Matthews & Olbermann Deny Media Doubted Palin's Maternal Fitness

It seems even the hyper partisan Olbermann and Matthews are trying to pretend that the drive-bys were not trying to drive Palin off the Republican ticket by any means. One of these was to say that her position as a mother made her unqualified to be Vice President.

Newsbusters takes them up on their lie.

Matthews and Olbermann, spurred on by criticism from Hawaii's Republican governor Linda Lingle at around 8:09pm [EDT] during MSNBC's live coverage of Thursday night's (September 4) Republican convention, threw down the following gauntlet:

KEITH OLBERMANN: Alright Andrea thank you. Thank you Governor. It would, I'd love the governor or anybody else repeating those talking points to give us the names of those news organizations that have actually questioned whether or not mothers have a right to sit in office. But we haven't heard that list yet.

...

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well I have to agree. I sit here waiting for that list of major news organizations who have questioned her motherhood or her right to become Vice President, given her motherhood. I don't think it has ever happened. But of course it's become the talking point for all the spokesmen.


Matthews and Olbermann's NBC colleague David Gregory made a similar claim on Wednesday's "Today" show.

Well for Matthews, Olbermann and Gregory's information, the following is "a list of major news organizations," that have, in fact, questioned Palin's maternal abilities:

"There's also this issue that on April 18th, she [Palin] gave birth to a baby with Down's Syndrome....Children with Down's syndrome require an awful lot of attention. The role of Vice President, it seems to me, would take up an awful lot of her time, and it raises the issue of how much time will she have to dedicate to her newborn child?"
–CNN's John Roberts on the August 29th, "Newsroom"


"Adding to the brutality of a national campaign, the Palin family also has an infant with special needs. What leads you, the Senator, and the Governor to believe that one won't affect the other in the next couple of months?...She has an infant -- she has an infant with special needs. Will that affect her campaigning?"

-ABC's Bill Weir on "Good Morning America," August 30.


"Is she prepared for the all-consuming nature of the job?...Her first priority has to be her children. When the phone rings at three in the morning and one of her children is really sick what choice will she make?"

-Washington Post's Sally Quinn, in an August 29, online column.

Faking lapses of memory in the age of the Internet doesn't work any more.