Sarah Palin is mentioned in The Bob Zadek Show only in passing, in two distinct contexts separated by more than a decade. She is not the subject of any episode in the excerpts, and no guest or host offers an assessment of her career, her record, or her political significance. The references are incidental: one as an example of what a guest characterized as a television program’s political agenda, and one as a name on a consultant’s list of past clients.
Glee and the charge of gratuitous swipes
In the 2011 episode on Hollywood and propaganda, guest Ben Shapiro argued that the television series Glee advanced a left political agenda. As part of that argument, he said the show took what he called gratuitous swipes at people including Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin. Shapiro’s claim was that every political position taken on the show—whether on religion, politics, or the gay agenda—reflected a left orientation, and that the swipes at Coulter and Palin were an instance of that orientation. He did not elaborate on what the show said about Palin, and no other speaker in the excerpt responded to that specific point. Hollywood: Obama’s Ministry of Propaganda (2011)
The exchange in which the reference appears was a call-in segment. A caller named Anne had challenged Shapiro’s framing of a so-called gay agenda, arguing that sexual orientation does not determine politics. Shapiro responded by defending the usefulness of labels and by citing Glee as a show that forwarded what he called the gay agenda, noting that Ryan Murphy, whom he described as a gay man, had said one goal of the show was to heighten tolerance for gay and lesbian activity. The Palin reference came within that broader argument about the show’s politics, not as a separate topic. Hollywood: Obama’s Ministry of Propaganda (2011)
Shapiro also offered a statistic about Glee’s first-season ratings, saying it came in at number 33 in the primetime rankings, and compared its advertising revenue per thousand viewers to that of The Good Wife. He argued the television industry had persuaded the advertising industry that Glee’s viewers were worth more than The Good Wife’s. The caller Anne questioned how advertisers could be bamboozled in a free market if they were willing to pay more; Shapiro replied that people get bamboozled in the free market all the time. Bob Zadek then moved the program to a break. Palin’s name appears only in the one sentence about the show’s swipes. Hollywood: Obama’s Ministry of Propaganda (2011)
Justin Hart’s consulting work
In the 2022 episode Gone Viral Goes Viral, guest Justin Hart described his background in data and politics. He said he grew up in the Bay Area, attended BYU, and went to Washington, D.C., in 1996 intending to combine the internet and politics. After the first dot-com boom and bust, during which he built websites for Toyota.com, Dupont.com, and Blue Cross Blue Shield, he returned to politics. He said the 2008 election, in which he placed himself on the right side of the aisle, and the subsequent Tea Party movement drew him into online political work. [[episodes/gone_viral__goes_viral|Gone Viral Goes Viral (2022)]]
Hart said he started his own consulting firm helping senatorial candidates, including Chuck DeVore in California, and that he helped Sarah Palin and a number of other people. He also said he worked in the last few months of the Mitt Romney presidential campaign doing technical work that brought in fundraising money online. He described himself as disappointed in how that campaign ended. In the same exchange, Bob Zadek asked Hart whether he had ever worked on anything that succeeded; Hart replied that the ones he succeeded at he could not talk about because they were kind of black ops, and that in the public and political sector he had not had the home runs he wanted. [[episodes/gone_viral__goes_viral|Gone Viral Goes Viral (2022)]]
The same material appears in the second 2022 episode, Gone Viral with Justin Hart, in a section on Hart’s business and political background. Hart again said he helped senatorial candidates, people like Chuck DeVore, and Sarah Palin, and that he worked on the Romney campaign. He again said the successes he could discuss were limited and that he had picked the right horses even if Romney was not the best candidate. He also described providing data and charts to the Trump administration behind Dr. Scott Atlas at the White House. [[episodes/gone_viral__with_justin_hart|Gone Viral with Justin Hart (2022)]]
Across episodes
The topic is touched in three episodes across two periods. In 2011, Ben Shapiro named Palin as an example of a target of Glee’s political swipes. In 2022, Justin Hart named her twice, in two episodes drawn from the same interview, as a candidate he had helped as a consultant. The excerpts show no development in the treatment of Palin between the earlier and later episodes: she is a name invoked in support of other arguments, and no speaker returns to her as a subject. The two 2022 episodes repeat the same biographical material rather than advancing a new assessment.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state Palin’s title, her offices, her state, her party affiliation, or any date associated with her career. They do not describe what Glee actually said about her, nor do they report any response from her to Shapiro’s characterization. They do not say what consulting work Hart did for her, when, or in what capacity, and they do not say whether the work was for a campaign, a political action committee, or another entity. No guest or host in the excerpts offers an opinion on her record or her significance.