Let's get one thing straight right from the start here. Sarah Palin is right. She got on the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) over the weekend and said this: "There is not truth coming out of the mainstream media."

Not only is she right; she couldn't be more right. There is no better demonstration of this fact than what the mainstream media, or the "lamestream media" as Palin usually calls them, reported of her CBN appearance. They took disjointed Palin comments from CBN and tried to make sense out of them, which might be just about the most "not truth" thing reporters can do.

Alaska reporters were the very first to engage in this behavior. When Palin ran for governor, the rule at the Anchorage Daily News was pretty much that she was not to be quoted. Not because anyone there disliked her. Just the opposite in fact. The state's largest newspaper repeatedly and regularly referred to the early Palin as the "Joan of Arc" of Alaska politics.

"She had trounced two Republican opponents, including (Gov. Frank) Murkowski, in the Aug. 22 primary and emerged with a Joan of Arc glow," the newspaper reported. And there followed that "Palin, 44, has been the Joan of Arc of Alaska politics, marching into battle against long odds on such big local issues as oil taxes and construction of a natural gas pipeline only to see her opposition crumble," and "Gov. Sarah Palin has been front and center on clean and open government, and these days that gives her the aura of Joan of Arc," and "Compared to the Legislature, Gov. Palin looks like Joan of Arc, with a better smile and personality."

If you are politician, at least a female one, you can't do much better than to be compared to Joan of Arc, the woman who led the French Army into victories at Orleans, Patay and Troyes before being sainted. The Daily News, it is fair to say, generally liked Palin in those early, heady years when she was something of an anti-Big Oil whistle-blower in favor of transparent government.

And thus she was seldom quoted because, well, because much of what she says when quoted makes no sense. Take, for instance, this exact quote about Egypt in that CBN interview:

"This is that 3 a.m. White House phone call and it seems for many of us trying to get that information from our leader in the White House, it seems that that call went right to the answering machine. And nobody yet has explained to the American public what they know, and surely they know more than the rest of us know, who it is who will be taking the place of Mubarak."

The august Associated Press translated all of that to mean "Sarah Palin says the Obama administration must tell Americans what it knows about who will be Egypt's next leader."

The Associated Press condensed Palin's ramblings into one, simple, declarative sentence.

You couldn't get much more lame than that. Palin clearly did not say the "Obama administration must tell Americans what it knows about who will be Egypt's next leader."

What she said was that there was a symbolic 3 a.m. call to the White House warning the president of global crisis, and that the call went to an answering machine. That, everyone who has been following the Egypt story knows, is simply wrong. The White House was responding to the crisis in Egypt even before Palin started joking about how at least this is one thing for which she won't be "blamed."

It's fair to criticize the Obama administration's handling of the crisis. Obama might have fumbled the hand-off. But to suggest that he failed to respond to the snap count is simply wrong.