Fox News employee Sarah Palin has a long history of complaining she's being victimized by what she likes to call the "lamestream media." This weekend, however, Palin reportedly set a new record in this department, attacking a Daily Caller reporter for a headline that he didn't write.

Here's what happened. Alex Pappas of The Daily Caller -- a conservative news site run by Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson -- wrote a story on August 12 about Palin's appearance at the Iowa State Fair. At one point, Pappas asked Palin about the 2012 GOP contenders, quoting her as saying: “Could I support somebody like Mitt Romney? Yeah. ... I'm of the mind of ABO -- Anybody But Obama, at this time.”

Things took a bizarre turn after Fox Nation, Fox's news aggregator, reposted Pappas' story with a headline of its own (which has since been taken down) that implied Palin is endorsing Romney. As Quin Hilyer of the conservative American Spectator -- a sometime defender of Palin himself -- explained, this did not go over well with Palin:

Fox Nation picked up the story and, in its own headline (not Pappas', not the Daily Caller's, but its own headline completely apart from anything Pappas ever wrote) played up the “Romney endorse” angle in a way that apparently did not make it clear that the endorsement might be in the general election, rather than the primary campaign. (The headline is no longer available at Fox Nation, so I can't say exactly what the wording was.)

Anyway, the Palin team pounced. Specifically inviting over reporter Kasie Hunt from Politico so she could hear the exchange, Palin called Pappas' cell phone and began berating him in a very scolding manner for writing a headline suggesting she supports Romney. Pappas didn't even know what she was talking about. When he tried to say that neither he nor his editors had written such a headline, she said she didn't have time for this, that she needed to go back to the “real people” at the State Fair, and hung up on him.

A Google preview of an earlier version of the Fox Nation post shows that the headline was simply a direct quote from Palin herself:

What did Palin say to Pappas? Since she insisted on having a Politico reporter stand next to her as she made the call, Palin's comments were recorded:

“So you're saying that I said that I support Mitt Romney?” she said to the reporter. “And what's your headline? You need to be clear, otherwise people really lose faith in the state of journalists today and that is, I said 'ABO'--anybody but Obama. And I would support the candidate who surfaces to take on Barack Obama. But no, your headline leads readers to believe that I'm supporting Mitt Romney at this time in this process, and no that's not accurate.”

Later, it became clear to Palin that Fox Nation, not Pappas, had written the headline -- but as Hilyer writes:

[A] Palin press aide called Pappas back not to apologize but to say that they now realized it was Fox and that the headline had been taken down. “No,” Pappas said, far more bemused than angry or upset, “he didn't come close to apologizing.”

So, to review, Palin told a reporter she “could ... support somebody like Mitt Romney”; a news aggregator, run by her own employer, ran the story under its own headline suggesting she was endorsing Romney; Palin called the baffled reporter and lambasted him for a headline he didn't write; and then she refused to apologize after being told about her mistake.

Hilyer summarizes it best: “If Palin wants to get rid of the image of being a difficult diva with a rude streak, she needs to stop acting like a difficult diva with a rude streak.”