Sarah Palin visits Haiti under tight guard
By JONATHAN M. KATZ
The Associated Press
Saturday, December 11, 2010; 8:39 PM
“PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin began a tightly stage-managed visit to Haiti on Saturday in which she visited cholera clinics while avoiding crowds and the press.
The 2008 vice presidential candidate was a guest of Rev. Franklin Graham, whose aid group works in the impoverished country. Haiti is facing a brutal cholera epidemic while struggling with an electoral crisis and reconstruction from the January earthquake.
Palin, who traveled in part by helicopter, provided access on her tour solely to the U.S. cable network Fox News.
Graham's organization, Samaritan's Purse, refused to discuss Palin's itinerary with other media and asked Haitian and American reporters to leave its compounds, citing a "security lockdown."
"I've really enjoyed meeting this community. They are so full of joy," Palin was quoted as saying on the organization's website. "We are so fortunate in America, and we are responsible for helping those less fortunate..."
“Associated Press television journalists saw Palin talking with foreign aid workers. She wore cargo pants, a T-shirt and designer sunglasses on her first trip outside the United States since speaking to investors in Hong Kong last year. That speech was also closed to the media.
Samaritan's Purse posted pictures online of Palin touring a post-quake shelter, touching the hand of a Haitian child and laughing with Graham and Fox News host Greta van Susteren. “
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/11/AR2010121101658.html
Cassi Creek:
Just what Haiti needs these days - visitation by politicians and missionaries trying to use the homeless, starving, and dying for political advantage.
I seriously doubt that anyone in Haiti knows or cares who Palin is. Her expenses for this little junket would have been far better spent providing rehydration medications for people with cholera than in flying her, Graham, Van Sustern, and assorted body guards and lackeys to, around, and from Haiti.
Palin had herself photographed touching a Haitian child's hand! How very brave of her. Was she also photographed afterward as she was having her hand surgically scrubbed?
Joy in Haiti? Find me a starving, homeless, disease-ridden cute Haitian orphan and make sure that they missionaries haven't beaten all the joy out of them yet. We have propaganda to manufacture.
I can’t think of anything less needed by Haitian than the Palin-Graham mob’s “mission of mercy.”
Palin’s noted “responsibility for helping those less fortunate” is obviously something new, something that only applies to photogenic non-Americans. We know how much responsibility she feels for American citizens who have lost their homes, their jobs, their access to health care, and, Oh yeah, their joy. It is obviously easier to coattail onto a missionary trip that is there with conversion, rather than care, in mind; because she will most likely never see any of the children kidnapped by missionaries again. She will, however, make use of both the photo-op and the missionaries to further her political goals. Franklin Graham won’t mind being used by Palin, he’s using her in hopes of increasing his current revenues and hoping to be rewarded by the Palin machine with a post as “America’s Minister” rather like that his father claimed.
It must have been hysterical watching all the hired security keep the Haitians and the Press/media people away from those who came to be seen with them. Graham’s compounds were locked down for “security!” I’d love to have been on the ground among the real media people to hear their comments amongst their selves as they were excluded from any contact with the holier-than-thou ghostwritten Palin and the equally sanctimonious Graham lest they intrude upon the secret and sacred intercourse between Palin and Graham inside the “secure” compounds. “Secure” of course can be translated as free of Haitians and free of any reporter or correspondent with an un-approved question that someone has crib notes for.
This must be Palin’s entry into the world of international relations and foreign policy. Obviously, she is still at the convert them or starve them stage of foreign policy. Now her portfolio contains an image of her hand touching that of a benighted heathen, sure to play well in Iowa and even better in South Carolina’s churches. We have to wonder what her plan for the Haitians might be. Graham’s is to convert them all. Palin can’t hunt them but perhaps she can open an adoption network, approved by Graham. The best guess, however, is that she will return from the island and promptly forget that she visited the island but had no real encounter with the people she will purportedly care so much about. Like all the other GOP/teavangelists, she will trumpet her concern for the “poor Haitians” while doing everything she can to prevent our government from caring for our own citizens who also need help.
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