“Reid “was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect.” ”

So then, first of all, are these a racist comments? Second of all, are they untrue? More to the point, is it untrue that a black man who is light skinned and without a so-called ‘negro dialect’ more likely to win the presidency than one who is darker skinned and with the so-called ‘negro dialect’?

Caffeinated Content

For the second time in just over a week, Fox News is coming under fire for misusing old news footage. The latest flap is leading some people to charge that the cable news network is intentionally misleading its audience, while Fox claims a “production error.”

Wednesday’s incident occurred when Fox News host Gregg Jarrett mentioned that a Sarah Palin appearance and book signing in Grand Rapids, Michigan had a massive turnout. As footage rolled of a smiling and waving Palin amidst a throng of fans, Jarrett noted that the former Republican vice-presidential candidate is “continuing to draw huge crowds while she’s promoting her brand-new book,” adding that the images being shown were “some of the pictures just coming in to us…. The lines earlier had formed this morning.”

However, the video used in the segment was from a 2008 McCain/Palin campaign rally. In response to the minor uproar that arose after clips of Jarrett’s report hit the Internet, Fox senior vice-president of news Michael Clemente issued an initial statement saying, “This was a production error in which the copy editor changed a script and didn’t alert the control room to update the video.”

On Thursday afternoon, Fox News issued an on-air apology delivered by host Jane Skinner:

Yesterday we told you about Sarah Palin kicking off her book tour and then we spoke to Sean Hannity about an interview that he did with former Governor Palin. When introducing the segment we showed you footage of people lining up in Michigan for a book signing that evening. In the tease before the segment, the tease to commercial, we told you how those people were already lining up to meet Palin. The problem is we didn’t show you the video we were actually referencing. Instead we mistakenly aired what’s called “file tape” of Sarah Palin. We didn’t mean to mislead anybody in that tease. It was a mistake, and for that we apologize.

The current mishap comes on the heels of a controversy sparked last week when footage from a conservative rally held over the summer was played on “Hannity” during a segment on a more recent rally. During the clip, host Sean Hannity marveled over the large turnout for a Washington, DC protest. The Daily Show later pointed out that there seemed to be some inconsistencies with the video shown on Hannity’s show, namely that the atmospheric conditions seemed to vary from shot to shot. Hannity later apologized on the air for what he called “an inadvertent mistake.”

Barely a week into Palin’s blitz to promote “Going Rogue,” media coverage is becoming its own story. Fox News rival MSNBC caught heat last week for using altered images of Sarah Palin on the air, for which they later apologized. On Wednesday, Yahoo! News reported Newsweek’s defense of their latest controversial cover, which Palin herself blasted as “sexist.”

– Brett Michael Dykes is a contributor to the Yahoo! News Blog
Thumbs up for everyone as i don’t favor any of the News Networks.

sarah palin fox news show

My piece of advice, they need a young presidential candidate. Some old guy who’s been sitting on his behind in the Senate for the last 30 something years can’t convince me that he will turn America around.

2012 republicans

White-Ginder requested the meeting after Huckabee, a former minister whose presidential candidacy has recently caught fire, defended his 1992 statement that the federal government needed “to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague.” Speaking on “Fox News Sunday” last weekend, Huckabee declined to retract the comment but said he was not suggesting that AIDS patients should have been quarantined. He did not offer an alternative explanation for how people living with AIDS at the time could have been isolated.
White-Ginder also hopes to bring with her some folks who are living with AIDS. “They’re very responsible, they’re back to their jobs because of the meds, and I would just like him to see the new face of AIDS today. It really saddens me to think that they don’t have a presidential candidate’s support. We have to respect the disease and the people who have it.”While campaigning in Iowa on Tuesday, the former Arkansas governor told the Associated Press, “I would be very willing to meet with them. I would tell them we’ve come a long way in research, in treatment.”

Though Huckabee’s meteoric rise in the polls nationally and in the early primary states has put his record under greater scrutiny, White-Ginder was surprised there wasn’t more of an “outcry” about his recent comments or even the statement he made back in 1992. “It was a big disappointment really, because a presidential candidate even referring to that information in ‘92 was unrealistic,” she said, recalling the early
when people initially thought that casual contact involving by kissing, tears, sweat, and saliva might spread HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. “We fought so hard — and I’m not just saying me and Ryan — to get us where we are today. I just think as a presidential candidate, we really have to be watchful of what we say and do because you are going to represent all of us — and yes, you’re going to represent all our people with AIDS if you are our president.”

White-Ginder said that getting information out about AIDS and HIV has been particularly difficult because of “the religious and moral issues that have always surrounded the disease.” Especially in Southern states and other conservative areas of the country, she added, “we haven’t been able to make it real to people that everybody is at risk for this disease. Now, some people are at higher risk, but this is everybody’s disease.” An estimated 550,000 people have died of AIDS complications in the United States up through 2005
White-Ginder tends to lean toward supporting Democrats but added that she works with legislators on both sides of the aisle and said, “I have a great deal of respect for both parties.” Her biggest concern in the race for president is not electing someone who advocates for abstinence-only education in schools and public facilities rather than educating adolescents about birth control, condom use, and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

“As a mother who has been involved in this AIDS epidemic for so long, I hear the stories, I see the faces, I know what kids are doing, and it’s not what we parents ideally would always want them to do,” she said. “But we have to be real, we have to get real with the disease. And we have to be able to speak about it at church and at home and in schools.”

The Huckabee campaign did not respond to a request for comment. (Kerry Eleveld, The Advocate)

Vote Palin

The book now has a title, one fitting for a public figure known for the unexpected – ‘Going Rogue: An American Life.’”

How excited are conservatives for this book? Do you find the fact that she wrote what will no doubt be one of the most significant documents in American history in just four months truly astonishing?

Where will Republicans rank this book among other revered documents? I don’t think anyone believes ‘Going Rogue’ will have the kind of influence on the Republican party that ‘The Turner Diaries’ or “Atlas Shrugged’ has. But could it slide into third place on the hierarchy, just before the Bible, Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers and finally ‘My Pet Goat?’

sarah palin book

Thanks for any and all responses!

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