Opine, Baby, Opine!!: Palin Picks Up A Pen

Thank you, Sarah Palin, for choosing to make your debut as a would-be public policy wonk this week (and thanks to the WaPo for your continued foolhardiness). We couldn’t have engineered a more auspicious launching pad for The Faster Time’s Media Analysis section, which will devote itself to the sacred pseudo-science of examining national affairs through the lens of print/online media assessment (while occasionally dipping a toe into broadcast news and the odd international fiasco).

In case you missed it, yesterday morning’s Washington Post carried Sarah Palin’s first post-retirement announcement salvo: An Op-Ed attacking Obama’s cap-and-trade plan, presumably pegged to the House bill to reduce carbon monoxide emissions.

Twenty-four hours after its publication the piece still reads like her “drill, baby, drill!” mantra writ large–in this case, a 700-word rant laden with platitudes (“we must move in a new direction”) but light on hard data or science. Indeed, as The Atlantic points out, she didn’t seem to find it necessary to “include the words pollution, emissions, carbon, or global warming” in a piece on climate change.

Palin, who took a swipe at the “chattering class,” had to expect the onslaught her jaunty debut as a chatterer is inspiring. She’s an easy target in the best of cases. Delving into a complex subject that continues to befuddle the best minds in science and economics didn’t help her cause. Herewith, our curated round-up of some of the more interesting criticism:

-Conner Clarke at The Daily Dish goes to great, chart-laden pains to correct what he feels is “an ignorance for the subject so profound it’s almost gutsy.”

-The greenies at Grist take a similar (though angrier tack), pointing out some of the glaring ironies in the piece.  To wit: “The Post has published an op-ed on climate change legislation by the governor of the state that is currently the most battered by climate change, without any discussion of climate change or its impacts on that state.”

-TNR’s Jonathan Chait has some fun over at The Plank, comparing the writing to that of a ninth-grade composition.

-And, as Michael Calderone notes, Move On is so flummoxed by this “marvel of misinformation” that they’re using it as a catalyst for fundraising.  USN&WR picked up/expanded on this part of the story today.

N.B.: In an effort at balance we looked for but didn’t find any well-reasoned defense of Palin’s piece at either The National Review or The Weekly Standard, though the excitable boys over at NewsBusters found Sarah’s take just peachy…