ABC’s Nightline threw a gratuitous punch at Sarah Palin in a story that had nothing to do with politics, either left or right. Rather, it was an investigation of violence into kids’ little league sports and the regrettable, all too common, angry attitudes of coaches and parents.
For the late night news show, ABC’s David Wright showed the audience videos of coaches encouraging kids to hit opposing teams in the head. He then showed a clip of the Will Ferrell kids’ sports comedy, Kicking and Screaming, then oddly segued to a clip of Sarah Palin.
Referring to the film of a coach screaming at his players, Wright talked about that “full-throated passion, part of the culture of sports in this country–lampooned in movies like Kicking and Screaming and celebrated by the original hockey mom herself, Sarah Palin, in 2008.”
The Palin clip Wright showed was that of the then-vice presidential candidate telling the 2008 GOP convention that the “difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull [is] lipstick.”
But this impromptu Palin quip delivered at the Republican National Convention had nothing at all to do with encouraging kids to be violent in little league sports! It was a celebration of determined motherhood, not a call for minors to engage in violence in competitive sports. It was also no “celebration” of adults treating kids badly in locker rooms.
This isn’t the only time that Wright has taken such a gratuitous swipe at Palin in what is supposed to be a news story. As Newsbusters reminds us, he did it again in a story on the 50th anniversary of the Barbie doll. Invoking the jibe that Palin is a Republican Barbie doll, Wright joked that Barbie once even “ran for vice president.”