Sarah Palin cancels 'Today' interview

An NBC News source confirms that vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is nixing a planned sitdown with Matt Lauer, which was to air on an upcoming episode of Today. The source adds that NBC is hoping to reschedule the interview.

According to the former governor’s Fox News colleague Howard Kurtz, Palin is still incensed about recent comments made by MSNBC’s Martin Bashir — who said Friday that Palin deserves to be defecated on for comparing the national debt to human slavery. (Bashir apologized for his “wholly unacceptable” remarks on Monday, calling them shameful, inaccurate, and “unworthy of anyone who would claim to have an interest in politics.)

While MSNBC suspended Up Late host Alec Baldwin after the actor shouted a gay slur at a photographer last week, it has taken no disciplinary action against Bashir — even though the latter host’s inflammatory statement was made on air.

Tim Crawford, the treasurer of Palin’s political action committee, pointed out that discrepancy in a letter sent Monday, addressed to NBC News president Deborah Turness and MSNBC president Phil Griffin, and posted on Breitbart News. “Are we to assume,” the letter asks, “that disciplinary procedures at your network take place based on the target of the remarks rather than the remarks themselves?”

Palin’s interview with Lauer would have taken place at her home in Wasilla, Alaska. The politician-turned-pundit is currently promoting her new book, Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas.

A rep for Palin has not responded to EW’s request for comment.