Good For Sarah Palin

Finally, the “lamestream media” is getting held accountable. The latest example is Sarah Palin.

Former Alaska Governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin filed a lawsuit against the New York Times Tuesday over an editorial that tied her to the January 2011 shooting of an Arizona congresswoman.

Palin’s attorneys claim the paper defamed her in the June 14 editorial, published hours after House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., was shot and wounded by a deranged man while Scalise was practicing with the GOP’s baseball team in Alexandria, Va.

Whether or not Palin wins her lawsuit against The New York Times isn’t the point. The larger point is that she’s holding the scumbags who parade as “objective media watchdogs” and protectors of humanity accountable. Just for once.

It’s kind of like the schoolyard bully that keeps getting away with it. A lot of times it’s best just to ignore bullies, thereby refusing to give them the unearned psychological power they crave. But architects of ignorance and pretense like The New York Times pull this kind of thing all the time. They make an outrageous claim, as they did when they associated Palin’s past campaigns in support of a Republican Congress during Obama’s presidency, as “inciting” violence against Democratic candidates. It’s a ludicrous claim, and The New York Times knew it when they published it. That’s why they withdrew it soon after.

What The New York Times and others like them do is plant an impression in people’s minds. If you’re a critical and objective thinker, there’s no way you’d walk away from a story like that thinking Palin’s campaign for gun rights incites violence. It was nothing more than a smear, designed to exploit emotional reactions to unpleasant events to prop up a cause like gun control that rationality and reason could never save. Those of us who support gun rights are used to it. The New York Times counts on the lack of critical thinking and intelligence that exists in far too many people to give its claim emotional appeal and intellectual “legs”. It counts on the worst and weakest within all of us in order to advance its absurd and unjust bias, not just against Palin but against anyone who disagrees with the corrupt, statist, socialist and anti-responsibility, anti-liberty, anti-individual rights Washington DC establishment.

For a long time, many of us have yearned to see elitist trash like The New York Times be exposed as something other than the pretentious know-nothings they really are. They will never change. But let’s bleed them of their credibility as much as we can, because they deserve none of it, and they’ve been getting a free ride and an unearned run for far, far too long.

Good for Sarah Palin. Here’s hoping we see lots and lots of accountability for media bullies in the weeks, months and years to come. I applaud her for leading the way.