Sarah Palin Interview on 20/20

The Sarah Palin interview has not been a proud achievement for ABC News and Charlie Gibson.

Before the interview segments shown tonight on 20/20, many (or all) of which have already aired, there was an intro piece, a hit piece. I think Barack Obama's campaign reviewed it, if it didn't write it.

I think those in the ABC News division thought long and hard about how much they could get away with, how aggressive they could be without completely looking like members of the Obama campaign.

Throughout the interview, Gibson was hostile and pompous and condescending and snippy. He was unprofessional and not likable.

Palin, on the other hand, was just the opposite. She was the model of controlled strength, poise, grace, and class. She was professional and confident. And yes, she was likable, very likable.

After the interview, the roundtable dissection of the interview with George Stephanopoulos, Torie Clarke, and Dee Dee Myers was really lame.

When does 20/20 air an interview like this and then follow up with this sort of critique on the same program?

Clarke was saying that she was so scripted and people would be turned off. I don't think she looked very scripted at all.

Myers was a little more kind.

I think the discussion was so goofy. It was meant to tell the audience how to respond to the interview.

The message: YOU SHOULD NOT LIKE WHAT YOU SAW.

It was nuts!

I didn't like what I saw from Stephanopoulos, Myers, Clarke, and Gibson.

I think what bothered me most about the way Gibson conducted the interview was his lack of respect for Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee.

I can't stand the lack of respect.

I also can't stand his lies.

From FOX News:

Millions of TV viewers who watched ABC News’ interview with Sarah Palin Thursday night never saw her take issue with a key question in which she was asked if she believes that the U.S. military effort in Iraq is “a task that is from God.”

The exchange between Palin and ABC’s Charlie Gibson, in which she questioned the accuracy of the quote attributed to her, was edited out of the television broadcast but included in official, unedited transcripts posted on ABC’s Web site, as well as in video posted on the Internet.

But in the version shown on television, a video clip of her original statement was inserted in place of her objection, giving a different impression of how Palin views the Iraq war.

In the interview, Gibson asked Palin: “You said recently in your old church, ‘Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.’ Are we fighting a Holy War?”

Palin’s response, which appears in the transcript but was edited out of the televised version, was:

“You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.”

“It’s exact words,” Gibson said.

But Gibson’s quote left out what Palin said before that:

“Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”

The edited televised version included a partial clip of that quote, but not the whole thing.

Gibson’s characterization of Palin’s words prompted a sharp rebuke from the McCain campaign on Thursday.

“Governor Palin’s full statement was VERY different” from the way Gibson characterized it,” read a statement circulated by McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.

“Gibson cut the quote — where she was clearly asking for the church TO PRAY THAT IT IS a task from God, not asserting that it is a task from God.

“Palin’s statement is an incredibly humble statement, a statement that this campaign stands by 100 percent, and a sentiment that any religious American will share,” Bounds wrote.

How sleazy!

How unprofessional!

It's not as bad as the Dan Rather 60 Minutes forged documents smear piece on President Bush in 2004, but it's still bad.

It is malicious, and it is meant to sway the election.

...ABC’s mischaracterization of Palin’s words was not the only one in the media. The Washington Post also did some last-minute clean-up in one of its articles on Palin — a front-page story Friday with the headline “Palin Links Iraq to Sept. 11 in Talk to Troops in Alaska.”

As pointed out by The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, the original version posted online used harsher language than the one that hit Beltway newsstands early Friday morning.

What an embarrassment! The Washington Post was forced to alter its "print version, and the version now appearing on the newspaper’s Web site."

More sleazy journalism.

Allow me to quote Barack Obama: "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH."

And allow me one more quote:

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

--Abraham Lincoln