Memo to Washington Post and editorial page editor Fred Hiatt: We get it already.
You don’t like clean energy. You don’t mind publishing unfact-checked articles again and again. And if somebody wants to publish an op-ed attacking climate legislation focused exclusively on the cost of action while never actually discussing climate change or the cost of inaction, hey, why not? It’s not like there’s a major study by a leading journalist criticizing the entire media for such biased coverage (see “The press misrepresented the economic debate over cap and trade…. The press allowed opponents of climate action to replicate the false debate over climate science in the realm of climate economics. The press … sometimes assumed that doing nothing about climate change carried no cost“).
But running a piece by Sarah Palin, “The ‘Cap And Tax’ Dead End” that is devoid of original arguments and simply repeats tired myths is a new low. As Art Brodsky writes in HuffingtonPost,
Is there any sane person left over in the Post management?
Palin is devoid of knowledge on climate (see “McCain VP Palin is a global-warming-denying, Pat Buchanan acolyte” and Palin on CBS: “I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate.”). As for energy, simply being a (quitting) governor of an energy state doesn’t make her an expert any more than being able to see Russia from a tall building in Alaska makes her a foreign-policy expert. Indeed, Palin does not even know basics of Alaska energy.
In fact, Palin is so ignorant of energy, so practiced at repeating falsehoods, that in September, during the campaign, the Washington Post itself gave her its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of “Four Pinocchios” for continuing to “to peddle bogus [energy] statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers.”
Amazingly, the Post has published an op-ed on climate change legislation by the governor of the state that is currently the most battered by climate change, without any discussion of climate change or its impacts on that state. Heck even Alaska GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski pointed out in a May 2006 speech on climate change that the tremendous recent warming had opened the door to the “voracious spruce bark beetle,” which devastated over three million acres in Alaska, “providing dry fuel for outbreaks of enormous wild fires.”
In one of the most unintentionally humorous pieces of crap the Post has ever subjected on the public, Palin states:
Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:
I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.
Seriously.
[Silver lining note: In a perverse way, perhaps we should be grateful to the Post. Probably the best thing that could happen to climate legislation is if Palin becomes the lead spokesperson attacking it.]
Let’s set aside the rather obvious fact that the bill that doesn’t even start imposing a cap until 2012, so it’s absurd to assert it will “undermine our recovery over the short term.” The reverse case is, in fact, stronger — see Nobelist Krugman attacks “junk economics”: Climate action “now might actually help the economy recover from its current slump” by giving “businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities.”
Moreover, even in 2012, the total value of the allowances will be under $50 billion (in a $15 trillion economy) and all that money is going to be returned to the economy, so again, like all economic models show, the bill will have no significant negative impact.
No, what’s so laughable about this piece is that Palin wouldn’t even be considered by the Post as a suitable candidate for an op-ed on the climate bill if it weren’t for the national media’s focus on personality-driven politics. As Art Brodsky writes in HuffingtonPost:
With all the talk about how newspapers are dying, can we add one more reason to the list of horribles — suicide. The “salon” scandal still hasn’t died down, not after the paper’s ombudsman published his scathing critique calling the intimate dinners at publisher Katharine Weymouth’s house an “ethical lapse of monumental proportions.” The damage to the credibility of the paper can’t be measure. How often does a publisher print a mea culpa as Weymouth did?
How does the Post regain its equilibrium? How does it recover not only from this disaster but also from the dismissal of popular blogger Dan Froomkin, whose sacking led to great protests from the readers the Post execs didn’t think existed?
Why, by putting the soon-to-be ex-gov on the op-ed page, one of the prime places of real estate left in the newspaper world? Not to put too fine a point on it — is there any sane person left over in the Post management?
