• @Inked_Tigress A Facebook contact reveals: dwindle. (Other suggestions dweeb & dwarrowdelf.) in reply to Inked_Tigress #
• I agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates: Newsweek’s choice of the Runner’s World photo for its Palin cover was sexist. http://bit.ly/2dCcFP #
• RT: @tonei: #Newsweek should worry more about how to solve its problem with sexism | Media Matters http://ow.ly/Dsy5 #palin in reply to tonei #
• Great lunch w/ my brother. Yep, even though we hadn’t seen each other since July in Spokane — I do have a brother right here in Anchorage! #
• Palin told Hannity she reads the WSJ. Hope she enjoys its review of her book — “petty vindictiveness” http://bit.ly/3GkT6I #
• RT: @shannynmoore: RT @OTOOLEFAN: BREAKING: Sarah Palin to star in remake of “V for Victim”. // “Remember remember the 17th of November” #
• Re: parking expansion at New Sagaya’s Midtown Market. So _that’s_ why the Emissions Test Center moved. http://bit.ly/34iiYG / #
• Faux News at it again: displays old campaign footage to claim Palin is getting ‘huge crowds’ at her book signings. http://bit.ly/2AjTpA #
• @ActuallyNPH You nearly slipped & broke your… coke habit? in reply to ActuallyNPH #
• RT: @redrummy: Has Palin ceased to be “deeply divisive” figure? She finally gave us something EVERYONE agrees on: Her book is a crock of poo in reply to redrummy #
• John Oliver’s Daily Show segment on Palin’s book: brilliant! Out of the mouths of (liberal elite east coast) babes. Smart kids! #

• I don’t think Colbert liked your book, Sarah. He called it a steaming pile of bleep! Awwwwwww. #

Word.

Related posts:

1. The Daily Tweets, 2009-11-17: The Book That Lied Day 1
2. About those death panels: The funny and the not-so-funny
3. A sea change in Alaska?

My interpretation yesterday, based solely on that two-sentence quote taken, was wrong. Therefore I am correcting myself here.  I have already added notes of correction to the original post.

Here’s what was posted on the ADN politics blog yesterday:

Page 92

Palin recalls her interview with Frank Murkowski, when he was considering who to replace himself with as the junior U.S. Senator from Alaska. “It was then I knew I wasn’t getting the gig. It seemed to me that though he thought me competent enough to make his short list, the father in him felt compelled to protect me from the storm that is national politics.”

I made the mistake of concluding that the two sentences quoted from Palin’s book were her final views on the Murkowski appointment.  But they weren’t.

That quote appears in Palin’s account of her interview by Gov. Murkowski, about a page or two before the full tale of the appointment is told.  In that moment — or at least, so her account indicates — Palin believed he was showing some kind of fatherly protectiveness towards her and her family because she had young children. Palin says that during the interview, he repeatedly said that the life of a U.S. Senator in Washington, DC would be very hard on her kids and her family. As a result, she writes that she believed by the end of her interview that Gov. Murkowski would not appoint any woman who had young kids.  She learned she was wrong when he appointed his own daughter, who also had two young kids.

She doesn’t say so in so many words, but her account taken in full indicates that the final meaning of the story to her was not that he cared about her in a “fatherly” sense, but that he acted hypocritically.  I’m pretty sure that in the final analysis she knows as well as I do that his short list of candidates was mere exercise, and that it had been his nepotistic intent to appoint his daughter all along.

In other words, that quote is not, as I claimed yesterday, evidence of Palin’s solipsism. (Though I think other things in her book are.)

I regret I wrote the earlier post.  I wouldn’t have, had I read the quote in its full context. My apologies to anyone who read that post and took my original conclusion to be accurate.  My apologies to former Gov. Palin for the distortion I created by taking that two-sentence quote out of context.

