ABC News reports:
In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by "attacks" from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.
Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.
"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."
Salon's Glenn Greenwald explains why this argument is frighteningly wrong:
If anything, Palin has this exactly backwards, since one thing that the First Amendment does actually guarantee is a free press. Thus, when the press criticizes a political candidate and a Governor such as Palin, that is a classic example of First Amendment rights being exercised, not abridged.
This isn't only about profound ignorance regarding our basic liberties, though it is obviously that. Palin here is also giving voice to the standard right-wing grievance instinct: that it's inherently unfair when they're criticized. And now, apparently, it's even unconstitutional.
According to Palin, what the Founders intended with the First Amendment was that political candidates for the most powerful offices in the country and Governors of states would be free to say whatever they want without being criticized in the newspapers.
The First Amendment was meant to ensure that powerful political officials would not be "attacked" in the papers?
Is it even possible to imagine more breathtaking ignorance from someone holding high office and running for even higher office?
9 comments:
this woman has not idea what she is talking about. i can't wait to see what her future brings after the election.
Many people hope that she will be the new face of the Republican Party.
I hope so, too.
She has that wonderful, wonderful gift contemporary Republicans admire so very much.
Supreme confidence matched with unsurpassed ignorance.
Mission Accomplished!
"Is it even possible to imagine more breathtaking ignorance from someone holding high office and running for even higher office?"
Gosh, I don't have to imagine it. I saw it in the VP debate when Joe Biden (36 years in the Senate) told us that Article Two of the Constitution dealt with the legislative branch. Of course, Joe is a lawyer, and head of the Judiciary committee, which vets judges. So it's not like you'd expect him to know anything about the constitution.
Or, when Barry O told us that the UN should take action to stop Russia invading Georgia. Unfortunately, none of his 300 foreign policy advisors bothered to tell him that Russia has a veto in the Security Council, so the UN would be a dead end for such an action.
Breathtaking.
Caribou Barbie steps in it once again. I swear that woman is God's gift to the Democrats. She never ceases to deliver.
This is a typical game rightists play. They act as if they are the only ones entitled to First Amendment Rights. Anyone who uses their First Amendment rights to criticize them, are supposedly violating the First Amendment rights of the rightist nutjob.
Even I can't find a way to defend that one. I thought that idea went out with the Alien and Sedition Acts back in the Adams Administration.
Gordon, do you actually believe that Palin knows as much about foreign policy and Constitutional law as Biden and Obama do?
And you actually believe their misstatements are a result of their lack of education and knowledge?
the election is over thus making this post irrelevant now. so while i may disagree with your conclusion, arguing the point serves no purpose anymore.
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