Context Free Conservativism

The righteous indignation of Sarah Palin was on full display while in the warm confines of the Fox"News" studios and Chris Wallace's program.



Here's the back story:

Sarah Palin is out for blood (again) this time against an Alaska CBS affiliate. She's accusing the station's reporters of conspiring against Joe Miller, calling them "bastards" and suggesting that the initials CBS stand for "Corrupt Bastards Club." The station is strongly defending itself, though, calling her claims entirely unfounded.

Palin, Miller, and their supporters are basing their accusations on a snippet of audio they leaked to Andrew Breitbart's website Big Government. The audio is weak, and it's hard to suss out the context, but what you can hear sounds like KTVA reporters facetiously explaining how to turn a story into a sensation: specifically, jesting about finding a child molester who's voting Republican and tarring Miller by association. The conversation took place after one of the reporters left a message for a Miller spokesperson, but accidentally failed to hang up.

It's a veritable conservative trifecta of outrage.

Let's take a listen to the audio:



Clearly, whomever is involved in this conversation did mention "child molesters", but there is no indication that these people are planning on concocting a story to attack Miller or are just being snarky. Naturally, conservatives are insisting that the former is true, and that "context" has nothing to do with it:

KTVA’s explanation is absurd. What possible context can they put around the suggestion that they start looking for child molesters at a political rally in order to exploit that for their television coverage? That’s a “potential what-if scenario”? Is this a suggestion that came up in strategy sessions when discussing a McAdams campaign rally?

The only absolution KTVA could have possibly had was showing that this conversation didn’t take place among their staff, but was left on the voicemail by some other people or organization. Even if KTVA approached coverage of every political event in this manner, it would be an embarrassment. In this case, it shows a strong bias against Miller and gives a window into the editorial direction at KTVA.

Next up: will CBS management take action against their affiliate?

Considering how the modern conservative movement approaches Democratic candidates, I'm really wondering if this is the argument that Ed Morrissey is wanting to present.

But let's look at the definition of the word "context":

–noun
1.
the parts of a written or spoken statement that precede or follow a specific word or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect: You have misinterpreted my remark because you took it out of context.
2.
the set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc.

I find it very hard to believe that anyone could divine any sort of context from the garbled audio that Andrew Brietbart's Big Journalism is peddling as the latest narrative puzzle piece designed to distract conservative voters.

In addition to Palin's complete lack of understand of who context works, she also seems to be unable to differentiate between the letters "S" and "C":

Apparently, college graduate Former Half-Gov Illiterata McAirHead thinks the letter C is the same as the letter S. CBS cleverly stands for “Corrupt Bastards Club” in her brain-deficient little unschooled world.

Palin, along with virtually every conservative in America, relies heavily on blaming the messenger rather than tackling the message - whatever it may be at the time. Her claims against CBS tend to fall more than a little flat when one considers the fact that KTVA is owned by the Alaska Broadcasting Co.:

KTVA News is owned by the Alaska Broadcasting Co., not CBS. No CBS staffers were involved and CBS has no knowledge of and no comment on these allegations.

Joe Miller has created enough problems on his own, so I'm not seeing how this trumped up accusation is going to improve his chances of winning against Murkowski. The GOP was already distancing themselves from Miller prior to this latest attempt to slander any media outlet that isn't Fox.

ABC's Jonathan Karl reports: A high-level GOP source tells me that party leaders have essentially given up on Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller and are now banking on a victory by write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski as the best bet for Republicans to keep the Alaska Senate seat.

Murkowski defied party leaders by running a write-in campaign after she lost the Republican primary last month. But with Miller's campaign faltering, the source tells me that Republican leaders are now worried that Democrat Scott McAdams has a shot of winning and that Murkowski may be the only way to stop him.

This will be nothing more than a launching pad from where people like Palin, Breitbart, and Miller can unleash boiler plate rhetoric and continue to portray themselves as perpetual victims and that would never engage in pushing fabricated stories about political candidates.