I got a long critical response from a liberal reader to my Sarah Palin piece at Lew Rockwell (now also posted at Palin for 2012 website). I’ve added my responses below the salient points in the response, which you can find in full in the Comments to the post entitled Liberals Love to Hate Sarah Palin.

Here are my responses:

Bill: Quote: Standards of decency from ” journalists”?? you are kidding right?

Lila: Well, no, not really. If journalists want to consider themselves professionals, they should act with professional standards. I think journalists need to be restrained toward the private
lives of ALL politicians. If they aren’t – no one competent and half-way
decent will want to go into politics – especially not women.

Bill: Palin is a media whore and she dragged her family in front and center, and
now expresses shock and dismay when the media does what the media does. I don’t get it,

Lila: I don’t think she was a media whore. You have to be able to project
yourself in the media – that’s the job of politicians these days.
They can’t be called whores for doing what they have to do to get visibility
The media is supposed to be the 4th estate, not some tabloid trash..but
today there’s no distinction.

Bill: You do cause me some vertigo “defending” bill clinton, but your venial
tirade is relatively trivial IMO, particularly in the context of the
recent POTUS history of pursuit of excellence to the bottom. I prefer to use
body count and erosion of civil liberties as the litmus test, not the
Berlusconi
scale. **

Lila: I do too..but in Clinton’s case, it’s related. Berlusconi certainly used women he’d bedded in his political empire…and he used them to shut down critics – so there’s really no distinction between those two facets of his life.

Bill: Quote: *assaulted a couple of women, bit one on the lip until she bled,
Assault!.Are you sure of that?

Lila: Very sure. Two is a conservative number, I think.

Bill: * Quote: sodomized the barely-adult daughter of a loyal Democrat donor and then
tried to trash her as a stalker? Barely adult !?! you have got to be kidding.. Stalker, no doubt

Lila: Lewinsky was a very young, chubby intern with a history of emotional problems, in her early twenties. He’s fifty plus and the most powerful  man in the world, with a history of wheeling and dealing in unsavory circles – you tell me who’s the player

Bill: *Quote: besides causing unaccountable career-implosions,... causing?, Arent
career implosions ultimately the stuff of free will
*gory suicides …innuendo, have any facts?

Lila: Vince Foster’s suicide was very odd and there were several others among less-known figures

Bill: *Quote: causing.. jail time... facts? did you mean elective jail time?

Lila: That woman who covered for him – Susan McDougal, for one

Bill: Ultimately what is your point? The liberal media gave Clinton a pass?? You
have got to be kidding..

Lila: No, I said the opposite. I said the media could have been more responsible and sensitive toward Clinton too..but the trashing of Clinton shouldn’t be the reason liberals use to go after conservatives on minor issues.

Bill: The whole time honored canard of the “liberal
media” unjustly persecuting conservative stalwarts has gotten pretty
threadbare. Liberal media, conservative media, I think you mean to imply
Corporate media. Corporate media goes after easy red meat irrespective of> affiliation and sells it to the superficial ADD public that laps it up.

Lila: The media is corporatist and reflexively liberal – since when are these two things opposed?

Bill: Quote: And that wouldn’t be something ever committed by Barack Obama now, would
it – he with the near-halo on every magazine cover,> are you forgetting the
evangelical canonization of Bush???

Lila: No, not at all. It’s all bad. I criticized Bush on the same grounds. Check it out.

Bill: Quote:Todd was the Palin they should have picked. Have you have taken leave of
your senses? BTW, in debate 101 that would be called Fallacy of False
Choice..

Lila: That was a cute line expressing the idea that real feminism would involved more concern for the family and less for a power career. By the way, it’s not a false choice. The unspoken implication of the line is if they had to have a Palin, Todd was the one they should have picked…

Bill:
*Quote*insiders who dragged America through the mud over the last two decades>> Once someone is elevated to be the Establishment throne POTUS, they are by
default the new insider by definition, don’t you get that? Was Clinton was
an insider when he was living larger than he ever expected in his wildest
dreams as gov. of AK?

Lila: Palin barely got into office in a remote state.

Bill: Quote* The persistent trashing of Sarah Palin is a trashing of ordinary
Americans. If Palin represents “ordinary americans” come and shoot me now

Lila: Yes, she does. She stands for a large part of America.

Bill: Perhaps BHO really sucks, but having Palin a heart attack away from POTUS
would have been in the realm of fantastic reality to take a line from
Richard Burton in the Night of the Iguana..

Lila: Agreed, she was a bad choice for Veep. I said I wasn’t a fan..