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Sarah Palin on battle with PETA over photo of son and dog: 'Absolutely hypocritical double standard'

Sarah Palin said on TODAY Tuesday that PETA applied "a hypocritical double standard" in criticizing her for a Facebook post featuring a photo of her young son standing on the family dog. Palin received criticism from PETA, which called her a "bizarrely callous woman," after she posted a picture on Facebook on New Year's Day of her son, Trig, 6, standing on the family's service dog while trying to

Sarah Palin said on TODAY Tuesday that PETA applied "a hypocritical double standard" in criticizing her for a Facebook post featuring a photo of her young son standing on the family dog. 

Palin received criticism from PETA, which called her a "bizarrely callous woman," after she posted a picture on Facebook on New Year's Day of her son, Trig, 6, standing on the family's service dog while trying to reach the kitchen sink. Palin noted that Ellen DeGeneres, who was selected as PETA's Woman of the Year in 2009, once posted a similar image of a young girl using a dog as a stepladder with no outcry. 

"I thought, absolutely hypocritical double standard, as usual, applied to, I don't know, perhaps a constitutional conservative,'' Palin told Savannah Guthrie on Tuesday. 

In an initial statement to NBC News on Monday, Palin referred to President Barack Obama, who admitted he tried dog meat as a 10-year-old in Indonesia, when she wrote that "at least Trig didn't eat the dog." She stood by those comments on Tuesday. 

"Oh heck no, that was the best line in the post that I wrote,'' she said after Savannah asked if it was a cheap shot. "It was the kickoff line."

More from Palin: 

  • On whether it was appropriate to show a child standing on a dog: "In this case, yes, because Trig's service dog is a strong, trained dog that does really, really love his best buddy Trig, and they put up with each other and there was no harm at all to this dog,'' she said. 

  • On the dog's unusual name, Jill Hadassah: "I had a roommate in college named Jill, loved her, always wanted a Jill, and then Hadassah, that's a Jewish name for Esther. I love in the Bible, the Book of Esther, so finally. I didn't have a sixth kid, but had a dog, and finally I got to use those names." 

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