FOX's Gretchen Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Dick Morris Give "Palin the Telepalmer" a Pass

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Jeffrey Joseph

Almost as if on cue, the conservative-dominated pundits of FOX News responded to Sarah Palin's telepalmer gaffe by doing the only thing a "balanced" network could do -- defending her inept actions with implausible rationales.

The damage control began early on FOX & Friends as Steve Doocy made a passing reference to "writing on the hand." For a moment, Doocy appeared to take a shot at his FOX colleagues that would go undiminished by the usual conservative spin. Enter Gretchen Carlson, who made an almost comical attempt to twist the obviously hypocritical incident from Palin into a subtle criticism of President Obama. As Carlson saw it, "She did it on purpose, yeah. Because it’s an exact opposite of reading off the teleprompter with a script written for you with every word in a sentence and here she’s just taking crib notes on her hand. It makes her look like she can just talk off the cuff and she just jotted down a...couple notes before she went out to give a big, long speech."

Why Carlson believed Palin would work so hard to overtly criticize President Obama for reading off a teleprompter, criticisms she delivered during a prepared speech, makes little sense on its own, but to credit Palin for an ability to "talk off the cuff" when having to refer to notes during an interview with pre-screened questions pushes the plausibility of even FOX's usually outrageous assertions. Perhaps Carlson actually offered the explanation less as an out for Palin and more as a subtle self-satire for the way she and her FOX colleagues rush to defend the right. Such an explanation would have just as much merit as Carlson's hypothesis taken at face value, at least.
Carlson would not work alone in defending her FOX colleague, as Sean Hannity worked vigorously to rewrite the debate into an indictment of President Obama, as well. Hannity asked Dick Morris "how come the media attacks her [Palin] because she wrote a couple notes on her hand and he [President Obama] writes a, reads a teleprompter all day long?" Based on the sentence construction, Morris could have pointed out that Hannity had asked why the media attacks either, especially given Hannity's proclivity for bashing the president, but Morris preferred to respond that it was "'cause she's a woman, and because she's a Republican woman, and that's a threat to the male Democratic majority." Morris offered no evidence to support o his assertion. Then again, Morris previously exhibited his illogical aptitude to blame 9/11 on President Clinton successfully convicting terrorists in 1993, so he doesn't bring much credibility to the table.

Palin earned the ire she drew from the incident through her childish condescension toward President Obama and his administration for the blatant hypocrisy of her attacks. The right may continue to defend the would-be Telepalmer President, but people outside of the Republican talking points know Palin gets ridiculed for the reason Bob Beckel cited on Hannity's "Great American Panel" segment --"not because she’s a woman, it’s because she doesn’t have anything substantively yet to say." As long as her colleagues on the blatantly biased FOX make feeble attempts to defend her, viewers may move on to substantive discussions and news -- and choose to Turn Off FOX.
Please send in tips and success stories to turnofffox@gmail.com, look out for us on Twitter @turnofffox, and join us at BuzzFlash in the Campaign to Turn Off FOX News.

Originally posted at Turn Off FOX.

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

Technorati Tags: Alerts FOX News Gretchen Carlson Sean Hannity Dick Morris Telepalmer Sarah Palin