Palin Quoted Writer Who Once Lamented Failure To Assassinate FDR

[Newsjock]

Source: Talking Points Memo

Thomas Frank has an interesting little scooplet: It appears that during her convention speech, Sarah Palin quoted an anonymous writer who, it turns out, once lamented that Franklin D. Roosevelt's would-be assassin hit the wrong man.

... The anonymous writer who penned these words, it turns out, is the right-wing columnist Westbrook Pegler.

Pegler also wrote that it was "regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara hit the wrong man when he shot at Roosevelt in Miami."


Read more: http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/palin_quoted_writer_who_once_l.php

[fjc]

1. This is just plain stupid stretching.

[chascarrillo]

10. Yeah. Pointing out that a VP candidate quoted out and put racists is stretching.

What is wrong with you people?

[progdonkey]

2. yeah, stretching...

The quote itself was pretty substance-less--she wasn't invoking any specific political beliefs of his.

And regarding what it says about her "influences"... this all assumes she actually wrote that speech. We all know she didn't; she had the "VP Convention Speech" that had already been written before McCain even made his pick. So if anything it perhaps says something about the influences of whoever wrote speech, but should we be surprised that Karl Rove or one of his proteges would've wanted the attempt on FDR to be successful?

[jberryhill]

3. She did mention Harry Truman, though - sent a chill up my spine /nt

Not the mere reference to Harry Truman, but upon realizing how Truman became president.

[RufusTFirefly]

4. Pegler was scum, but this is a lame-ass link

For starters, as some have already pointed out, Palin is nowhere deft enough to write her own speeches. So including the quote almost certainly wasn't her idea.

The sooner this "scooplet" dies, the better.

[izzybeans]

5. Says more about the Bush speechwriter who gave her those words than Palin.

She's the Ron Burgundy of speechifying. She'll read whatever you put in front of her smug face.

[nxylas]

8. "I'm Sarah Palin?"

Aw, goddamn it, did somebody put a question mark on the teleprompter again?

[NorthernSpy]

6. Westbrook Pegler on Jews:

Pegler was in the "habit of calling Jews 'geese', because they hiss when they talk, gulp down everything before them, and foul everything in their wake."


Westbrook Pegler on blacks and civil rights: "clearly (it is) the bounden duty of all intelligent Americans to proclaim and practice bigotry." He was a proud racist, and a self-described one.


Westbrook Pegler's career washed up on the polluted shores of the John Birch Society before his death in 1969.


The fact that his words ended up in a televised speech given by a candidate for a major party, at a national party convention in 2008 says something very unsavory about the people who work for that party behind the scenes. Specifically, it says that the Republican Party is contaminated by an extremist-right strain which may be blossoming into virulence just now.



http://www.slate.com/id/2096673

[justiceischeap]

7. Put in that context, I think this dog can hunt. (eom)

[raebrek]

9. I don't think you have anything here. n/t

[Ian David]

11. I've quoted Arthur Conan Doyle. Does that make me a heroin addict? n/t