CNN's Carol Costello: Hyuck Hyuck, It's So Funny Listening to This Audio Where Bristol Palin Describes Being Assaulted by a Man

Young girl gets beaten by man, and this is comedy fodder for our #WarOnWomen-propagating media?

"Anyone who is concerned about a 'war on women' -- but not disturbed by this report — is clearly biased," [columnist Matt] Lewis wrote.

Enter CNN anchor Carol Costello.

"I never wanted to become the poster child for anything, let alone domestic violence. But my blood is boiling, so when I say shut up, I'm venting at all those people out there who insist on blaming the victim," Costello wrote with righteous fury directed at the National Football League (and the morning show Fox & Friends) over what she considered an insufficient level of concern for an incident involving Ray Rice striking his fiance.

Costello goes on to reveal that she, too, was the victim of what sounds like a horrible assault while by her college boyfriend. It was a brave thing for her to admit, and it made her commentary on the lax treatment Rice received from the NFL that much more powerful. But this admission also branded her take on the Palin assault as one which is inexplicably hypocritical.

"Sit back and enjoy!" Costello exclaimed as she introduced her audience recently to the audio in which Bristol Palin recounts how she was attacked. "You'll want to hear what she told cops about how it all started."

Indeed. Twitchy rounds up reactions, including this one by John Nolte:

Charles Cooke wrote a great post about this yesterday. Note that he begins by explaining the reasons he doesn't like Sarah Palin as a politician, as a manner of establishing his bona fides; that is, noting that he has no love of Palin, but still sees this treatment as untoward and inexcusable.

That notwithstanding, there is a material difference between one’s personal view of a person and the manner in which one wishes to see them treated, and I think we all have a responsibility to understand where that line is. All in all, I can think of few people in public life who have been as disgracefully hounded as has Palin; and nor, for that matter, can I recall a single figure in the past decade who has been subjected to self-serving double standards by the press and by elite culture writ large. It is six years since the woman ran for public office and more than five years since she enjoyed any real influence at all, and yet she is still held up by her many enemies as the standard bearer for all that ails the country. It really is no overstatement to say that, since she first came onto the scene in 2008, the self-appointed smart-set has treated Palin as a walking, talking source of confirmation bias -- part totem for the much-despised people of "flyover country"; part boogeyman of a never-quite-appearing theocratic coup; part Barbiefied pinata, to whom none of the usual rules apply.

Here, progressive hypocrisy has been utterly breathtaking. Day in and day out, the more trigger-happy feminists within America's media circus are moved to pen extravagant disquisitions on the nature of sexual inequality if and when a man they dislike so much as looks at them askew. Elsewhere, wholly substantive criticisms of Elizabeth Warren or Hillary Clinton are held up as shining examples of deeply embedded sexism within the United States, and of the subtle, sometimes invisible role that "hatred of women" plays within the country’s political culture. To take potshots at clownish figures such as Lena Dunham, we have learned, is to invite indignant death threats. And yet, when a veritable legion of male comedians elects to use foul, carnal, and, yes, "gendered" language to dismiss Palin and her family, our contemporary Boudiceas shrug at best and offer endorsements at worst. Sarah Palin, as the abominable bumper sticker has it, "isn't a woman, she's a Republican."

He also wonders why the press isn't also chuckling about Hunter Biden's cocaine problem.

posted by Ace at 11:34 AM

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