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Liberal Website 'Wonkette' Pulls Reprehensible Post About Trig Palin, Issuing Half-Hearted 'Apology

Liberal Website 'Wonkette' Pulls Reprehensible Post About Trig Palin, Issuing Half-Hearted 'Apology

Sorry for the---satire?

As The Blaze reported yesterday, the liberal website Wonkette commemorated Trig Palin's third birthday on Monday by calling him, among other things, "retarded." Trig, Sarah and Todd Palin's son, has down syndrome.

Here's what Wonkette had to say about Trig on Monday:

That strange man yelling unintelligibly at Sarah Palin? He’s merely a lowly shepherd proclaiming the birth of our savior. Today is the day we come together to celebrate the snowbilly grifter’s magical journey from Texas to Alaska to deliver to the America the great gentleman scholar Trig Palin. Is Palin his true mother? Or was Bristol? (And why is it that nobody questions who the father is? Because, either way, Todd definitely did it.) It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are privileged to live in a time when we can witness the greatest prop in world political history.

Well after pretty much everyone denounced the post as "reprehensible" and "disgraceful"--and after some advertisers bailed on Wonkette--the liberal blog decided to pull the story. And issue an apology.

Life News:

Wonkette editor Ken Layne originally attempted to defend the post but eventually removed Stuef’s byline from it and added an apology that was less of an apology and more of a defense of the post as supposed political satire and attempting to paint a picture of Sarah Palin as someone who uses her son as a political prop.

The Wonkette apology is titled “Rude Post Deleted By Editor; Author Apologizes."

It reads:

A post on this page satirizing Sarah Palin using her baby as a political prop was very badly done and sounded like the author was mocking the child and not just Sarah Palin/Sarah Palin’s followers.

The writer, Jack Stuef, has apologized for it. And we have decided to remove the post as requested by some people who have nothing to do with Sarah Palin, but who do have an interest in the cause of special needs children. We apologize for the poor comedic judgment.

Mediaite's Tommy Christopher, who issued a stern denunciation of the original Wonkette post, does a good job explaining the lead up to the apology in this post. He concludes:

On the subject of Wonkette’s deletion, I am of two minds. [Wonkette editor] Layne’s original decision to leave it up had the benefit of being both journalistically transparent, and a permanent shame-monument.

On the other hand, it also served as a sort of perpetual frag grenade, injuring anew every time it would be viewed. For that reason, I suppose the deletion is a good thing.

What’s not so good is Layne’s description of the post, which may be honest in his own eyes, but is far from accurate. That’s the downside of this approach, but there’s nothing preventing Wonkette from adding a fairer description.

In another post, Christopher details an exchange he had with Wonkette's editor (prior to the Wonkette apology).

I emailed Wonkette Chief Editor Ken Layne to see if he had any comment, or if Wonkette intended to take the post down.

Layne responded thus:

On whose account are you requesting that Jack Stuef remove a post mocking Sarah Palin’s well-documented use of her special needs child as a political prop? Is this coming from Mediaite? Which editor?

Christopher shot back, "I'm not asking THAT you remove it, just if you're going to."

Layne, defiant as ever:

So Mediaite wants you to encourage political satire websites to remove items that offend those who support the targets of the mockery? That seems awfully strange for Mediaite. Which editor is encouraging this, is what I’m asking.

Read Christopher's response to this here.

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