Holiday Weekends Require Attention-Grabbing News Releases
Sarah Palin responded — without mentioning the article by name — to the overwhelmingly negative Vanity Fair article by Michael Joseph Gross detailing the former vice presidential candidate’s background and current life. On Sept. 2, she said:
“I don’t read some of it because I know that those who are impotent and limp and gutless, and then they go on, they’re anonymous, they’re sources that are anonymous, and impotent, limp, and gutless reporters take anonymous sources and cite them as being factual references. … [I]t just slays me because it’s so absolutely clear what the state of yellow journalism is today that they would take these anonymous sources as fact. So when a story especially is filled with those and we know it’s bogus, and we’re not going to read it.”
Advocate.com editors — the piece has no named byline — took umbrage at Palin’s comments, writing:
Is Sarah Palin using code words to slam gay journalist Michael Joseph Gross, a frequent Advocate contributor who wrote the much-buzzed-about profile of the former vice presidential nominee in this month’s Vanity Fair?
Palin didn’t mention Gross by name while talking Thursday on Sean Hannity’s WABC radio show, but she seemed to be referring to the article — and pointedly used emasculating words that have long been used as euphemisms for homosexuality — when she called reporters who publish “rumors” about her “impotent,” “limp,” and “gutless.”
The Advocate.com piece, however, prompted its own response, with GOProud board chairman Chris Barron issuing a statement today:
“It is The Advocate, not Sarah Palin, who is guilty of ‘gay-baiting.’ I don’t think most people associate the words ‘impotent,’ ‘limp,’ or ‘gutless’ with being gay – I know I certainly don’t. If the folks at The Advocate think these words are euphemisms for being gay or lesbian then I think that speaks volumes about their own internalized homophobia.
“Governor Palin was absolutely right to use the words she chose to describe the pathetic hatchet job penned by Mr. Gross.”
Regardless of who’s right, score one for GOProud for finding a way to get people talking on a Friday before a long weekend about words and what they mean.
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