'President Obama’s shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end,' Palin said. Palin defends 'shuck and jive'

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is blasting critics who considered her use of the phrase “shuck and jive” about President Barack Obama to be racially inflammatory.

“I would have used the exact same expression if I had been writing about President Carter, whose foreign policy rivaled Obama’s in its ineptitude, or about the Nixon administration, which was also famously rocked by a cover-up,” Palin wrote on Facebook on Wednesday night.


Palin said that Chris Matthews, White House Press Secretary and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo had all also used the phrase previously.

“I’ve been known to use the phrase most often when chastising my daughter Piper to stop procrastinating and do her homework. As she is part Yup’ik Eskimo, I’m not sure if this term would be deemed offensive when it’s directed at her or if it would be considered benign as in the case of Chris Matthews’ use of it in reference to Rachel Maddow,” Palin wrote. “Just to be careful, from now on I’ll avoid using it with Piper, and I would appreciate it if the media refrained from using words and phrases like igloo, Eskimo Pie, and “when hell freezes over,” as they might be considered offensive by my extended Alaska Native family.”

Todd Palin’s grandmother was half Yup’ik Eskimo.

Earlier Wednesday, the 2008 vice presidential candidate wrote: “Why the lies? Why the cover up? Why the dissembling about the cause of the murder of our ambassador on the anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil? We deserve answers to this. President Obama’s shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end,”

Palin joined other conservatives who have slammed the Obama administration’s handling of the attacks at U.S. posts overseas, saying the administration blamed the attacks on an anti-Islam video trailer instead of terrorism. Tuesday, Reuters reported that members of the Obama administration and State Department officials knew two hours after the attacks that an Islamic militant group took credit for the attack.

CNN contributor Roland Martin said in 2008 after the phrase was used by then-New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that it was a “negative assessment” of African-Americans, writing: “’Shucking and jiving’ have long been words used as a negative assessment of African Americans, along the lines of a ‘foot shufflin’ Negro.’ In fact, I don’t recall ever hearing the phrase used in reference to anyone white.”

According to Urban Dictionary: “To shuck and jive originally referred to the intentionally misleading words and actions that African-Americans would employ in order to deceive racist Euro-Americans in power, both during the period of slavery and afterwards. The expression was documented as being in wide usage in the 1920s, but may have originated much earlier.”

White House press secretary Carney used the term during a Sept. 7, 2011, press briefing after he brought out the wrong notebook, Real Clear Politics reported. “Sorry, I’m going to shuck and jive,” Carney said. “Time to shuck and jive.”

On Twitter, liberal commentators from Keith Olbermann to The New Yorker’s Andy Borowitz and others criticized Palin for her word choice:

Ms. Palin, do you have any clue that this is a racially demeaning phrase? RT @ sarahpalinusa Obama’s Shuck and Jive Ends With Benghazi Lies — Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) October 24, 2012

In fairness to Sarah Palin, “shuck” and “jive” are just two of the many thousands of words she doesn’t know the meaning of. — Andy Borowitz (@BorowitzReport) October 24, 2012

Sarah Palin’s use of ‘shuck and jive’ isn’t an example of a racist dog-whistle because it’s too obviously racist to be considered code. — Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) October 24, 2012

Matthews said on “Hardball” on Wednesday that Palin’s remark was an “ethnic shot” that was “pretty blatant.”

“Shuck and jive has a particular ethnic connection, not necessarily bad in all cases. It’s sort of slang. It doesn’t mean evil but to throw it at the president as an ethnic shot is pretty blatant,” Matthews said.

Matthews had used the term in 2010 while talking to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow about the war in Afghanistan.

“What has it been like, as you shuck and jive, hang out with the men over there, the women over there, in uniform risking their lives every day? How is the reaction to you, Rachel Maddow?”Matthews said at the time, according to a show transcript.