Hitsville doesn’t care about the politics surrounding Sarah Palin’s v.p. nomination, but finds the journalistic controversy over whether she was a member of the Alaska Independence Party interesting. The NYT’s Elizabeth Bumiller reported yesterday that she’d been a member of the party for two years. The McCain campaign has said this isn’t true, and even produced the head of the party to say she’d been mistaken when she told Bumiller about Palin’s membership.

Bumiller’s original story is here.

An NYT blog’s account of the campaign seeming refusation is here.

Anyway, I heard Bumiller defend the piece against charges of inaccuracy on TV last night, and the Times hasn’t yet posted a correction, so I assume they are standing by the story, despite the blog item.

You can see a pretty comical video account of an AIP meeting in the YouTube entry below, to which I am grateful for giving me the hed of this item.

It gives you an insight into the sort of attitudes a woman in politics like Palin had to deal with.* In it, however, the guy seems pretty sure Palin’s a member of the party, and has a pretty exact account of both her being in the party and why she left it. It’s possible, though, he was wrong. (And possible, too, that he was the source of the information that mislead the head of the party, who’d spoken to Bumiller.) But for what it’s worth it is a contemporary bit of information that buttresses Bumiller’s original contention. Just because he’s a sexist old chucklehead doesn’t mean he was wrong!

It’s an open question as to whether reporters should trust the McCain campaign at this point. From the WashPost:

Last weekend, two campaign officials told The Washington Post that the background investigation of the finalists included an FBI check of any possible ongoing criminal investigations. That information was incorrect. A knowledgeable official said Tuesday that the vetting team had hoped to run such a check but that FBI officials declined to do so because that type of inquiry is reserved for people nominated for senior administration jobs. The official also said the FBI was uncomfortable providing the information to a political campaign, rather than to government officials.

It reads as if the campaign was throwing around phrases like “FBI background check” with little regard for honesty or, indeed, reality.

p.s. Howard Kurtz on the McCain campaign’s pushback:

The intensity of media inquiries hit a new level after an anonymous blogger on the liberal Web site Daily Kos last weekend charged that McCain’s running mate is actually the grandmother of Trig Palin, the 4-month-old baby born with Down syndrome, and that the real mother is her daughter, 17-year-old Bristol Palin. That led to mainstream media inquiries, which prompted the McCain camp to disclose in a statement Monday that Bristol is five months pregnant and plans to have the baby and marry the teenage father.

The Kos speculation, extreme even by liberal blogger standards, was certainly underway when the revelation was made. But there’s another account of why the Palin family came clean:

The ultra-conservative governor’s announcement about her daughter’s pregnancy came hours after The ENQUIRER informed her representatives and family members of Levi Johnston, the father of Bristol’s child, that we were aware of the pregnancy and were going to break the news.

In a preemptive strike Palin released the news, creating political shockwaves. 

That’s from the National Enquirer. Who are you going to believe—them or Howard Kurtz?

* On the other hand, here’s another YouTube video featuring Palin:

Update: The NYT has just posted a story on the AIP, saying that Palin’s husband was a member, but the now-governor never was.