PrintOctober 1, 2008
The Lie that will not Die
The blinders that liberals in the media put on when it comes to Republican candidates is appalling. The Boston Globe runs an editorial headlines: "Wasilla made rape victims pay:"
ONE QUESTION that Sarah Palin should answer during tomorrow's debate is why, during her tenure as mayor of Wasilla, the town started charging rape victims or their insurers for hospital emergency-room rape kits and examinations.
The policy so outraged the Alaska Legislature that in 2000 it passed unanimously a bill forbidding such fees. But Palin has never explained why, under her leadership, the town stopped picking up the cost of the swabs, specimen containers, and tests.
A spokeswoman for Palin wrote to USA Today that Palin "does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test." But that was the practice in Wasilla while she was mayor.
Then compounds the problem by rhetorically asking :
Generally, victims of sexual assault have the option of an emergency contraception pill, which some opponents of abortion consider tantamount to abortion itself. Does Palin support the decision two years ago of the US Food and Drug Administration to allow over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception pills?
This type of tactic-posing leading questions, pregnant with an allegation-is the editorial equivalent of the reviled tactic known as "push polling:. For greater reasons still, it should be condemned when practiced by professional journalists.
There is no record of a victim being charged for a rape kit.
This whole issue is a fabric of lies and deceptions based on negligence regarding the drafting of laws rather than a policy practiced by Wasilla or by Sarah Palin.
Palin addressed the matter weeks ago, releasing a statement that she ‘does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test.' "
As Rachel Larimore wrote in Slate:
But the fact remains that this is a nasty and untrue rumor about Sarah Palin that's been circulating for weeks. If you're an Obama supporter who gets frustrated that people still believe he's Muslim or won't put his hand on his heart for the Pledge of Allegiance, you should understand the frustration that Palin supporters feel when this slime is taken at face value.
The fact that this lie would be perpetrated by a major American newspaper-it was also revived just a few days ago in the New York Times, the Globe's sister newspaper-is revealing about the agenda at work among some of the powers that be in American media.