But there’s more to this than just a mea culpa, or a reminder to myself never to form conclusions without knowing the full context.  The fact of the matter is, I was also influenced by the mood of the day, which was to assume that anything Palin said had to be wrong or  a lie or in some other way to be screwy.

But you know, that kind of judgment is just as wrong and screwy as anything we accuse her of.  We are wrong if we judge anyone based on preconceived beliefs, instead of facts.

I’m sick & tired of Palin.  I still believe her to be solipsistic & narcissistic, and to have a very unreliable relationship with anything that could be called the truth.  She is one of those people about whom I say, The truth is whatever comes out of her mouth at the time.

But if I claim to live by a higher standard of truth, I had better really live by it. And that means taking extra special care when I pass judgment on other people, no matter how sick & tired I am of them.

I did a crap job of that yesterday.  I hope that this post helps reduce the harm I created.

Related posts:

1. Palin adds a whole new definition of solipsism — CORRECTED
2. Todd Palin's deposition: A record of obsession
3. Progressives, civility, & Palin: Anatomy of an apology

• Today’s essential reading: AK Muckracker (@Mudflats) reads Palin’s book so you don’t have to. http://bit.ly/4bJwUi #
• RT: @Mudflats: i just walked in to WalMart & bought a copy of Going Rogue. is it too early to start drinking? // Going Rotgut? #
• @erinely Yeah, but the Twitter version of retweet doesn’t allow for editing to add brief comments of your own. in reply to erinely #
• @erinely I notice that Twitter also doesn’t add its special retweet symbols to RTs that have been done via other clients. in reply to erinely #
• @erinely Looks like Twitter RTs also don’t show up in other clients. You did 2 RTs on Twitter that I didn’t get in Echofon (Firefox app). in reply to erinely #
• Daddy Murkowski Loves Me More than He Loves Lisa. #altSarahPalinBookTitles http://bit.ly/MZ4A3 #
• Wealthy effete young chap Andrew Halcro reads (about himself) from Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue.” http://bit.ly/3e7Z6g #
• RT: @katsylver: Gonna go try and warm up my car now. Yeah, that’s gonna happen. *grumbles* // Another reason I love People Mover. #
• RT @JanFlora49: @yksin Isn’t Halcro’s video the classiest response to an insult you’ve ever seen? // Extremely classy. Halcro rocks. #
• @JanFlora49 May it get under Palin’s skin that she can’t get under Halcro’s skin. in reply to JanFlora49 #
• RT @Inked_Tigress: Pop quiz: what are the only three words in the English language that start with the letters “dw”? // dwarf dwell dwimmer #
• @Inked_Tigress (if dwimmer is a word. I remember it’s part of place names like Dwimmerdale in LOTR.) in reply to Inked_Tigress #

Andrew Halcro’s second video, wherein he has his Katie Couric moment, wasn’t released until the next day, but I’m including it here anyway. Both videos by Alaska Dispatch.

Related posts:

1. The Daily Tweets, 2009-11-20: Enjoy your cookie
2. The Daily Tweets, 2009-11-18: The Book That Lied Day 2
3. The Daily Tweets, 2010-02-05: Caprica w/ sauerkraut

Signs at the Hold Palin Accountable rally, 27 Sep 2008, Anchorage, AK

Note 18 Nov 2009: I find I must make some correction to this post.  Several hours after writing it, I had opportunity to see a copy of Palin’s book and read the few pages to either side of the quote examined here. It’s clear to me now that without its context, that I misconstrued what Palin & her ghostwriter intended to say here.  Please see my the noted at the end of this post for explanation.

Because I’m busy trying to write 50,000 words this month for National Novel Writing Month, I  haven’t been blogging lately, except for  “Daily Tweets” posts generated automatically from my Twitter feed.

Even before that, I stopped  writing posts about Sarah Palin unless I had something really substantive to say.  I’ve learned that I can reliably increase my blog traffic merely by putting her name in the subject line of a post — but I’d rather gain a readership for this blog based on people liking my stuff, rather than simply because they are obsessed about Palin, whether in like or dislike of her. So except for a tweet here & there, mostly I just say nothing about her.

