Martin Bashir

We are living in a very duplicitous society.  One in which some things are punished and others aren't.

Alec Baldwin was recently taken off the air for two weeks by MSNBC for using a gay slur.

But, nothing has really happened to Martin Bashir for what he has said about Sarah Palin.  He gave a sneery-lipped, wooden apology.  It was an apology that I wouldn't have accepted from my own child.  She would have gone back to her room until some real remorse showed up.

That's ok, though, right?  Liberals HATE Sarah Palin.  She is the poster child for the American Dream!  She is a hard-working, successful career woman with both a family and a great job.  Liberals want that for all women, right?  Who is having that war on women again?

Let me be clear about what Bashir said, the clips have been played a lot and I am going to say it once, once, because that is absolutely enough.  Some media outlets aren't playing the entire quote.  Either it is illegal by the FCC to re-play it or they are just too polite.  So, they aren't playing the exact words, just paraphrasing.  I wanted to know exactly what he said (and for that I am truly sorry).  Here we go...

Sarah Palin, in a speech, said that we are all becoming slaves to the government.  And, we are.  We are less and less free, each time Obama picks up a pen.  Slaves throughout history haven't been slaves based on race.  That is brand new, only in the past 200 years did people enslave based on race.

For over 3,000 years, people have been enslaved for their religion, political ideology and ancestry.  In the middle east (it has been around a while) everyone was kinda brown-ish and people were slaves anyway.

Her comment had nothing to do with race.  Slavery really hasn't always been about race, it has been about those other things.  OK?  We are currently becoming more and more enslaved to our tyrannical government.

Martin Bashir, then, with nostrils flaring said that Palin should be subjected to a slavery-like punishment:

"Given her well-established reputation as a world class idiot, it’s hardly surprising that [Palin] should choose to mention slavery in a way that is abominable to anyone who knows anything about its barbaric history.
So here’s an example. One of the most comprehensive first-person accounts of slavery comes from the personal diary of a man called Thomas Thistlewood, who kept copious notes for 39 years. Thistlewood was the son of a tenant farmer, who arrived on the island of Jamaica in April 1750, and assumed the position of overseer at a major plantation. What is most shocking about Thistlewood’s diary is not simply the fact that he assumes the right to own and possess other human beings, but is the sheer cruelty and brutality of his regime. In 1756, he records that a slave named Darby ‘catched eating kanes; had him well flogged and pickled, then made Hector, another slave, s-h-i-t in his mouth.’ This became known as ‘Darby’s Dose,’ a punishment invented by Thistlewood that spoke only of... inhumanity. And he mentions a similar incident in 1756, his time in relation to a man he refers to as Punch. ‘Flogged Punch well, and then washed and rubbed salt pickle, lime juice and bird pepper. Made Negro Joe piss in his eyes and mouth'. I could go on, but you get the point.
When Mrs. Palin invokes slavery, she doesn’t just prove her rank ignorance. She confirms if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, she would be the outstanding candidate."

OK, all I am saying is - if a conservative commentator on any network, anywhere, no matter who they were and who they worked for said that, or something like that - would be fired.  Fired, period.

Were is the liberal outrage?  Were is the righteous indignation?

This is a shining example of our duplicitous society.  There is nothing else to say.