I know the story has been reported here already, but I just can't get over how iconic Palin's flameout has turned out to be. I thought for sure that with the entire Fox News machine behind her, she'd be saved from her own Antimidas touch. Evidently not.
So what happened here when you boil it down? This is what conservatives hoped to gain by featuring LL on Palin's show:
Popular conservative blogger Allahpundit tweaked liberals who accuse Tea Party supporters of racist sympathies, saying they'll be "shocked to find the alleged Grand Dragon of the tea-party movement making chitchat with a hip-hop legend."
Obviously Palin chose to feature LL as a cynical ploy to show the world that she does in fact have a black friend. Turns out she doesn't. That's not really a surprise to most of us of course.
What's really incredible though is that they actually thought they could splice in LL's old interview and pass it off as if it was something Sarah Palin organized. You'd think they would have known better than to insult an African American like that, especially one with clout like LL. Really it's just shockingly racist and shockingly sloppy, even for Fox.
So Palin blew it. She tried to show the world she had a black friend by faking it. It's as if she invented a black facebook friend to put on her website in order to convince everyone that she does in fact know black people and they do in fact like her.
How could it possibly have gone any more wrong in terms of race relations or Palin's pretty lame attempt to disprove what the rest of us already know: she, like her base, is a white supremacist at heart.
It's not like we didn't already hear what her father had to say about her experience in Hawaii and the reason she transfered to the University of Idaho, ie minorities make her uncomfortable.
Well, of course now Fox is trying to backpeddle and claim that they never intended to promote LL as being "on the show."
But in a statement released to other media outlets, the network said: "'Real American Stories' features uplifting tales about overcoming adversity and we believe Mr. Smith's interview fits that criteria. However, as it appears that Mr. Smith does not want to be associated with a program that could serve as an inspiration to others, we are cutting his interview from the special and wish him the best with his fledgling acting career."
So in summary:
Fox and Palin try to pretend like they have a black friend. They get busted and it turns out they don't. They lie about it. And then of course Palin quits on the whole LL deal. And then just to put the cherry on top, they insult the black person they tried to use for their cynical racist purposes by mocking his career. Nevermind I'm sure that LL is more respected by more people on this planet than Palin is.
She sure is a class act. And a pretty big racist too.
An unbelievable flameout for Palin's debut on Fox. I'm honestly shocked at how everything she touches just blows up in her face, even when it's really controlled by a seemingly powerful organization like Fox. It's like she's cursed or something.
Update [2010-3-31 17:0:3 by banderson]: Uh, oh... looks like it's snowballing. I'm sure Fox's totally not racist viewers wouldn't mind if Fox also mocked Toby Keith's "fledgling" music career:
Toby Keith, of all people, is voicing a similar complaint, reports HifFix. "We were never contacted by Fox," Keith's spokesman said. "I have no idea what interview it's taken from. They're promoting this like it's a brand new interview. He never sat down with Sarah Palin."
