Palin Said What?

If a waitress named "Lucille" says so, it must be true? No, really, I'm skeptical, particularly of the "Sambo" part:

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

The "beat the bitch" line, if said, could have been a reference to the infamous McCain event where he fumbled his answer to the question, "How do we beat the bitch". But "Sambo"? Well, if in fact Plain is inclined to refer to Obama as "Sambo", I doubt that she would have done so on just the one poorly sourced occasion.

Perhaps Florence (Sorry - that was a waitress from "Mel's Place") Lucille did relate what she though she heard. And I'm prepared for the possibility that other incidents will come to light. But right now I'm operating from the position that this is an ill-conceived smear or the misunderstanding of something overheard in a conversation taking place across a room. It's a catching, emotional way to open an essay, but when the opening kick in the gut turns out to be that "convenient" yet that poorly sourced it calls the author's motives (and other assertions) into question.