CAN YOU SPELL DIRECTED VERDICT:

[A]bout a half hour in, the wheels came off.

Palin's own attorney asked her to shift her focus forward from 2011 to 2017, when a New York Times editorial revived that false connection between Palin's rhetoric and the Giffords shooting (thereby provoking this lawsuit). Palin responded by saying the Times had "lied" about it "again." A lawyer for the Times objected, for obvious reasons: No one--including Palin in her filed complaint--has ever alleged that the New York Times got this wrong on any other occasion aside from that one editorial.

Palin's lawyer tried to help her clean it up. Judge Jed S. Rakoff invited her to clarify what she meant. But Palin doubled down, saying, "My view was the Times took a lot of liberties" in the wake of the Giffords shooting and that the paper had "led the charge" against her back then. Confused looks sprouted on everyone's faces. Reporters exchanged glances. Palin grew flustered, recognizing that something had curdled but not exactly sure what she'd screwed up. And here she reverted to the caricature: that fidgety posture and those looping, meaningless sentences. "I don't have the specific references in front of me," she said, desperately scrambling to recover.

The judge and all the lawyers seemed to agree, in what felt like silent assent, that an immediate sidebar had become necessary. [...]

She described a gradual diminution of her celebrity over the past decade, and claimed that by 2017, when the Times resuscitated those incitement accusations, she didn't have the same kind of power to fight back as she'd had in 2011. "I didn't have the PAC up and running and being aggressive," she said. "I didn't have any TV contracts. I didn't have that platform." She described the Times as a "Goliath" to her David. "There I was up in Wasilla, Alaska," she said, "going up against those who buy ink by the barrel, and I had my number two pencil on my kitchen table."

This was a good line. It was clearly one she'd prepped in advance. And it was, of course, a bit of an exaggeration. Palin isn't the superstar she once was (only a handful of paparazzi waited outside the courthouse to photograph her this morning when she arrived with her reported beau, former New York Rangers hockey star Ron Duguay), but she still has more than a million followers on Twitter and more than four million on Facebook.

When a lawyer for the Times cross-examined Palin, he first asked whether that initial round of false accusations, back in 2011, had in fact hurt her reputation much. She acknowledged that she continued to make appearances on Fox News, and even signed a new contract with the network in 2013. She was also the featured character in multiple reality television shows.

Then the lawyer brought up The Masked Singer. Palin appeared on this prime-time show in 2020, well after the story she's suing over ran in the Times. In the run-up to this trial, her attorneys filed a motion to bar any showing of the video in the courtroom. Now, Palin tried to bar any mention of the incident. "Objection," she said, in an earnest way that made it sound like she actually thought she had the ability, as a witness, to object. The courtroom burst into chuckles. Judge Rakoff informed her that this was a power not accorded to her. Forced to talk about the show, Palin said it was "the most fun 90 seconds of my life" and, when asked how much she was compensated, allowed that it had "paid some bills."

Later, the Times' lawyer asked what kind of mental anguish Palin had endured as a result of the publication of the Times editorial. She said she lost a little sleep, but admitted she'd never seen a doctor about it, or taken any medication. She never hired a PR firm to restore her allegedly tarnished image. She'd also never consulted a pastor, or a therapist. "I've never operated that way," she said. "I holistically remedy issues that are caused by stress. Meaning running, hot yoga, those kinds of things."

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