As my Executive Assistant often points out to me, when a story lands on your desk that appears too good to be true, it usually is. And what could be more “too good to be true” to the entertainment media than another opportunity to smear Sarah Palin? Case in point, E! Online’s article of March 3rd, “Sarah Palin and Grabby Entourage ‘Like Locusts’ at Oscar Gift Suite” by Ted Casablanca and Whitney English.  The background of the article is that Palin attended a pre-Oscars charity event put on by The Silver Spoon and the Red Cross to support disaster relief efforts in Haiti. E! chose not to properly vet the story and instead unleashed a mocking screed against Sarah Palin loaded with defamatory assertions that require immediate corrections.

The Silver Spoon responded to the misinformation spread by this article and others like it with detailed retraction requests.  Below are statements from E! Online’s article juxtaposed with text from the press release from The Silver Spoon:

E! Online:

We’re told Palin was quite the prima donna and that she insisted the suite be opened two hours early so she could come when no looky-loos would be around.

Silver Spoon:

The governor arrived with a small group about 15 minutes prior to our store’s official opening; and upon arrival, she and her entire group gave generous donations to the cause. We offered to open early to accommodate her schedule; she did not ask us to open early. (more…)

Roger Ebert has been on our radar since we noticed his twitter tirades against Sarah Palin and “teabaggers” last week.  We have identified yet another tweet we would like him to retract:

We have established that we differ on the last sentence, but his claim he did not know that “teabaggers” is a pornographic term until the MSM (mainstream media) told him is provably false.  We know it’s false because in 1998, Prof. Ebert reviewed a film containing this scene (NSFW):

The above clip is from the John Waters’ film “Pecker” starring Edward Furlong.  Not only did Ebert review the film, but he acknowledged the ”tea-bagging” scene in his review.

(more…)

**Update 2/11, 11:54 PM PST: Ebert thus far refusing to retract.**

As Big Hollywood readers know, Roger Ebert’s foray into the political realm via twitter had a major setback this week: articles from Pam Meister and John Nolte prompted him to tweet he would suspend usage of the word “teabagger.” Onward and upward!  Or not…

Two hours ago from the time this post was written, Ebert tweeted:

The link is to an article which was cross-posted at the Huffington Post. Problem is, the Huffington Post version of the article had been previously corrected:

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post misstated the color of a bracelet Sarah Palin wore during a Tea Party appearance. Palin’s bracelet was not black, as was reported by several news outlets, and is not meant to memorialize her son Track Palin, but rather to honor his service, according to Herobracelets.org.

Professor Ebert spread misinformation to impugn Sarah Palin after it had been debunked at, of all sites, the Huffington Post.  We ask him to publicly retract this statement via twitter.

Some of you may follow my work on BigJournalism.com, but for those of you don’t, see here.

“Retracto”

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Credits:

Shelli Eaton- Lead vocals
Michael Broderick – Lead guitar, background vocals
Gary Eaton – Guitar, bass, drums, tambourine, background vocals
Retracto - Vocals
Music and lyrics by Gary Eaton

Retracto

The ass says he doesn’t have a horse in this race
But Retracto knows he does now he’s got egg on his face
The donkeys on the left got owned by a kid
They can say it was a crime but Retracto knows what he did

Retracto
The Correction Alpaca
Retracto
He’s comin’ at ya (more…)