Palin And Lauer

More inconsistencies and weirdness about the $150,000 clothing allowance, then this:

LAUER: What was the biggest misconception that you would have loved to have corrected at the time?

S. PALIN: It started off with the rumors, the speculation, even in mainstream media, that Trig wasn’t actually my child, that Trig was somebody else’s child and I faked a pregnancy. That was absolutely ridiculous. And it took days for that false allegation (inaudible) be corrected.

And then rumors right off the bat, too, that, you know, I was some -- some wacko. That as city manager I tried to ban the books in our local library, and they listed the books that supposedly I tried to ban, books like “Harry Potter” that hadn’t even been written when I was the mayor and the manager. And things like that, that so easily could have been corrected if -- if reporters would have done their job.

For the record, some Harry Potter books had been written when she was mayor and manager. This is not open to factual dispute (why did Lauer not correct her?). And the "false allegation" of the "fake pregnancy" was never corrected within "days."

In fact, three days after her candidacy was announced, former Bill Kristol employee, Michael Goldfarb was prolonging the agony:

In an unguarded moment last night, McCain Report blogger Michael Goldfarb replied to my question of whether there's any truth to the rumor that Sarah Palin's Down Syndrome child is actually her daughter's with the following less-than-confidence-inspiring comment: "Well, I don't...think so."

The next day, the Palins put out a statement saying that their daughter, Bristol, was around five months pregnant (which means she is eight months pregnant now and due next month). There was no actual refutation of the rumor from the McCain-Palin campaign until the same Michael Goldfarb told Howie Kurtz of the Washington Post the following on September 25, weeks, not days, after the questions first came up:

"These rumors are false. It is her baby. The whole thing is absurd. All of this rests on the fact that she wore her pregnancy extremely well. A couple of months later, there are a ton of pictures showing she is obviously pregnant. It's ridiculous. There's just nothing to it. We're not going to release her gynecological records to prove it. It's just madness."

And no such records were ever produced. The question is still open in reality, if not in Palin's own head, and could easily be resolved instantly, if Sarah Palin wanted it to be. But she refuses to end this ridiculous controversy by releasing actual records of her pregnancy, for reasons that remain unclear. When the reporters ask her questions in Florida, will any of them have the balls to ask her for records? Or are they going to be as pathetic as Lauer?

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