Vanity Fair on Palin. Let the Skewering Begin.
30 06 2009I have been besieged with emails, Facebook messages, and blog comments asking for my impressions of the Vanity Fair piece that appeared today entitled “It Came from Wasilla.”
Basically, the article was a whole lot of what we already knew, skillfully brought together, and topped off with some more interesting McCain staffer revelations from the campaign trail. I would have loved to hear more about Palin’s religious intrigue, a topic that has been discussed, but has never gotten the traction in the national media as some of her other dimensions. We may be hearing more of this, now that we know her new communications director is a Christian book author. Perhaps that explains the sudden religious lingo that has “become manifest” in the messages from the governor’s Twitter account.
Also not covered are her environmental policies, her potential ties to Pebble mine, and her abysmal track record of dealing with rural and Native issues. But an author only has so many words in which to tell his story, and Sarah Palin needs a whole book. No, not the one she’s writing with her Christian book author ghostwriter, the other kind. And no, the Christian book author ghostwriter for her upcoming book project is not the same Christian book author as the communications director Christian book author. It’s a different one.
But, back to the article. Palin supporters will be screeching about the fact that dismissed ethics complaints weren’t mentioned, among other things. But while Palin and her supporters, in addition to her detractors, tend to focus on the micro-news of the day, Todd S. Purdum is able to take a step back and analyze the big picture from outside the Palin bubble. It wa a refreshing perspective of the forest, from a place that often gets caught up examining the bark.
There were several moments in the article when I found myself chuckling, or realized that my eyebrows were physically as high as they could possibly go. Here are a few:
Walter Hickel, 89, a former two-term governor and interior secretary, and the grand old man of Alaska politics, who was co-chair of Palin’s winning gubernatorial campaign, in 2006, now washes his hands of her. He told me simply, “I don’t give a damn what she does.”
I’d heard that before, but I haven’t gotten tired of it yet.
There is virtually nothing about Palin’s performance in the fall campaign that should have come as a surprise to John McCain. Had he really attempted to learn something about her before the fateful day of August 29, 2008, when he announced that she was his choice for running mate, he would easily have discerned all the traits that he belatedly came to know.
THANK you.
So, of all the puzzling things that Sarah Palin told the American public last fall, perhaps the most puzzling was this: “Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.”
Believe me, it is not.
That was the biggest chuckle line for me. Not only because Palin has never really been “outside” enough to know what America is really like, and second because….believe me, it is not.
There’s a lot of good behind-the-scenes stuff from McCain insiders about the debate prep, and how one of them called her “Little Shop of Horrors.” It was unclear if it’s the same one who called her a “whack job.”
But the part that really surprised me, and the thing that Alaska bloggers and others routinely discuss that hasn’t been discussed much out in the open is Meghan Stapleton, the spokesperson for SarahPAC.
But just months into its existence the pac’s chief fund-raiser, Becki Donatelli, a veteran of Republican campaigns, suddenly quit. One person familiar with the situation told me that Donatelli could not stand dealing with Palin’s political spokeswoman in Alaska, Meghan Stapleton, who has drawn withering fire from Palin friends and critics alike for being an ineffective adviser.
I like to think of Stapleton, (who has earned the monikers “Stapletongue,” “Staplegun,” and “Meg the Mouth”) as a guest at a picnic who sees an insect on the food table, and without hesitating, lets off a Banshee scream and pounds the thing into oblivion with an overhead swing of a sledgehammer. Guests may or may not realize later, as they all pitch in to clean up the mess, that it was a butterfly.
So, if you haven’t done so already, pull up a seat, select your beverage and dig in to six pages of an interesting read.
I wonder if Todd S. Purdum realizes how much email he’s going to get.
I’ll be waiting for chapter two.
June 30th, 2009 at 10:04 PM
I see where there is a banner with a star also in the “flag” picture. She wants to make sure we all know her son is in the service.
I still think that Rev Billy Graham’s son was instrumental in getting the Rep. party to get Palin on the McCain ticket. Don’t think McCain ever vetted her. Just decided to get a woman on the Republian ticket. Don’t think Billy Graham’s son is anything like his father. I read about his involvment with Palin back during the election. Bad News!!!!!!!!
June 30th, 2009 at 10:04 PM
I was listening to a recap video, some of which had palin speaking…or something similar to speaking (maybe in her case – double speaking).
I noticed she avoids word contractions at all costs.
