Just a reminder that I'll be on the Joy Behar show on HLN tonight after Levi Johnston at 9 pm. Johnston, his aide, Tank Jones, and I had a fascinating chat in the green room. It was all off the record but I hope at some point to be able to interview Johnston on the record as a way to get some first-hand fact-checks on the Palin book and public statements.
As I say on Behar, this really isn't about Palin. Or about Johnston.
It's about our democracy's apparent lack of interest any more in what is true and what is false. It's about the mainstream media's willful decision not to tackle a story that was integral to a major candidate's core integrity; it's about the Republican party elite's cynicism and condescension to millions of voters; it's about the decision of Harper Collins, Adam Bellow and Jonathan Burnham to publish a book so riddled with untruth without even a gesture toward ensuring its accuracy; and it's about the recklessness of John McCain, a man hollowed out by careerism and cynicism, selling out every scruple or principle he may have had to make his way in the modern GOP; and it's about the power of fundamentalist religion to blind everyone to the banal but vital details of secular politics.
In other words, it's about the core reasons this country has gone off the rails these past few years. That matters to the Daily Dish. If it doesn't matter to you, or if you think it involves details that really should not be aired in public, then take your blame to McCain, not me. Because he didn't do his job, I'm doing mine.