September 26th 2008
Media Bias #74
Those Rat-Killing Palin-Parents
It’s bad enough that Sarah Palin hangs out of airplanes shooting poor, innocent moose* – but now this:
Palin’s Parents: Retirees, Part-Time Rat Killers
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – More than six years before Sarah Palin visited ground zero as the Republican vice presidential nominee, her parents were there as part of the response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks—trapping rats.
Chuck and Sally Heath have been part-time U.S. Department of Agriculture wildlife specialists for the past 15 years, traveling throughout Alaska trapping or killing animals. They’ve eradicated rat infestations, shooed geese from runways and killed foxes that were keeping threatened Canada geese from nesting.
In January 2002, they went to New York City for a two-week assignment that fit their specialty. Their job was to make sure birds and rats did not disturb the debris from the collapsed World Trade Center towers that was being searched by forensic teams for human remains in Staten Island’s Fresh Kills landfill.
They used snap-traps to catch mice and rats and pyrotechnics to scare off the gulls. If the birds persisted, the couple shot them as a last resort, Chuck Heath told The Associated Press on Thursday.
“Rat-killers?” They had to put “rat-killers” into the headline? I can’t think of a more deliberate way to make the Palin-parents seem like odd, way out of the mainstream and more than a little vicious individuals. It’s certainly not a headline that would make the Heaths or their daughter appeal to the animal rights set – yeah, yeah, that’s not exactly a demographic the McCain/Palin ticket is wooing, but still.
I can’t help but think that if it were Joe Biden’s parents who were killing rats making the WTC site safe, the headline would have read:
Biden’s Parents Braved Rats to Help with 9/11 Recovery
* No she didn’t.
hat-tip: Jim
Media Bias 2008 covers pro-Obama media bias in the presidential campaign. Items are listed from most recent to oldest; the numbering reflects this and is not a ranking. Send Media Bias 2008 examples via “comments”‘ below, or to email2laer [@] yahoo [dot] com.
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