June 30th, 2009 at 10:18 PM
Maybe I am reading far too much into GINO’s statement concening that she can outrun President Obama in a race. I see her metaphorically and snarkily saying that she can beat him in a presidential race. Does anyone else get that idea or is it just me?
June 30th, 2009 at 10:18 PM
oops: concerning
June 30th, 2009 at 10:37 PM
califpat
i agree, that was the first thing that came to my mind.
June 30th, 2009 at 10:40 PM
@ califpat
——————–
She’s a braggart……and a name dropper. PO has absolutely nothing to do with her running. She chose to drop his name into the conversation to feel important…..like all name-droppers do.
July 1st, 2009 at 12:51 AM
I’m surprised that no one referenced my favorite part of the whole article so I am going to have to share it with you:
But Palin’s lack of knowledge turned out not to hurt her. Andrew Halcro later remembered that he and Palin once compared notes about their many encounters, and she said, “Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I’m amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, Does any of this really matter?”
I have read this before in Andrew’s blog & quoted in other articles. To me, this not only sums up Sarah Palin, but also tells you a lot about how well she knows her loyal followers. Indeed, to them none of it really matters.
July 1st, 2009 at 3:22 AM
The Fox article mentions that President Obama did not “immediately” return requests for a response to SP’s comment on how she could outrun him.
Really? They think this is an important matter for him to address? Do they REALLY think that he has an opinion either way? What if he said “I could beat SP in a basketball game”? Would they run to SP for a comment in response to that?
Fox is utterly ridiculous to think PO has a thought in his head about SP, other than that she is a constant distraction that he avoids consistently.
Why are they bothering him for a comment on her grandiose statement of beating him at running? Who the F cares? And don’t they have any REAL news to cover?
Further, those photos are around the world by now… very nice way to present our flag to others, SP. Very “presidential” layout in RW, also too.
Why is it they think she can run our country on looks? Instead of spending a day with RW, maybe she should have been reading an Econ 101 or Foreign Policy 101 book?
All fluff, no substance. Embarrassing.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:06 AM
One observation about Sarah Palin that sticks deep inside like a dagger: Palin fits the description of an NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) to a tee. This fact, which should frighten the bejesus out of everyone, is also the one that Kristol fears most, as its the first one he trots out and dismisses not at all convincingly:
“Is there any real chance that “several” Alaskans independently told Purdum that they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders? I don’t believe it for a moment. I’ve (for better or worse) moved in pretty well-educated circles in my life, and I’ve gone decades without “several” people telling me they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.”
Anyone with enough experience in life has encountered dangerous people like NPD narcissists and ASPD sociopaths — Palin’s documented behavior closely fits both diagnoses, which often run in tandem.
For a partisan Democratic example, just look at Jonathan Edwards, another pol who fits NPD traits to a tee (http://www.slate.com/id/2213740):
“John Edwards outed himself as one when forced to confess an adulterous affair. (Given his comical vanity, the deceitful way he used his marriage for his advancement, and his self-elevation as an embodiment of the common man while living in a house the size of an arena, it sounds like a pretty good diagnosis.)”
Palin is very probably NPD, and maybe ASPD too (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASPD). Based on this alone, her political career should be dead, no matter what people think of her actual politics.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:00 AM
I have not seen this mentioned in the posts (but I may have overlooked), but this one paragraph from the VF piece is incredibly significant and will likely be taken very seriously by political types:
“When I ask Bitney what he makes of the whole Palin phenomenon, he sighs. “What do I take away from this?” he asks. “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s just a lot of emotions and stuff. I find it’s frustrating dealing with Sarah, because it seems we’re always dealing with emotional crap and we never seem to be able to focus on the business at hand that needs to be done. I don’t know whether to blame her or pity her for all this emotional upheaval that we’re always going through with her.”
July 1st, 2009 at 5:11 AM
[...] story is probably gonna be bigger then the Letterman thingy, I’m guessing. I liked this part (H/T-Mudflats): But the part that really surprised me, and the thing that Alaska bloggers and others routinely [...]
July 1st, 2009 at 5:39 AM
AKM..I am late to this thread, but I LOVED how they “fired” at Staplegun (thanks that’s my li’l nickname for her), she been getting away with this charade too long. SP should have let her go long ago but undoubtedly will be hyper critical now..or cut her losses and sack Mega-phone Staplegun! Meg has probably thought she has been able to hide behind SP’s gaffes…but no mas! The VF Becky Donatelli ( as in I have tons of power and money) line was superb!
