Sarah Palin Wins Our GOP Hypocrite of the Week Award For Her Book, 'Going Rogue: An American Lie'

Sarah Palin

With the frenzy of what the mainstream media so adorably calls "Palinpalooza," you had to have seen this coming. Due to the likely record-breaking number of distortions and falsehoods in her new book, Going Rogue: An American Life, Sarah Palin was a shoe-in for this week's GOP hypocrite extraordinaire.

Even in her efforts to publicize the book she's been two-faced, going so far as to train her underlings in the art of high hypocrisy. In response to an accusation over the reason for the cancellation of a campaign interview with Univision in 2008, an aide to Palin shot back that the only ones who are talking about the 2008 campaign are frustrated former McCain staffers. From Huffington Post:

Jason Recher, a senior campaign adviser to Palin now working on her book tour, dismissed the story and took a shot at Navarro for dwelling on last year's news. According to Recher, Palin was ready to talk about Hispanic issues. But McCain's advisers canceled the interview because she was not familiar with McCain's complicated record in the area.

"Nobody's sitting around talking about the 2008 campaign except for the people who lost it," he said.

Yeah, Sarah doesn't really talk about that at all. She's soooo over 2008; she hardly remembers it!  And maybe that's why she gets such an amazing amount of facts totally wrong in her new "memoir."

Indeed, from the "family vote" over whether or not to run with McCain to the $150,000 wardrobe to the time line of her daughter's pregnancy to aerial wolf hunting to Saturday Night Live and plenty more, Palin seems to have confused the definition of "memoir" with that of "fantasy fiction." A great deal of the fact-fudging is in regard to things she didn't even need to lie about, adding to a growing worry among friends and family that poor Sarah has a compulsive lying problem.

But one lie we simply can't forgive her for centers on the Exxon Valdez oil spill case. As BuzzFlash documented in a four-part series earlier this year, the case is a 20-year exercise in how a huge oil company can avoid paying for the damage it has done to a small Alaskan fishing community.

Many were surprised when Palin came out on the side of the fishermen and other Alaskan citizens as the final ruling came down from the Supreme Court in 2008 that cut the award amount to a such a minuscule figure that it wouldn't make much of a dent in the damages caused by the spill.

"I am extremely disappointed with today's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court," she said. "While the decision brings some degree of closure to Alaskans suffering from 19 years of litigation and delay, the court gutted the jury’s decision on punitive damages... It is tragic that so many Alaska fishermen and their families have had their lives put on hold waiting for this decision. My heart goes out to those affected, especially the families of the thousands of Alaskans who passed away while waiting for justice."

But now she's trying to rewrite history in her memoir. From Reuters:

"It took years for Alaska to achieve victory. As governor, I directed our attorney general to write an amicus brief in the case, and, thanks to Alaska's able attorneys arguing in front of the highest court in the land, in 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the people," she writes in her book. "Finally, Alaskans could recover some of their losses."

But Palin's claims of victory for the plaintiffs and of playing a role in achieving that victory are highly distorted, said the chief attorney for the approximately 32,000 plaintiffs that sued Exxon over damages from the worst oil-tanker spill in U.S. waters.

"That is the most cockamamie bullshit," said Dave Oesting of Anchorage, lead plaintiff attorney in the private litigants' civil case against Exxon and its successor, Exxon Mobil Corp. "She didn’t have a damn thing to do with it, and she didn't know what it was about."

Not only is she telling a bald-faced lie about the nature of the decision, she's also trying to take credit for it! How slashing a jury-awarded amount of punitive damages to a pittance is an example of the court ruling "in favor of the people" remains a mystery, unless one considers oil giant Exxon Mobil to be the "people."

Then again, if you're looking to raise a ton of campaign money from "people," you don't want to piss off Big Oil. And the actual people of Alaska don't like her anymore, so even if they had all kinds of money, they probably wouldn't donate it to her anyway.

Yet, is anyone surprised? While this was perhaps the saddest, most craven lie we've read about since Palin's book was released upon the public, it is only one of many duplicitous, two-faced hypocrisies evident in the delusional tome. And that is why Sarah Palin is our GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

Remember our motto: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.

Catch up with you soon.

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This is Sarah Palin's third GOP Hypocrite of the Week Award. She was previously honored with the award Oct. 31, 2008 and Sept. 12, 2008.  You can see a list of all previous nominees here.

Image courtesy of auburnxc's photostream on Flickr.