But today, I’ve got something to say.

From Dictionary.com:

sol⋅ip⋅sism
/ˈsɒlɪpˌsɪzəm/  [sol-ip-siz-uhm]
–noun
1. Philosophy. the theory that only the self exists, or can be proved to exist.
2. extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one’s feelings, desires, etc.; egoistic self-absorption.

From the Anchorage Daily News politics blog, about Palin’s book Going Rogue:

Page 92

Palin recalls her interview with Frank Murkowski, when he was considering who to replace himself with as the junior U.S. Senator from Alaska. “It was then I knew I wasn’t getting the gig. It seemed to me that though he thought me competent enough to make his short list, the father in him felt compelled to protect me from the storm that is national politics.”

If I thought Palin or her ghostwriter had a smidgen of any real sense of humor, I’d think that they each had their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks as they wrote that sentence.  But we’re talking Palin here.

And we’re also talking about what is only the most famous recent example of nepotism in Alaska politics, because of course the person Frank Murkowski ended up appointing to fill his incomplete Senate term in December 2002 was his own daughter, Lisa Murkowski.  His nepotism created such a firestorm of opinion in Alaska that as soon as we could, we Alaska voters passed a referendum which stripped the governor of the power to appoint U.S. Senators to fill unexpired terms.  His nepotism was also one of the factors that drove his popularity so far into the hole that Palin was able to trounce him devastatingly in the 2006 Republican primary leading up to her election as governor.

(Lisa Murkowski, for her part, later gained a full term in the U.S. Senate through legitimate election in 2004.)

So let’s read that sentence from page 92 of Palin’s book again:

It was then I knew I wasn’t getting the gig. It seemed to me that though he thought me competent enough to make his short list, the father in him felt compelled to protect me from the storm that is national politics.

As I commented at the ADN Politics blog,

I think, rather, that the father in him compelled him to thrust his own daughter into the storm that is national politics.

In effect, Palin is claiming that Frank Murkowski had more fatherly concern for Palin, than he did for his own actual daughter.  Whereas every evidence is that his efforts to even develop a short list of names from which to make the appointment was a mere excercise, & that his decision had nothing to do with her at all.

But for Palin, everything is about her.

Her solipsism, her narcissism, beggars the mind.

And now, with the end of my lunch hour, I return to the Reality-Based World.

Note 18 Nov 2009: A reading of the Palin’s full account of her interview by Gov. Murkowski and his eventual appointment of his daughter leads me now to a different conclusion, & it would be irresponsible of me not to say so.  In fact, Palin’s account is that her belief he was showing some kind of fatherly protectiveness towards her and her family was something she felt only at & immediately after the actual interview, before he made the appointment.  She says she believed that he would not appoint anyone with young children, because those were the reservations he expressed during her interview. But once he appointed his daughter, who also had two young kids, she finally understood that his seeming fatherly concern was an act.

She doesn’t say so in so many words, but her account taken in full indicates that the final meaning of the story to her was not that he cared about her in a “fatherly” sense, but that he acted hypocritically.  I’m pretty sure that in the final analysis she knows as well as I do that his short list of candidates was mere exercise, and that it had been his nepotistic intent to appoint his daughter all along

I regret I wrote this post.  I wouldn’t have, had I read the quote in its full context. My apologies to anyone who read this post and took my original conclusion to be accurate.  My apologies to former Gov. Palin for the distortion I created by taking that two-sentence quote out of context.

Do I still believe that Palin tends to be solipsistic and narcissistic?  Yes.  But this instance is not evidence of it.  And I would be distorting things if I did not do my best to correct myself here.

Mea culpa.

See also my follow-up post.

Related posts:

1. Mea culpa: My post about Palin yesterday distorted what she said
2. Questions about the Palins' tax returns
3. Palin's Hong Kong adventure…