July 1st, 2009 at 6:56 AM
Honesty in Gov,
Thank you. I found the article here thanks to you
http://www.ktuu.com/Global/story.asp?S=10615662
In the article Jay Ramras says that that group makes anti semitic statements. Does anyone know why or what those are? It doesn’t surprise me one bit. R says that Sarah has a flag of Israel but people from Sarah’s strange fringe extreme religion do not support Israel for the reasons Jews support Israel: And on a recent video of the religious group, they had several anti-semitic statements. I think they are called Joels army and their intent is to “control the banks” along with the other 6 pillars (their words) of society…..
They are a scary group and I hope people focus more on this-it has been discussed a lot on other blogs lately.
I wonder if this is what Jay Ramras is referring to. Does he have a blog? Anyone know? Thanks………
July 1st, 2009 at 7:04 AM
txindygirl – that paragraph grabbed me, too! Regretfully, she’s a good reason why many think women aren’t capable of handling a big political job. I’m old fashioned enough to think that with that many kids (and one a Special Needs child) a person owes it to her family to take care of them. . . .and, she probably could have done a half decent job of that if she had limited herself to just governing AK. But, she not doing a good job of either. The thing I dislike about her the most, is that she is such a fake. Voters will excuse almost anything but that!
July 1st, 2009 at 8:01 AM
Quoting Plato now. She must have studied hard not to mangle that line, unlike her stumbling, bumbling Reagan (Gingrich) and Lincoln attempts.
It was just about running (or was it? beating Obama with her feisty endurance?) but did you see one of the first comments, “I like her so much, not only will I give her my vote to lead the nation and the free world, but I think I’ll take up running!” LOL!
Not to pick on her (and certainly not to defend Palin) but Ennealogic tries to say that nursing mother’s cannot run. Not true. I nurse, I run.
Unlike Palin, I do look like I had a baby. I looked pregnant too when I was. I look like a nursing mother also too. I can barely manage to get in a 20 minute run thrice a week or hit the gym. I juggle two jobs and care for two little ones, try and keep home and house and it is damn hard work.
Wish I had an intricate network of extended family and staff and catastrophic insurance coverage so I could run a national campaign and tour overseas NG while continuing to collect my salary just cause I tweeted and blackberried all the way. Some would say I was rude while I ignored briefings by people who do all the work that I claim credit for. But by god, I have accomplishments and am just used to doing hard work all day, every day. If only someone would explain to me just what a Mayor/Governor/CEO/VP does! Again very appreciative of all that going on all these years.
July 1st, 2009 at 8:06 AM
Oops, thought I was on the Runner’s World thread, but it all leads back to the self-worship of Palin. : )
The VF article was an addicting read, and AKM, your butterfly comment about Stapleton was perfect! Another example of someone in over her head.
July 1st, 2009 at 8:24 AM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~THE MENTAL INSTABILITY~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The pattern is inescapable: she takes disagreements personally, and swiftly deals vengeance on enemies, real or perceived.
In the aftermath of the November election, the conventional wisdom among Palin’s supporters in the Republican establishment was that she should go home, keep her head down, show that she could govern effectively, and quietly educate herself about foreign and domestic policy with the help of a cadre of experienced advisers. She has done none of this.
Rather, she has pursued an erratic course that, for her, may actually represent the closest thing there is to True North
Also with Coale’s help, Palin formed the grandiosely named Alaska Fund Trust, to defray a reported half million dollars in legal expenses arising from a slew of formal ethics complaints against her in her home state—prompting yet another formal complaint, that the fund itself constitutes an ethical breach.
Palin is a cipher by choice.
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DICTIONARY MEANING- a person of no influence; nonentity.
Main Entry: cipher
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: zero; nothingness
Synonyms: blank, naught, nil, nobody, nonentity, nothing, nullity, squat, zilch, zip, diddly squat, goose egg, insignificancy, nada, nought, zippo, zot
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When she chooses to reveal herself, what she reveals is not always the same thing as the truth. Her singular refusal to have in-depth conversations with the national media—even Richard Nixon and Dick Cheney, among the most saturnine political figures in modern American history, each submitted to countless detailed interviews over the years—has compounded the challenge of understanding who she really is.
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I’ve included this because Palins previous interviews showed not JUST her lack of knowledge, but her irrational thought processes….M
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The caricature of Sarah Palin that emerged in the presidential campaign, for good and ill, is now ineradicable.
