How is mother Sarah Palin responding to the news that her 16-year-old daughter Willow called a schoolmate a “faggot” on Facebook? By blaming the lamestream media, natch!

Appearing on Sean Hannity’s show (on the network where Palin is a paid contributor), the ex-governor and reality television star lays out the defense of her daughter: she is the real bullying victim!

“People probably think that my greatest frustration is the lies that are told in the tabloids and on hateful blogs full of anonymous sources about my family,” says Palin, “and there are constant everyday lies that we have to read that are out there in the public. But my family and I…thick skin…we can take it, you know…we can take what the haters say despite the fact that there’s injustice in the situation. I mean, look at the other day. Willow, finally, my 16 year old, she had had it up to here with somebody saying very, very hateful things about the family and saying mean things about her little brother Trig, and Willow finally responded and she used a bad word when she responded in defense of her family. And her response became national news, even hard news copy it turned into, so that’s ridiculous and I had to explain to her, ‘Willow, there is no justice here but you have to just zip your lip and let’s move forward.'”

Missing from that parental lesson: There is no excuse for calling people homophobic slurs. But this is a woman who campaigned on the idea that gay Americans are less than, so that was to be expected. Or maybe it’s because the boy — Tre — Willow laid in to is actually straight, so what’s the big deal, right?

Also expected: Palin completely misrepresenting the facts. As Mediaite notes, “The exchange to which she refers contains nary a mention of Trig Palin, and was touched off by a single negative comment about Palin’s reality show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska. Palin would have been perfectly justified had she chosen not to get into the details of the story, but since she did, she ought to have described them accurately.”