The op-ed page, despite what conservatives say, is seen by progressives as a neo-con haven, sheltering talents like Jim Hoagland and conservatives like Kathleen Parker. But Palin is another case entirely. It’s not simply that no one who saw her last two press conferences about her quitting Alaska for the bright lights of the Lower 48 believes she actually wrote the piece. Ghost-writing is a fine established art. Few politicians do their own writing.
It’s quite another to believe that she actually knows or cares sufficiently about cap-and-trade and environmental legislation to care enough to write about it for a major newspaper. And even if she does, what possible justification on Earth is there for the Post publishing her?
The only one I can think of is to “get people talking” about the Post page. To create “buzz.” Well, there’s good “buzz” and bad “buzz.” This is definitely the latter. It’s not only that Palin has no constituency to speak of. It’s not even that she has been trashed by the right, in addition to criticism by the left. She has no authority to write an article like this and the Post has no business running one.
At the least, and it’s a far stretch, a global-warming denier like Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) represents a constituency — the oil industry and the people of his state. Palin has just abandoned whatever electoral constituency she had, and now the Post is helping to establish herself in this brave new world of hers with conservative celebritydom and punditocracy.
The Lerner family, the owners of the Nationals, finally let their manager go after one too many embarrassments. It’s time for the owners of the Post to wake up and to realize that having a joke of an op-ed page is no joke.
That’s what I’ve been saying — trade Fred Hiatt (see “Memo to Washington Post: Editorial page editor Fred Hiatt just recycled a right-wing WSJ op-ed. If you won’t fire him, could you move him over to obits where he can’t hurt anyone?“).
Related Posts:
- The Washington Post launches a paranoid (and naïve) attack on the House clean energy and climate bill for promoting efficient new buildings
- George Will and WattsUpWithThat embrace a proud former shill for a man convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges
- The Washington Post op-ed page remains the home of un-fact-checked disinformation about clean energy and global warming
- Washington Post reporters take unprecedented step of contradicting columnist George Will in a news article
- The Washington Post, abandoning any journalistic standards, lets George Will publish a third time global warming lies debunked on its own pages
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And Jon Stewart has the perfect send off video satire at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ 2009/ 07/ 14/ half-baked-alaska-samanth_n_231330.html
Art Brodsky wrote: “She has no authority to write an article like this and the Post has no business running one.”
Second-rate sports writer George Will had no more “authority” than Sarah Palin to write articles about global warming, and yet the Post has published column after column after column by George Will over a period of years, in which Will deliberately and knowingly repeats long-ago and many-times-over debunked lies — in some cases cutting and pasting, verbatim, assertions that both he and the Post editors KNOW to be falsehoods from his own previous columns. Which Fred Hiatt defends as an “important contribution to the debate”. I’m sure he’d say the same thing about Palin’s ghost-written lies.
It’s obvious that the management of the Post has decided that it’s in their financial interest to join the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal as an aggressive purveyor of ExxonMobil-funded denialism and deceit.
the only response to this must be the snark:
http://wonkette.com/409832/409832#comments
It’s obvious why the Post gave Palin space on the Op-Ed page: on sunday it published an Op-Ed by President Obama.
She writes an entire column about cap-and-trade without ever mentioning global warming or greenhouse gases. Wow. She can’t acknowledge global warming because that defeats her argument, and she can’t deny it because the science doesn’t back her up. (Too bad for her that reality has a liberal bias…) So she just ignores it, talks in vague terms about “environmental challenges” — clever, because *some* of those can indeed be met by better technologies on coal plants. But the entire point of cap-and-trade is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, so its omission is notable to say the least.
So Palin instead pretends that cap-and-trade is about dependence on foreign energy sources. This was a HUGE blunder by environmentalists. I was never in favor of pushing the energy independence line. Bad economics (comparative advantage), bad for the planet (coal liquefaction), and bad international policy (by and large, international trade is not a bad thing, as it seems to foster peaceful relations). It was a dumb idea when Nixon proposed it and it’s still a dumb idea.
“Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. ”
Quitter Sarah Palin sure doesn’t seem willing to focus on the “gravity of these challenges”.
