WASHINGTON – Tea Party crusader Sarah Palin accepted MSNBC host Martin Bashir’s apology Sunday for saying someone should defecate in her mouth – but didn’t forgive the network that let him get away with it.
“Who am I to not accept an apology,” Palin said on “Fox News Sunday,” while also denouncing his “vile, evil comments.”
Bashir last week attacked Palin for comparing US debt to slavery, saying she should get the same torture meted out by slave owner Thomas Thistlewood, who would have one slave crap in the mouth of another.
He apologized on the air Friday, but MSNBC did not discipline him.
“As for … the networks condoning those types of statements, because there’s been no punishment of the fella who said these words, that’s hypocrisy,” said Palin, a former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee.
She said the media elite routinely “pooh-pooh it, laugh it off, it’s no big deal” when the target is a conservative woman.
But she said that she is used to “taking shots.”
“In a case like this, I don’t have to accept his words, his vile, evil comments. So they don’t have to affect me. I move on. And I charge forth,” said Palin.
“However, if Mr. Bashir or anybody else in this media elite bubble that they put themselves in were to attack someone who is defenseless, like a vulnerable child, who does not have that podium, that microphone that God has blessed me to be able to express my opinion … well, if you want to see a mama grizzly get riled up and slap that person down, then you come after a vulnerable child,” she said.