Good Morning America's David Wright on Saturday continued his habit of dropping insulting comments into stories about Sarah Palin, snidely asserting that the Alaska governor "lacked seasoning and, some would say, a firm grasp of the issues." Wright, who was reporting on Palin's announcement that she would be resigning her office, also speculated that far more serious motives could be behind the move.

He darkly intoned, "It is difficult to ignore the timing of this announcement, late on a Friday afternoon, on a holiday weekend. Many Americans bound to be tuned out. That suggests that the reasons are not good ones." And although the ABC journalist also commented that many in the Republican Party saw Palin as a "fresh face" in the GOP, Wright has a long history of adding demeaning comments to his stories on the 2008 vice presidential nominee.

In Maureen Dowd's Sunday New York Times column on the shock resignation of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin ("Now, Sarah's Folly"), the proudly shallow columnist piled on with her usual self-satisfied (and pseudo-sophisticated) mockery.

More seriously, she regurgitated an extremely dubious anecdote from the recent Vanity Fair hit piece on Sarah Palin by former Times journalist Todd Purdum. It's a good example of how liberal media elites pass along their own prejudices by their willingness to believe even the most far-out stories that reflect badly on their political enemies.

Purdum was a long-time Times reporter who covered the Clinton White House before leaving the paper in 2006 (he is married to former Clinton White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers).

Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol found the anecdote flatly unbelievable, and even leftwing media critic Eric Boehlert at Media Matters said that it "doesn't pass the smell test." Which didn't stop Dowd from passing it along unchallenged:

Sarah Palin showed on Friday that in one respect at least, she is qualified to be president.

Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy.

"If Sarah Palin Weren't a Fanatic, I Might Feel Sorry For Her" blares the headline for Bonnie Erbe's June 30 blog post up at USNews.com. Gov. Palin joins blogger Michelle Malkin as a target of Erbe's rather catty disdain.

The PBS "To the Contrary" host and US News contributing editor alerted her readers of her antipathy for the former Republican vice presidential nominee in light of Todd Purdum's drive-by hit piece in Vanity Fair [see NB contributor Mike Sargent's excellent takedown of that here]:

Gov. Palin is a woman on a right-wing mission. She's clearly not ready for prime time. She's easy grist for any journalistic mill. If she weren't such a fanatic, I could feel sorry for her. But since she enjoys killing moose, wolves, and anything else in her rifle sight, I'll pass, thanks.

Erbe generally has been harsh on Palin, but once lauded the Alaska governor for admitting that for a very brief moment she considered aborting her youngest child Trig:

“Another case of Sarah Palin derangement syndrome has reared its ugly head,” FNC's Bret Baier announced Tuesday night in citing Todd Purdum's lengthy piece in the August issue of Vanity Fair magazine, “It Came from Wasilla.” Purdum, a New York Times reporter for 23 years until leaving the paper in 2006, is married to ex-Clinton White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers.

In the “Grapevine” segment, Baier recounted how Purdum was appalled by “a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded,” quoted “an anonymous friend of presidential nominee John McCain as referring to Palin as quote, 'little shop of horrors,'” and charged “that on the campaign trail aides quote, 'worried about her mental state: Was it possible that she was experiencing postpartum depression?'” Plus, “quote: 'No political principle or personal relationship is more sacred than her own ambition.'”

In “Liberal Media and GOP Hacks vs. Palin” on the Weekly Standard's blog, Bill Kristol denounced the “hit piece” from the “lefty” Purdum:

You don't have to be a big Palin fan to recognize the article is full of dubious claims, and is dependent on self-serving stories provided on background by some of the people who ran the McCain campaign into the ground.

On December 15, NBC’s Today invited Time editor Richard Stengel to promote who might become their Person of the Year, which allowed Stengel to boast: "Obviously, Barack Obama is a titanic figure on the world and American stage now. I mean, he may already be a transformational figure in American politics." (Stengel returned two days later to publicize Obama’s selection.)

By contrast, on December 29, Today promoted the liberal magazine Vanity Fair and its new "Farewell to All That" good-riddance piece on the Bush administration. Co-host Meredith Vieira plucked out what liberals would find to be the most insulting lines: "one of Colin Powell's former aides actually called Bush a Sarah Palin-like president." Vieira’s only nod to conservatives came in defending Vanity Fair’s reputation against viewers at home she suggested might say "Well, Vanity Fair, of course, this is a liberal magazine, so they're going to take pot shots at the president," but she noted they also talked to Bush-friendly sources.

Bill Clinton’s attack on former New York Times reporter Todd Purdum for his anonymously-sourced attack piece in the usually liberal-pleasing Vanity Fair magazine was greeted as strange by the liberal media elite. They might have thought Purdum was being attacked like he was writing Clinton-bashing stories for The American Spectator. So maybe it’s not surprising that American Spectator editor-in-chief R. Emmett Tyrrell is charging that Purdum is plagiarizing material out of his latest book The Clinton Crackup: The Boy President’s Life After the White House. From his press release:

"Seventeen anecdotes and ideas are clearly lifted from my book, The Clinton Crack-Up," states Mr. Tyrrell. "Mr. Purdum’s article did not make reference to the book once."

Purdum’s article covers Clinton’s "post-White House escapades, from the dubious (and secretive) business associations to the media blowups that have bruised his wife’s campaign, to the private-jetting around with a skirt-chasing, scandal-tinged posse." Tyrrell’s book covers Clinton’s life from retirement to the earliest days of his wife’s candidacy.

Other references without citations include:

CNN senior political analyst (and former Clinton adviser) David Gergen, responding to Todd Purdum’s recent Vanity Fair article on Bill Clinton during a segment on Monday’s "Anderson Cooper 360," acknowledged that the former President "does have a temper, and he goes off like Mount Vesuvius," but then went on to criticize Purdum’s article, that it "does not give enough weight to what he has done in the non-profit sector," specifically referring to the Clinton Global Initiative.

Clinton had called Purdum a "scumbag," "sleazy," and a "really dishonest reporter." He also accused the Vanity Fair editor of trying to "nail Hillary for Obama. It's the most biased press coverage in history."