Sarah Palin Sends 'Message to All 57 States' Bashing Media Focus on North Korea Gaffe

November 26th, 2010 10:09 AM

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin on Thursday struck back at media members that bothered reporting the slip of the tongue she made the previous day concerning North Korea being America's ally.

In a Facebook posting entitled "A Thanksgiving Message to All 57 States," Palin mocked news outlets for not giving similar coverage to gaffes made by Barack Obama:

My fellow Americans in all 57 states, the time has changed for come. With our country founded more than 20 centuries ago, we have much to celebrate – from the FBI’s 100 days to the reforms that bring greater inefficiencies to our health care system. We know that countries like Europe are willing to stand with us in our fight to halt the rise of privacy, and Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. And let’s face it, everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma and they end up taking up a hospital bed. It costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early, and they got some treatment, and ah, a breathalyzer, or an inhalator. I mean, not a breathalyzer, ah, I don’t know what the term is in Austrian for that… 

As can be seen, Palin included links to YouTube videos of Obama saying some really absurd things:

If you can’t remember hearing about them, that’s because for the most part the media didn’t consider them newsworthy.

Palin also noted that she didn't mention any of Joe Biden's famous gaffes - "I didn’t have enough time."

She continued:

If the media had bothered to actually listen to all of my remarks on Glenn Beck’s radio show, they would have noticed that I refer to South Korea as our ally throughout, that I corrected myself seconds after my slip-of-the-tongue, and that I made it abundantly clear that pressure should be put on China to restrict energy exports to the North Korean regime. The media could even have done due diligence and checked my previous statements on the subject, which have always been consistent, and in fact even ahead of the curve. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann certainly didn't care about such facts Wednesday evening:

KEITH OLBERMANN, HOST: And a choked chicken leads us fittingly as Thanksgiving looms to a fully functioning turkey. Bad things happen when you try to get in your everything is Obama`s fault talking points in all at one once.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How would you handle a situation like just developed in North Korea?

SARAH PALIN, FORMER GOVERNOR OF ALASKA: Well, North Korea -- this is stemming from, I think, a greater problem when we`re all sitting around asking, oh, no, what are we going to do and we`re not having a lot of faith that the White House is going to come out with a strong enough policy to sanction what is it that North Korea is going to do. So, this speaks to a bigger picture here that certainly scares me in terms of our national security policies.

But, obviously, got to stand with our North Korean allies. We`re bound to by --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: Uh-huh. Wait, what?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PALIN: But, obviously, got to stand with our north Korean allies. We`re bound to by treaty.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: South Korean.

PALIN: We`re also bound by -- yeah. And we`re also bound by prudence to stand with our South Korean allies, yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: Just a slip of the tongue, right? We take you to the book "Game Change," page 397: "on September 10th, she was preparing to fly back to Alaska to tape her first network interview with ABC`s Charlie Gibson. Before the flight to Anchorage, Schmidt, Wallace and other members of her traveling party met Palin at the Ritz Carlton near Reagan Airport in Pentagon City, Virginia, and found her that although she had made some progress with her memorization and studies, her grasp of rudimentary facts and concepts was minimal. Palin couldn`t explain why North and South Korea were separate nations."

As NewsBusters previously reported, ABC's "Good Morning America" thought this was newsworthy Thanksgiving day:

So did the Associated Press:

Sarah Palin is drawing criticism from around the world after declaring that the United States has to stand with "our North Korean allies."

Palin's gaffe, made Wednesday during an interview on Glenn Beck's syndicated radio show, was quickly corrected by her host. But it drew immediate fire from liberal bloggers, who cited it as an example of the 2008 vice presidential candidate's lack of foreign policy expertise.

The AP felt it was newsworthy again Friday:

While Palin's fans are loyal and legion, the prospect of her running for president alarms some Republicans. They think Palin is too polarizing and too inexperienced to defeat Obama, even if Republicans in general can maintain the momentum of their powerful performance in this month's midterm elections.

Her foreign policy gaffe Wednesday kept the question alive. She declared on Glenn Beck's syndicated radio show that the United States has to stand with "our North Korean allies" in connection with tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Her mistake was quickly corrected by her host. But it drew immediate fire from liberal bloggers who cited it as an example of her lack of foreign policy expertise. Newspapers in Asia and Europe echoed the criticism. The Times of India says Palin "did it again," while London's Daily Mail says she "may want to brush up on her geography."

UPI also hit this Thursday:

Sarah Palin has yet to address the controversy arising from her televised statement about standing "with our North Korean allies," observers say.

She has now.