More messy aisle cleanups regarding the Crazy Woman today. In chronological order, they played out this way:Early morning: Alaska blogger Jesse Griffin and reporter-videographer Dennis Zaki drove from Anchorage to north Wasilla, to cover the book signing of the pathetic and outrageous collection of lies penned under Sarah Palin's name, titled Going Rogue, being held at the Curtis Menard Sports Complex and Community Center. When they got there, they were refused entry, because it was a private event and the security personnel claimed they were concerned for Griffin's and Zaki's safety.
Late Morning: Andree McLeod's lawsuit, seeking release of emails that the CW and parts of her retinue possibly illegally sent and received on private accounts before she quit her public job to get more involved in "private events" began. Although KTUU-TV was there, and ran coverage of the opening arguments on Tuesday's broadcast news, they haven't yet posted a story on their web site.
Tuesday Evening: The Anchorage Daily News, in their story on the Wasilla book signing, as they added new material on the banning of Griffin and Zaki, cut off comments to their article on this, and disappeared earlier ones. It is the only story featured on the ADN page web edition that currently offers no comment opportunity. No explanation has been provided.
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Today's overall coverage of Palin is just the latest example of how willingly much of Alaska media merrily continues to go along with enabling this flaky, narcisistic, destructive, dangerous personality, as they so selfishly continue to indulge a fetish that brings them cherished web hits. The ADN article on the Wasilla Sports Complex banning incident, though it permits no comments, seems to be overly incurious, to say the least. And the article links - as always - to the ADN Palin Shrine.
At least the ADN Palin shrine no longer always appears directly under the ADN masthead. The week Bob Poe filed as a Democratic Party candidate for Governor, Progressive Alaska requested that they remove it from the front page, and the ADN complied.
I suppose that, among other things, my friends and colleagues Griffin and Zaki (apparently other progressive Alaskan bloggers - along with their web-based color photos are on the list) were banned for:
Observing that a couple of weeks ago, on a national venue, the CW stated that she has provided a public copy of her youngest child's birth certificate. It was a bald-faced, brazen lie. We covered it, the Alaska media ignored it.
Observing that Palin has, for the past 14 months, reached out almost fervently to the darkest recesses of the basest base of the GOP, through sometimes coded, sometimes over-the-top imagery, and got an ugly response that endangers our president and our Republic. We covered it, the Alaska media ignored it.
Observing that, by instead of going to Western Alaska last winter as our chief executive, the CW chose to instead go there in company with a televangelist who seeks to destroy our Alaska Natives' heritage through surrender to a creed that makes that heritage and its 10,000 years of development meaningless. We covered it, the Alaska media ignored it.
Observing that Palin, by choosing the awful Wayne Anthony Ross to succeed the worst Attorney General in Alaska history, Talis Colberg, had made an historically inappopriate decision. Not only had Ross left a HUGE trail of racist bullshit behind that the ADN and other media sources might have easily pulled up from their own archives, he was more universally reviled by Alaska's Native community than any cabinet nominee in our state's history. We covered it, the Alaska media largely ignored it.
I could continue this list for several more pages, but I am just too fucking sick and tired of wasting time and electrons on Palin. I have been for months.
Will the Anchorage media find out who else was banned? I doubt it.
Will they ever openly admit to their readers that the CW quit because the questions citizen activists like Andree McLeod and Linda Kellen, and Alaska's other progressive bloggers asked about Palin's legal defense fund and book contract forced that resignation? I doubt it.
I've been writing this post for 90 minutes. The ADN comments are still shut off on this story, and this story only.
Why?
Updated - Wednesday - 10:00 a.m: The ADN finally has begun allowing comments, beginning at 9:54 a.m. Alaska time. The influential national blog, Talking Points Memo, is leading with this story.
Updated - Wednesday - 1:30 p.m: ADN Editor Pat Dougherty has provided his version of an explanation on why they arbitrarily turned the comments off on the Wasilla book-signing story:
Readers:
Some of you have asked why comments on this story were turned off. The answer is that because of a defective update of the Pluck commenting software, we have been unable to delete comments anywhere on adn.com since last weekend. And because commenters on Palin stories are unusually prone to violating our commenting guidelines, we were not willing to host those comments without the ability to moderate them. The software was fixed this morning and we can once again moderate comments. You can find a more discussion of our handling of comments on Palin stories on the Editor's Blog.
Pat Dougherty
Here's a link to the discussion at the ADN Editor's Blog.
Once again, Dougherty is treating Palin as some sort of special case. If one goes back through articles at the ADN regarding the actions of citizen activists like Andree McLeod or Linda Kellen Biegel, there are hundreds of instances of commenters "unusually prone to violating our commenting guidelines." These comments weren't moderated,or at least they don't appear to have been. Yesterday and today, for instance, commenters at Richard Mauer's short article about Andree McLeod's Tuesday court appearance have been quite rude and crude toward Andree.