Todd Purdum, A Sleazy Man's Slimy Scumbag

When Bill Clinton calls someone a dishonest, sleazy, slimy scumbag, it should make you wonder about the magnitude of sleaziness we are dealing with. Purdum's regurgitation of all the hackneyed cliches against the left's Public Enemy Number One and Future Barack Slayer Sarah Palin reveals for all who the champion of slime really is.

"[He's] sleazy," [Clinton] said referring to Purdum. "He's a really dishonest reporter... [H]e's a real slimy guy," the former president said.
When I reminded him that Purdum was married to his former press spokesperson Myers, Clinton was undeterred.
"That's all right-- he's still a scumbag," Clinton said. "... He's just a dishonest guy--can't help it."

Clinton also accurately identified the slimy scumbag's motive:

"You know he didn't use a single name, cite a single source in all those things he said. It's just slimy. It's part of the national media's attempt to nail Hillary for Obama. It's just the most biased press coverage in history. It's another way of helping Obama. They had all these people standing up in this church cheering, calling Hillary a white racist, and he didn't do anything about it. The first day he said 'Ah, ah, ah well.' Because that's what they do--he gets other people to slime her. So then they saw the movie they thought this is a great ad for John McCain-- maybe I better quit the church. It's all politics. It's all about the bias of the media for Obama. Don't think anything about it."

"[T]his has been the most rigged press coverage in modern history-- and the guy ought to be ashamed of himself. But he has no shame..."

"Anytime you read a story that slimes a public figure with anonymous quotes, it oughta make the bells go off in your head. Because anytime somebody uses those things--he wrote the story in his head in advance, and he just goes around and tries to find some coward to say whatever they want to say, hoping to get some benefit out of it...

Although Clinton later regretted his choice of language, its descriptive accuracy remains unchallenged.
Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics blog points out the obvious:

Even more perplexing is the MSM's continuing fascination with, and seemingly instiatible desire to destroy Sarah Palin. Why are Todd Purdum and Vanity Fair pulling out all the stops for a piece on Palin 10 months after the election? Is it because they fear she's still viable as a national political figure, or simply that a 9,800 word hit job on Palin is the kind of delicious red meat VF's readers can't resist?

Either way, there's the very real possibility that this kind of piling on Palin by the elitist MSM will actually improve her image outside the New York/DC corridor and make people in flyover country like her more, not less.