Let me get this straight: Palin is no longer a governor. She is not a candidate for anything. She is a housewife, and *not* a climate scientist. She is neither an accountant or market analyst. She has a bachelor’s degree in communications and used it only to work as an sports reporter for an Alaskan TV station. So how does she qualify for space on the editorial page of the Washington Post? She doesn’t even qualify for space on the editorial page of Elle magazine.
I guess the Post really is dead. Bob Woodward should write its obituary and make it official.
Welcome to infotainment, writ large.
Palin is quickly becoming the public policy equivalent of Paris Hilton, someone who’s primarily famous for being famous. She will get all the attention she could want. She’ll get interviews, chances to publish more ghost written op-eds, book contracts, a talk show (FOX on line 3, Ms. Palin), millions of adoring followers, etc.
I honestly doubt she wants to be president or a member of anyone’s cabinet. She’s figured out that she can make way more money and have a lot more fun by being a very well paid critic instead of someone who’s actually responsible for making and executing policy and, you know, fixing things to make peoples’ lives better.
I predict she will be a public figure for a long, long time.
Maybe Fred just likes the word “clobber.”
Finally, a way to make ACES look so very good. Palin does serve a political purpose.
Unfortunately, there are many very good reasons to criticize this bill and she missed all of them. Here are two:
The Democratic party controls (tries to control) Congress and a Democrat is the President. Still, for all the problems with Coal, there is no political will in Washington to do anything about coal. That will remain as long as Sen. Byrd can threaten his own filibuster (a skill he has honed to perfection) and Rep. Nick Rahall (WV-03) Chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources. So, coal plants continue and mountain top removal continues and rivers will be polluted while we all cheer Waxman-Markey.
Then, there is the treatment of Agriculture. The Environmental Working Group had a release yesterday that takes this to task as well, another Democratic sellout to Big Ag just as they bowed to King Coal.
Somewhere along the line, I have been pressured to become a Democrat. I am glad I never yielded.
Wes Rolley
CoChair, EcoAction Committee, Green Party US.
And maybe it’s time to bring back this little document she also endorsed.
http://www.seethroughthepodium.org
Posting it on her fan page got a friend banished as her “fan.”
Sorry! the correct link is here:
http://www.seethroughthepodium.org/ issues/ climate/ environment_mccain.pdf
dwight, thank you, THAT is beyond funny! Sarah Palin is such a liar, it never ends. She really is the Paris Hilton of politics, and doesn’t have a coherent thought in her head other than how next to further sensationalize her media profile. Send that link to tips@wonkette.com, they will make great fodder of it.
John Kerry rebutes Palin:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ john-kerry/ what-gov-palin-forgot_b_231892.html
Exactly Dan, and especially momentous is his reference to this link in the article you refer to:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/ articles/ 2009/ 06/ 22/ failed_states_index_the_last_straw
and for the humor, Keith Olbermann has this to say:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ 2009/ 07/ 14/ olbermann-slams-palins-en_n_232583.html
To bad Palin isn’t a moose, maybe she could barrow the costum from the SNL skit of last year and with luck meet a helicopter on the melting tundra.
15 attacks on a Sarah Palin story? I think the Weekly Reader would even get more than that!!!
Off topic: must-read report http://www.oxfam.org.uk/ resources/ policy/ climate_change/ downloads/ bp130_suffering_science.pdf
> We concluded that the scientific evidence has now become overwhelming and that human activities, especially the combustion of fossil fuels, are influencing the climate in ways that threaten the well-being and continued development of human society.
Ha ha look everybody, now Dwight is famous and will live eternally on the intertubes!
http://wonkette.com/ 409861/ why-does-commie-sarah-palin-love-cap-trade-so-much
Never mind that Sarah Palin supported cap & trade when she was a candidate. Washington Post editors should have caught that — Jon Stewart did!
Araba
Yahea