Each year, Time magazine announces its Time 100 -- a list of what it purports to be the world's most influential “leaders, artists, innovators and icons.” These influentials are then profiled in the magazine by other influentials.
Media Matters has already looked at Sarah Palin's send up of fellow Fox Newser Glenn Beck (she couldn't go four words without lying) but it isn't Palin's only foray on the Time 100 this year. Center for American Progress' Eric Alterman looks at Ted Nugent's profile of the former half-term Governor and absolutely destroys the right-wing rocker:
“We know that bureaucrats and, even more, Fedzilla, are not the solution; they are the problem. I'd be proud to share a moose-barbecue campfire with the Palin family anytime, so long as I can shoot the moose.” That's Ted Nugent on Sarah Palin from the current “100 Most Influential People in the World” cover package of Time.
I ask you, dear reader, has any other allegedly reputable magazine ever published a stupider article about a putatively serious subject? Nugent also provides a stirring character reference for the quitter of the Alaska governorship: “The tsunami of support proves that Sarah, 46, represents what many Americans know to be common and sensible. Her rugged individualism, self-reliance and a Herculean work ethic resonate now more than ever in a country spinning away from these basics that made the U.S.A. the last best place. We who are driven to be assets to our families, communities and our beloved country connect with the principles that Sarah Palin embodies.”
This coming from a man who terms Hillary Clinton “a worthless bitch,” believes “Barack Hussein Obama should be put in jail,” and whose credentials in the family values department include once attempting to become the legal guardian of a minor in order to have a romantic relationship with her. He also has been ordered by the courts to pay child support to the mother of his illegitimate son whom he has never met.
I wonder if Time's fact-checkers, aware of Nugent's penchant for threatening innocent people with guns, were afraid to do even rudimentary fact-checking on this brilliant essay. In fact, the “tsunami of support” for Palin Nugent cites is barely a puddle. As David Cay Johnston reports in his Tax Notes column, based on the latest national polls done by reputable survey organizations and taken shortly before the dreaded tax day, fewer than one in four Americans view Palin favorably. Her approval rating of 24 percent does not even reach half the level of the Internal Revenue Service, which earned a 49 percent rating. (The so-called “Tea Party” movement came in somewhere in the middle at 36 percent, while the IRS was statistically tied with President Obama.)
You can find more on Nugent here.
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