The swift journey from her knockout convention speech to Tina Fey’s dead-eyed incarnation of her as Dan Quayle with an updo played out in real time, no less for the bewildered McCain campaign than for the public at large.
It is an ironclad axiom of politics that if a campaign looks troubled from the outside the inside reality is far worse, and the McCain-Palin fiasco was no exception.
By the time Election Day rolled around, the staff had been serially pummeled by unflattering press reports about the gaps in Palin’s knowledge, her stubborn resistance to direction, and the post-selection spending spree in which she ran up bills of $150,000 on clothes for herself and her family at high-end stores.
The top McCain aides who had tried hard to work with Palin—Steve Schmidt, the chief strategist; Nicolle Wallace, the communications ace; and Tucker Eskew, her traveling counselor—were barely on speaking terms with her, and news organizations were reporting that anonymous McCain aides saw Palin as a “diva” and a “whack job.”
Many of the details that led to such assessments have remained obscure. But in a recent series of conversations, a range of people from the McCain-Palin campaign, including members of the high command, agreed to elaborate on how a match they thought so right ended up going so wrong.
At one point, trying out a debating point that she believed showed she could empathize with uninsured Americans, Palin told McCain aides that she and Todd in the early years of their marriage had been unable to afford health insurance of any kind, and had gone without it until he got his union card and went to work for British Petroleum on the North Slope of Alaska.
Checking with Todd Palin himself revealed that, no, they had had catastrophic coverage all along. She insisted that catastrophic insurance didn’t really count and need not be revealed.
This sort of slipperiness—about both what the truth was and whether the truth even mattered—persisted on questions great and small. By late September, when the time came to coach Palin for her second major interview, this time with Katie Couric, there were severe tensions between Palin and the campaign.
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To attempt to use something like this, that is so easily disproved, lends to Palins mental state, her delusional grandiose opinion of herself….M
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By all accounts, Palin was either unwilling, or simply unable, to prepare. In the run-up to the Couric interview, Palin had become preoccupied with a far more parochial concern: answering a humdrum written questionnaire from her hometown newspaper, the Frontiersman.
McCain aides saw it as easy stuff, the usual boilerplate, the work of 20 minutes or so, but Palin worried intently.
At the same time, she grew concerned that her approval ratings back home in Alaska were sagging as she embraced the role of McCain’s bad cop.
To keep her happy, the chief McCain strategist, Steve Schmidt, agreed to conduct a onetime poll of 300 Alaska voters. It would prove to Palin, Schmidt thought, that everything was all right.
Then came the near-total meltdown of the financial system and McCain’s much-derided decision to briefly “suspend” his campaign.
Under the circumstances, and with severely limited resources, Schmidt and the McCain-campaign chairman, Rick Davis, scrapped the Alaska poll and urgently set out to survey voters’ views of the economy (and of McCain’s response to it) in competitive states.
Palin was furious. She was convinced that Schmidt had lied to her, a belief she conveyed to anyone who would listen.
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It’s all about her, the paranoia is showing………M
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The next big milestone for Palin was the debate with Joe Biden, on October 2. An early rehearsal effort in Philadelphia found 20 people sitting in a stifling room with hundreds of sample questions on note cards.
Palin just stared down, disengaged, non-participatory.
A disaster loomed, so Schmidt made the difficult decision to leave campaign headquarters, in Virginia, and fly to McCain’s vacation retreat in Sedona, Arizona, where it was thought that Palin might be able to relax and recharge, and accept the assistance of a voice coach and a television coach. For three full days—at the height of the campaign—Schmidt dropped virtually all other business to help Palin prepare
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From paranoid to completely disfunctional…M
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He also enlisted some extra help. By this point, Palin’s relations with Nicolle Wallace—a veteran of the Bush White House and a former CBS News analyst who had tried to help Palin get ready for the Couric interview, and whom Palin blamed for the result—were so strained that campaign aides cast about for someone who could serve as a calming presence:
Palin’s horse whisperer.
They settled on Mark McKinnon, a smart, funny, soft-spoken former Democrat from Texas. McKinnon had long admired McCain, and had begun the Republican primary season helping him out—though warning that he would never work against Obama in the general election.
But now McKinnon, whose role in helping prepare Palin has not been previously reported, and who declined to elaborate on it to V.F., changed his mind and quietly signed on.
Mark Salter, McCain’s longtime aide, says that McKinnon was picked because “he’s got a lovely manner You sort of want a guy who’s very easygoing, gives good advice, and doesn’t add to the natural nervousness.”
