I haven’t posted about the Twitter and blog war which broke out over a clip of Mike Tyson trash talking Sarah Palin in very explicit and violent sexual ways, although I did spotlight Dan Riehl’s post about it as Post of the Day.
The controversy is not that a convicted rapist would make such statements, but that The Daily Caller would run the clip with a bold traffic-grabbing headline and keep it there without so much as any commentary (which was not added until later).
I can’t say it was the worst trashing of Palin I’ve ever seen, but it definitely was the worst I’d ever seen at a supposedly conservative website and one which has a high profile. While the post quoted Tyson, it was pure traffic-baiting using sexual violence against Palin as the tease.
There is a huge difference between an article discussing despicable comments about conservative women, and quoting the language in the context of analysis, and what The Daily Caller did.
Dan Riehl drove the issue hard (including one post he has since taken down in which he used some parody to impugn what The Daily Caller had done). And then Greta Van Susteren got involved with a brutal take down of her “friend” Tucker Carlson, who runs The Daily Caller (bold lettering in original):
I really don’t understand my friend Tucker Carlson. He owns the website The Daily Caller and it currently has on its front page the most vile story — referring to a sex act with Governor Sarah Palin as a “womb shifter.” It is even the headline. Do you know what that means? Figure it out It is really vile. It is not just smut…this is violence against women.
Once Greta got involved, the controversy went mainstream, with a post at Politico and a long Memeorandum thread.
Carlson went on Greta’s show last night, and he didn’t do himself any favors:
Carlson tried to call it mere news reporting, but it was pure traffic baiting. Greta saw it for what it was, and Carlson just kept digging.
The damage to The Daily Caller is enormous. It now is the subject of widespread mockery, such as this “Hitler” video from Three Bears Later blog.
This is a disaster compounded by the folks at The Daily Caller digging while in a hole, and digging even harder when people called them out on it, and doubling down on the digging as it went viral.
Can The Daily Caller survive? Should it?
Depends on how much money its investors want to throw at it, because at this point it’s a pretty deep hole they’ve dug.
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