden Inn during her 40-minute talk at the "Raise the Roof" capital campaign for Teen Challenge.

"Taking a stand for God is not always easy ... but it is always right and worthwhile," Palin said.

God and prayer help people find their true calling and innate talents, she said, and in God's "cosmic calculus" for each of us he provides the lessons we must learn in our individual journeys.

Teen Challenge, she said, is an example of God's work in action. Each day, the national program helps alcoholics become sober, drug addicts come clean and helps scared, unwed teen mothers turn that hardship into life's great blessing.

In Missoula, the group serves up to 20 women and their small children who have been caught in addictions to drugs or alcohol.

There are no perfect families, Palin said - and family isn't just who you are born into, but who you choose to be around.

God's "cosmic calculus", which, as we all know, also includes Sarah Palin becoming the first female President of the USA.

Palin also told her audience the holy Trig pregnancy story again. She will probably still tell this story in about 30 years from now on.


Robust applause erupted when Palin laid out her no-holds-barred opinion about the way the country is currently being governed.

"The things they are doing in Washington, D.C., are absolutely whacked," she said. "They are upside-down."

I also found the part interesting about "God loves gang members" (see the live twitter). Does that mean that God loves all people who strayed from the path of righteousness, including for example Sherry Johnson? I am sure that Sarah has for example already met Sherry Johnston and Diana Palin (click for more info) and has reassured them that God loves them too, has she not...?

But then comes the kicker - the relationship between Sarah Palin and the media, which she now seems to regard in its entirety as the "enemy", apparently becomes more and more tense.


During her talk, Palin at times deviated from her awe-filled words of faith to take swipes at the media - at one point proclaiming that "moles" were in the audience texting about her belief in prayer and taking it all out of context, as per usual.

These remarks by Palin were also reported for example here. But that was not everything. The editor of the "Missoulian", Sherry Devlin, took exception to Sarah Palin's remark and wrote a scathing blog post, defending the integrity of the media, and correcting Sarah Palin's lie.

Sherry Devlin wrote:

We didn’t “sneak in” to Sarah Palin’s speech

First: This blogpost is not about politics.

Second: Contrary to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s warning to the standing-room-only crowd at this afternoon’s Teen Challenge fundraiser in Missoula, the media did not “sneak in” to her speech. We were not there as “moles,” in her words.

Third: I only mention this because that sort of talk – “Be careful. There may be some media that sneaked into the room.” – is intended to create distrust of the professional journalists in this city and all across the country who take their jobs very seriously and work hard to accurately and fairly report the news.

Fourth: So here is how the Missoulian and other media came to attend Sarah Palin’s talk.

Months ago, when the fundraiser was announced, we let the folks at Teen Challenge know we wanted to cover the former governor’s speech. Teen Challenge established guidelines for how many reporters and photographers could attend, and this newspaper and other media submitted the names and credentials of the journalists who would be representing us.

Reporter Betsy Cohen and photographer Linda Thompson were identified as the Missoulian’s representatives, and were there on Sunday to document Palin’s speech.

Last week, they picked up a credential packet from Teen Challenge. They showed I.D. to pick up the packet. They were given green wristbands and were told to put them on their left wrists. They checked in at the door on Sunday, showed their wristbands and were placed in one corner of the room – and told not to move.

They were very visible, very public, very respectful and professional.

They didn’t sneak in or out. They smiled. They thanked their hosts. And they are back at the office now writing a story and processing photos and video, for posting later tonight on Missoulian.com and publication in Monday’s Missoulian.

For all to see and hear and read.

Sherry Devlin

Missoula Editor about Palin's speech


I wish the media had the guts to defend themselves more often against the Quitter Queen.

On a lighter note:

Please read this brilliant satirical post about Sarah Palin's visit to Montana.

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Our reader maelewis made an excellent comment, which I would like to add to the post:

"This isn't Sarah's first confrontation with media, and it is always the media that is wrong regarding Sarah, The Professional Victim. She is content to let her followers issue threats against the reporter(s), and she is content to wage war by tweet and face book instead of actually sitting for an interview. Somehow, the media always gets it wrong and casts Sarah in such a bad light.

The girls at CSUS who released the pages of Sarah's diva contract were treated like common criminals. Michael Gross reported factually, and had to issue a rebuttal and proof to the false claims. Joe McGinniss was not a peeping Tom, spying of helpless Piper. The way that Sarah treated the media at CSUS, relegating them to a separate feed in another room, came back to bite her in the butt with the open mike comments.

In case Sarah forgot one of most important talking points, her brave son fighting to defend our constitutional freedoms, Sarah forgot the rest of the first amendment, the freedom of the press. Places like China, Russia, other dictatorships control what the press can write and report. The brightest light that illuminated the uprisings in Iran following an election came from cell phone bloggers, not the muzzled Iranian press. When Sarah restricts the press, she is clearly forgets what Track was fighting for (according to her version of the story). And, the more that Sarah tries to control access, the more that people will cover her, openly and honestly as the reporter did in Montana, or by covert means using a fountain pen video or a miniature video camera stuck hidden behind a lapel. To use Sarah's famous words, the media will not sit down and shut up. When Sarah tries to control what the media writes about her, she shows us exactly what kind of dictator she would be if she would ever get in power again."
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UPDATE:

A new, much longer clip from Sarah Palin's speech on 9/11 in Anchorage has surfaced. This is also relevant for this post, as it contains HEAVY media bashing, see for example from around the 7:00 mark: "I can tell you, folks: It is a brutal leftist dominated lamestream media world our there - what would we do without Fox News, by the way?"




This youtube-user also uploaded another long clip from this event with Glenn Beck's speech, 14 1/2 minutes long - click here.

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UPDATE 2:

I made a little clip about Palin's "brutal leftist dominated lamestream media world" remark, and added a very special touch at the end, taken by our very own videographer outside the venue on 9/11 in Anchorage:



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