Palin Smacks Waltrip: Check Your Facts, Get Some 'Strategery' Before 'You Shoot Off Your Mouth'

Palin Smacks Waltrip: Check Your Facts, Get Some 'Strategery' Before 'You Shoot Off Your Mouth'
Tony Lee

Former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin blasted NASCAR commentator Michael Waltrip on Wednesday for wrongly mocking her during last Sunday’s NASCAR telecast on Fox for words Palin never said or have been associated with her. 

After Palin re-tweeted the Breitbart Sports article that described the incident, she tweeted to Waltrip, “Get some ‘strategery’ and check your facts before you shoot off your mouth.” 

In response to Palin’s tweet, Waltrip tweeted a picture of himself with the Palins and said, “you are one” of my favorite “people on earth.”

After attempting to say Brad Keselowski’s crew chief Paul Wolfe was a “master strategist” last Sunday, Waltrip butchered his words on live television and said Wolfe was a “master strategery.” He and studio host Chris Myers then laughed at Palin, implicating her with the word “strategery” by making reference to the “I can see Russia from my house” commentary that has been has been falsely attributed to Palin. Of course, Palin never said she could see “Russia from my house.” Tina Fey said those words during a Saturday Night Live skit in 2008. 

The word “strategery” has never been associated with Palin. In fact, Will Ferrell introduced that word into the vernacular during a Saturday Night Live skit in October of 2000 when he was mocking George W. Bush’s debate performance against Al Gore.

As Breibart Sports wrote, Palin has been an avid NASCAR fan. She enthralled the NASCAR faithful in 2010 when “she attended the Daytona 500 as a VIP guest. Palin was watching this year’s Daytona 500, tweeting her support for Danica Patrick during the final laps of the race.” Further, “Waltrip’s and Myers’s mocking of Palin should be disconcerting for NASCAR and Fox. NASCAR cannot afford to lose its core supporters, many of whom are Reagan Democrats and identify with Palin’s populist, Jacksonian, Tea Party, independent-conservative appeal.”

Palin urged conservatives last Friday to go into Hollywood and sports because they are upstream from politics. In many ways, sports has often been upstream from culture, but as Breitbart Sports noted, the popular culture oftentimes impacts sports–and, as was evidenced on Sunday, sometimes not in the most positive ways.

Waltrip’s dig was even more ironic because it happened during a race on a NASCAR event Palin was at as a fan nearly a year ago. 

At this time in 2012, Palin went to back-to-back NASCAR races. She attended the NASCAR race at Las Vegas, which Tony Stewart won in 2012. This weekend, NASCAR comes to Bristol, Tennessee, and Palin attended that race last year as well and drew “full-throated cheers” from fans at Bristol Motor Speedway. 

It remains to be seen if the NASCAR announcers–without snark–will issue a sincere apology to Palin while calling the race this weekend at a track where fans greeted Palin so enthusiastically just a year ago. 

Below is a photo of Palin and Richard “The King” Petty at the Daytona 500 in 2010. 

Photo credit: Sarah Palin Facebook page

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