LATimes’ Snead: Palin With ‘Rifle’ on Newsweek Cover… is it ‘OK?’

October 9, 2008 | Filed Under 2nd Amendment, Democrats/Leftists, Elections, GOP, Media Bias, President, Publius Contributor, Security/Safety, Society/Culture, Warner Todd Huston |

-By Warner Todd Huston

Over at the L.A. Times’ The Dish Rag blog, Elizabeth Snead wonders how Newsweek got Governor Sarah Palin to pose “with a rifle” for the cover of its next issue? Snead then reveals that it was not a new photo but an old one, that the Governor did not pose for the cover at all, and wonders if it is right for the magazine to use the photo as they did? I suppose Snead wasn’t really too worried about the photo, but she did just prove that she has no idea what a “rifle” is because Palin is holding a shotgun, not a rifle, in the cover photo.

Snead tries to give a ribbing to Governor Palin for holding the “rifle” over her shoulder with the barrel pointing toward the ground and the breech open with the shoulder stock draped over her left shoulder. Showing she has no idea how a firearm works, Snead wonders if Palin could “shoot” her “foot off like that?”

Hey, is that even the right way to hold a rifle? Can’t you shoot your foot off like that?

What we have here is another denizen of Hollywood that knows zip about firearms. Palin is not holding a rifle. And even if it were a breechloading rifle, with the breech cracked open, draped over a shoulder, one cannot shoot one’s foot off regardless. A breech must be closed before any foot shooting can be in the offing.

Looks to me like the only self-inflicted foot shooting is being done by Elizabeth Snead as she reveals her ignorance of firearms.

As to Newsweek using the photo of a gun toting Palin, I don’t see anything wrong with it. It’s an old photo form 2002, but so what? They didn’t doctor it and it doesn’t show Palin in a bad light — unless you are a gun hater, of course. And, only someone in Hollywood could presume that a cover photo had to be “posed for,” after all.

It always makes me wonder what country these people in Hollywood are from, anyway?

(Newsweek Cover courtesy of the L.A. Times)

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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston