Sarah’Merica to become a pundit?

So, I’ve been baffled by Sarah Palin’s oddball resignation from her job as elected AK Governor. CW says that she’s aiming to set herself up for a run for the White House in 2012, but the bizzare circumstances of her exit from AK make it pretty likely that she’d have a hard time successfully navigating the primaries, despite her rabidly loyal (and brainless) base.

Overnight on her twitter feed, this showed up:

….”Most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they’re not, by my definition, they can hardly be good newspapermen” W. Cronkite

Well, Cronkite clearly admitted that newspapermen must be liberals – like the three of us who post on this blog – to be good newspapermen, right?

Not quite.

You see, Sarah rather expertly excised that quote from it’s incredibly relevant context, which includes the definition of the word “liberal” that is being used in that quote. From the 1973 interview with Playboy that quote was pulled from:

PLAYBOY: Implicit in the Administration’s attempts to force the networks to “balance” the news is a conviction that most newscasters are biased against conservatism. Is there some truth in the view that television newsmen tend to be left of center?
CRONKITE: Well, certainly liberal, and possibly left of center as well. I would have to accept that.

PLAYBOY: What’s the distinction between those two terms?
CRONKITE: I think the distinction is both clear and important. I think that being a liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, noncommitted to a cause?but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it’s a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they’re not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen. If they’re preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can’t be very good journalists; that is, if they carry it into their journalism.

Boy, the right wing sure is consistent with their message, yes? Saying the same things now they were saying 36 years ago. But the real thing to note is the fact that Sarah very cleverly removed the context to make it look like a prominent media figure were admitting that the media were “leftist”. And she did it in the context of a previous tweet decrying “newspapermen” but praising right-wing radio hosts.

She’s got all the tools to be a right-wing pundit. If she did that, she could continue to bask in the adulation of her fans, but without having to be troubled with all that hard “governing” stuff.