About Sarah’s Latest Post (Updated)
It seems that there are many people flying off the handle and accusing Sarah of being a racist for using the term “shuck and jive” in a recent Facebook post. For the record, we’ve heard that term most of our lives and to us it always referred to someone who was skirting the truth. There was never an inkling of racism in it when we used it. We also used the term “juke and jive” when we talked about faking someone out on the basketball court or the football field. Is that racist, too? The origins of many American expressions may be dubious, but that doesn’t imply that people using them today have the same intent. I think the media demonstrates their hypocrisy on this issue when you look at the way they handled Jay Carney saying the same thing (total silence) on a national stage.
(If you cannot view video, visit the article where RealClearPolitics.com posted it September 7th of last year.)
Sarah’s original post:
As I mentioned on “On the Record” last night, there is breaking news that just two hours after the September 11th attacks on our consulate in Benghazi, the White House and State Department knew that an Islamic terrorist group with ties to al Qaeda claimed credit for the attack. We now know that the State Department sent an email to the White House, the Pentagon, the FBI and others in the intelligence community about this Islamist group claiming responsibility. And yet for days afterwards the White House and State Department led everyone to believe that the attack was the result of a spontaneous protest over an obscure YouTube video that had been uploaded months prior. Anywhere from 300 to 400 people from the administration and our intelligence community would have seen that email. Why the lies? Why the cover up? Why the dissembling about the cause of the murder of our ambassador on the anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil? We deserve answers to this. President Obama’s shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end.
- Sarah Palin
(Update) Sarah responds tonight:
For the record, there was nothing remotely racist in my use of the phrase “shuck and jive” – a phrase which many people have used, including Chris Matthews, Andrew Cuomo, and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney to name a few off the top of my head. In fact, Andrew Cuomo also used the phrase in reference to Barack Obama, and the fact that Mr. Cuomo and I used the phrase in relation to President Obama signifies nothing out of the ordinary. I would have used the exact same expression if I had been writing about President Carter, whose foreign policy rivaled Obama’s in its ineptitude, or about the Nixon administration, which was also famously rocked by a cover-up.
I’ve been known to use the phrase most often when chastising my daughter Piper to stop procrastinating and do her homework. As she is part Yup’ik Eskimo, I’m not sure if this term would be deemed offensive when it’s directed at her or if it would be considered benign as in the case of Chris Matthews’ use of it in reference to Rachel Maddow. Just to be careful, from now on I’ll avoid using it with Piper, and I would appreciate it if the media refrained from using words and phrases like igloo, Eskimo Pie, and “when hell freezes over,” as they might be considered offensive by my extended Alaska Native family.
The outrageously outraged reaction to this expression from perennial hypocrites like Chris Matthews has only made me laugh. Mr. Matthews, let me share with you my favorite Irish toast: “May we always be happy, and may our enemies always know it.”
- Sarah Palin
And she tweets:
Looks like Chris Matthews is a racist. is.gd/FUwbA8
— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) October 25, 2012
Looks like Andrew Cuomo is also a racist. is.gd/FUwbA8
— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) October 25, 2012
Uh oh. Looks like Jay Carney is a racist too. is.gd/WZDOB7
— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) October 25, 2012
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