Health Care BS

In its coverage of the phony troopergate “investigation,” the MSM issued a collective yawn about Michael Wooten’s propensity to taser 10-year-olds. It appeared that, for the media,  child abuse was “not an important failure,” as the poet Auden might have put it.

Now, however, the media are suddenly outraged by some new “child abuse” they have discovered relating to “troopergate.” Newsweek, in its unending quest to dig up dirt on Sarah Palin, rummaged through her sister’s divorce papers and found this:

An Anchorage judge three years ago warned Sarah Palin and members of her family to stop “disparaging” the reputation of Alaska State Trooper Michael Wooten, who at the time was undergoing a bitter separation and divorce from Palin’s sister Molly.

This “judge” went on to make the following idiotic assertion:

‘Disparaging will not be tolerated—it is a form of child abuse,’ the judge told a settlement hearing in October 2005.

So, having virtually ignored actual child abuse by Trooper Wooten, abuse that got him suspended from the state police force, the MSM and nutroots have taken this judge’s brainless statement and splashed it all over the internet.

I did a Google experiment this morning: First, I searched on Wooten AND taser. This produced a paltry 25,700 hits. Then, I searched on Palin AND judge. This produced more than 3.6 million hits.

Anyone see a pattern here? The folks at Factcheck.org certainly do. Here’s a post at Hot Air about Brooks Jackson’s take on the ongoing smear campaign. The MSM is now indistinguishable from the nutroots and the tabloids.

UPDATE I:

While Newsweek and other “news” outlets express grave concern that Gov. Palin would “disparage” Michael Wooten, some bloggers have actually looked into the scary behavior of this paragon of virtue. Beldar provides some pretty disturbing information on this Wooten character.

UPDATE II:

Meanwhile, as if to prove that the outrageous bias described above is all we can expect from the MSM, ABC shows its appreciation for the exclusive Palin interview by taking her quotes out of context and getting basic facts wrong. Michelle Malkin asks why we should watch the rest of Charlie Gibson’s hatchet job.

Why indeed.