TLC’s Sarah Palin’s Alaska Jumps the Shark by Attacking Critical Blogger

TLC’s “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” website has a Broadsheet section written by David Murray. Last night, Mr Murray actually attacked a Texas blogger who had the temerity to correct Ms Palin over her inaccurate claim that environmentalists were “limiting deforestation” in Alaska. Mr Murray adds to the spice of this late night musing by actually suggesting that this show isn’t political as he says, “once or twice per episode, Sarah does make a quick aside with some political content.”

Yes, that’s right, Mr Murray. Once or twice an episode Sarah Palin makes a dig at Michelle Obama or the President or the feds or some other evil liberal target. The rest of the time she’s busy rehabbing her image with narratives about “working hard” and “not quitting” and being a “tough” female. Why, in one episode she ran around looking like Rambo for the Ronnnie Reagan vote. Then she takes her petty attacks at her critics, like suggesting that “refudiate” was a typing error because the “d and the f are right next to each other”. A pause while we realize that if she had used the d, she would have made an even worse mess of the word. Image rehab, fighting critics and sending political messages all wrapped up in the neat flagship of a “reality” TV show.

At any rate, I wouldn’t say that was political either if I were working for a network that was engaging in paid political advertising for a very divisive candidate and receiving tax credits from the state of Alaska (for the star’s salary if nothing else), because you see, that would be propaganda for profit at the tax payers’ expense and on public airwaves and that would be uncool on many fronts.

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And that wouldn’t be good for TLC to admit.

Only TLC gave Sarah Palin Executive Producer credit and control over editing (per her own tweets), so this is her message and everyone in America knows that Palin politicizes everything she touches. So TLC has to defend her from suggestions that she is making political attacks and we all know how Palin loves to be defended, so this is another cozy relationship of money, power and elite media congloms working to sell Palin, Inc to America. Nice work, TLC.

Let’s not forget that TLC “disinvited” media critic Jennifer Pozner from TLC’s “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” podcast because they claimed she was “too political” for the show. In the past, Jennifer Pozner has criticized “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” as nothing more than a paid political commercial wherein the politician is getting paid by the network. Too political, you say? Gee, I’m flummoxed.

Now, on to the specifics of this particular fight.

Malia Litman, author of “Rebuttal to the Rogue”, who blogs on “Malia Litman’s blog” was watching last week’s episode of “Sarah Palin runs for President” (oops, I mean, “Sarah Palin’s America”…no, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska”) and she became offended that Sarah Palin claimed conservationists were somehow stopping logging and deforestation of Alaska. God forbid we should limit deforestation of our resources. However, let’s not get bogged down in that fight.

This is pure vintage Palin. She can make an enemy out of thin air. Because, see, no one is stopping loggers in Alaska. No evil environmentalists are stopping “progress” in Alaska. This is another Palin v No One fight, where the viewer gets to plug in the evil guy (who is always a liberal and usually in the White House).

Watch here. The rant against no one starts at 8:22:

Then Malia Litman does due diligence and corrects Palin:

“In the same episode, Palin criticized environmentalists for their opposition to logging and deforestation. Although nothing about Obama was mentioned by Palin, the viewer certainly assumed that Palin was critical of the Obama administration for any efforts to limit deforestation in Alaska. In this instance it was Palin’s total absence of acknowledgement of the attempt by the Obama administration to allow the expansion of logging in Alaska, that was so offensive. Just this year the Obama administration has come under harsh criticism for its approval of the sale of timber from the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. The Obama administration has approved the sale of timber from the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. The 17-million acre forest is the largest stand of continuous temperate rain forest in the U.S. and contains a lot of old-growth trees. This first sale will come after seven miles of roads are built for the 381-acre clear-cut. Either Palin didn’t know or purposefully failed to mention that the Obama administration had worked to limit the laws regulating the limited removal of trees in Alaska. The Obama administration allowed the cutting down of trees, in spite of the knowledge that deforestation now accounts for nearly ¼ of global CO2 emissions in the world.”

Do we all know whom she means? This is the woman who can’t stop making petty jabs at Michelle Obama’s healthy eating initiative, after all. Yes, if you live in America, you’re aware of whom Palin thinks of as her mortal enemy; he who stole her crown. Or as they call him on her heavily moderated Facebook page, the “usurper” President. He whom Palin can not, will not, stop criticizing at every turn until the Russian newspaper Pravda called her out as a traitor to her country. But Mr Murray wants us to pretend that we don’t have any idea whom she means. I mean, we can’t prove she meant that! She never said it. So there. That get’s TLC off the hook for Palin’s misinformation.

Wait, see how that worked? That’s called moving the goal post. Because you see, Palin did misinform her viewers and one would like to think that as former Governor she knows what goes on with logging and deforestation laws in her state. But perhaps I give her too much credit. I hear she gets her information from Fox, so maybe we should give her the benefit of the doubt.

Here comes TLC’s “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” Broadsheet to rebut the rebuttal! December 30, 2010 by Broadsheet:

….Here’s the excerpt, with the weaker assumption in bolded text:
…” Palin criticized environmentalists for their opposition to logging and deforestation. Although nothing about Obama was mentioned by Palin, the viewer certainly assumed that Palin was critical of the Obama administration for any efforts to limit deforestation in Alaska. In this instance it was Palin’s total absence of acknowledgement (sic) of the attempt by the Obama administration to allow the expansion of logging in Alaska, that was so offensive.”

Now, Palin has of course been critical of Barack Obama in the past; that’s not the part of that statement that seems (to me) to be unreasonable. It’s that, even though Sarah said nothing of Obama, the viewer would immediately think “she’s talking trash about Obama!” And if she’s not talking about Obama (which we really don’t have very much reason to believe she is, her not mentioning him at all), then why would it be offensive not to bring up his track record on logging in Alaska? She didn’t mention a lot of people’s track records. Is that offensive? I don’t think it is…

No, see, what’s so offensive is that Ms Palin attacks outward over false issues and implies that enemies like evil liberal environmentalists are out to get hard-working loggers, while Mr Murray, Malia and I know this isn’t true. That is the issue. Let’s stop moving goal posts, shall we?

I wonder why Mr Murray left that part out of his quote from Malia’s blog? I wonder why Mr Murray didn’t even have the courtesy to link to Malia’s blog so people could make up their own minds about what she meant. Maybe he didn’t want people to see the truth. After all, that would look like TLC was funding baseless attacks on the Left and we all know they aren’t doing that. They certainly aren’t funding a misinformation campaign or a political ad.

Now if only the rest of America would kindly swallow this lump of coal so TLC could collect it’s monies and move on before things get too dicey. Oh, and maybe TLC should supply us with the information about exactly how much money they get from the film tax credits and incentives if they qualify for them. We already know that the people of Alaska are paying 44% of Sarah Palin’s salary per the film incentive. After all, TLC is using public airwaves and they’re using tax-payer money, so this is our business.

Sarah Jones

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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

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