Sarah Palin booed in Philadelphia before Flyers-Rangers game
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The world’s most famous ‘hockey mom’ can now join the ever-growing list of icons booed by Philly fans. Move over, Santa Claus and Mike Schmidt, Sarah Palin was booed tonight in front of Willow and Piper as she was introduced to drop the first puck at the Flyers’ home opener against the New York Rangers.
Despite pleas from the scoreboard at the Wachovia Center, which read ‘Flyers fans, show Philadelphia’s class and welcome America’s No. 1 hockey mom, Sarah Palin,’ ABC News’ Jake Tapper reports that the booing was so prevalent that the music had to be cranked up to ‘deafening’ levels in order to compete with the fans from the city of Brotherly Love.
Although Pennsylvania is often considered a swing state, the jeering is easily heard in the video above, and one can clearly see a few Obama/Biden signs in the stands.
The Flyers not only invited Palin to drop the puck, they had created a contest to find ‘the ultimate hockey mom’ to accompany the GOP vice presidential nominee onto the ice. Earlier, the Flyers’ founder, Ed Snider, expressed how excited he was that Palin was going to attend the game:
‘Because of the tremendous amount of publicity she has brought to our sport, we invited the most popular hockey mom in North America to our home opener to help us get our season started,’ said Snider, the Comcast-Spectacor chairman who founded the Flyers in 1967. ‘We are very excited she has accepted our offer and we are very proud of the publicity she is generating for hockey moms and the sport of hockey.’ - NHL.com
This morning, The Times’ top blog, Top of the Ticket, helped celebrate the NHL’s opening weekend by pointing out that interest in hockey is increasing among young people, particularly girls. About 57,000 young females signed up to play hockey, according to USA Hockey, Andrew Malcolm pointed out.
-- Tony Pierce