Government

Sarah Palin's Back In The News, So That Seal Has Been Opened

Her long-dismissed defamation case is back on.

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(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

“And I looked, and behold a Palin horse.”

I confess that I really thought we’d fully banished Sarah Palin to the dustbin of history. The right-wing found fresher and, almost hard to believe, crazier avatars to prattle during cable news hits. Her political career was over and unless she joined her kids in debasing herself for a dancing competition show or something, she would exist only as a tale half-remembered of the time when John McCain self-destructed on a national stage.

But Sarah’s back! Thanks to the Second Circuit, her lawsuit against the New York Times is back on after being dismissed two years ago by Judge Rakoff. Palin sued the Times for defamation for insinuating that when she put up a map with crosshairs on politicians like, for example, Gabby Giffords — who was subsequently shot — that such rhetoric is fueling violence. If that sounds like clearly protected opinion, you’d be right. But the Second Circuit decided we needed to beat this dead horse for a bit longer.

“At bottom, it is plain from the record that the district court found Bennet a credible witness, and that the district court’s crediting his testimony impermissibly anchored the district court’s own negative view of the plausibility of Palin’s allegations,” [Judge John] Walker wrote today.

Essentially, the court determined that at the motion to dismiss stage, Rakoff erred in taking Times editor James Bennet’s testimony into account that the paper edited itself as soon as it appeared that the Giffords shooter wasn’t inspired directly by Palin’s ad copy. It would take an exceptional dullard to read the Times without realizing that the connection between Palin and the shooter that it described had much more to do with increasingly militarizing partisan rhetoric as opposed to some suggestion that Sarah Palin is calling in hits like Mike Corleone, but the Second Circuit determined that exceptional dullards are some of the Times’ most loyal readers:

“We agree with the district court that a reasonable reader could view the challenged statements as factual, namely that Palin, through her political action committee, was directly linked to the Loughner shooting,” the opinion states. “The social media backlash that precipitated the correction further suggests that the Times’ readers perceived the false statements as fact‐based.”

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The stupid… it hurts. This is not a good day for the Times, which is still reeling from its hare-brained decision to headline the paper with “Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism” based on a Maggie Haberman and Michael Crowley story. In defense of the editorial staff, given the authors I’d have assumed that headline would fit to the T.

Anyway, this Second Circuit decision is likely just a speedbump for the Times. Palin faces an uphill battle now that she’s cleared the motion to dismiss stage. Still, we’re going to have to hear about Sarah Palin for longer, which is a sad development for an America with dangerously low stockpiles of Alaska jokes.

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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