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WOW! This is really over the top. Typical Palin blaming others, which is part of her mental instability, then needs a “horse whisperer ?
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When orders or advice from McCain headquarters began to conflict with her own impulses, aides told me, she simply did what she wanted to do.
Some top aides worried about her mental state: was it possible that she was experiencing postpartum depression? (Palin’s youngest son was less than six months old.)
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Not postpartum, just typical Palin. If they had taken the time to know her they would have realized that there is s”something wrong” with her………M
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Palin maintained only the barest level of civil discourse with Tucker Eskew, the veteran G.O.P. operative who had been made her chief minder.
A third party had to shuttle between them to convey even the most rudimentary messages.
“She started to hedge her bets,” the same McCain friend says. “Frequently, she would be concerned about how something would play in Alaska.
What? You’re worried about your backside in Alaska when there are hundreds of millions of dollars being spent?”
One longtime McCain friend and frequent companion on the trail was heard to refer to Palin as “Little Shop of Horrors.”
When aides went to load McCain’s concession speech into the teleprompter, they found a concession speech for Palin—written by Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully, who had also been the principal drafter of her convention speech—already on the system.
Schmidt and Salter told Palin that there was no tradition of Election Night speeches by running mates, and that she wouldn’t be giving one.
Palin was insistent. “Are those John’s wishes?” she asked. They were, she was told.
But Palin took the issue to McCain himself, raising it on the walk from his suite to the outdoor rally. Again the answer was no.
Polar Disorder
There is virtually nothing about Palin’s performance in the fall campaign that should have come as a surprise to John McCain.
Had he really attempted to learn something about her before the fateful day of August 29, 2008, when he announced that she was his choice for running mate, he would easily have discerned all the traits that he belatedly came to know.
In every job, she surrounded herself with an insular coterie of trusted friends, took disagreements personally, discarded people who were no longer useful, and swiftly dealt vengeance on enemies, real or perceived.
“Remember,” says Lyda Green, a former Republican state senator who once represented Palin’s home district, and who over the years went from being a supporter of Palin’s to a bitter foe, “her nickname in high school was ‘Barracuda.’ I was never called Barracuda. Were you? There’s a certain instinct there that you go for the jugular.”
The second thing McCain could have discovered about Palin is that no political principle or personal relationship is more sacred than her own ambition.
To be sure, Palin is “conservative,” whatever that means, but she can be all over the lot in the articulation of her platform.
She gained the mayoralty of Wasilla in 1996 by turning against the incumbent, John Stein, who had been one of her mentors when she was on the city council, and injecting sharply partisan issues such as gun rights and abortion into what had previously been a low-key local contest.
She fired the police chief, eased out the museum director and the city planner, and fired and then rehired the librarian (who had opposed book censorship).
Palin was entitled to make the dismissals, and she variously justified them on the grounds of budget difficulties or the need for a team that she could be sure would support her efforts.
But the Frontiersman accused Palin of confusing her election with a “coronation.”
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Richard Nixon, eat your heart out!…..M
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She apparently didn’t like preparing for debates back then either. “In the campaign for governor, they’re prepping her for debate,” Curtis Smith’s former business partner, Jim Lottsfeldt, told me recently in Anchorage, “and Curtis says, ‘The debate prep’s going horribly. Every time we try to help her with an answer, she just gets mad.’”
But there were ominous signs—indications of an erratic nature.
This is the third thing McCain could have discovered about Palin—a woman, after all, who kept a pregnancy secret for seven months, flew all the way home from Texas to Alaska with a near-full-term baby while leaking amniotic fluid, and then finally drove the 45 minutes from Anchorage to a hospital in Wasilla, all so that the child could be born in the 49th state.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~This will never make sense to anyone, either she is crazy or a liar……..M
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As governor, she hired several old high-school, hometown, or political friends with minimal qualifications for important state jobs.
One friend, a former mid-level manager for Alaska Airlines, headed the department that reviewed candidates for state boards and commissions; another became director of the state Division of Agriculture, citing a childhood love of cows as one qualification.
Palin communicated with legislators and her staff mainly by BlackBerry, sometimes using a personal e-mail account to avoid having to disclose documents under the state public-records laws.
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Nixon again…………M
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The brutal reality is that many people who have worked closely with Palin have found themselves disillusioned.
More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—“a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy”—and thought it fit her perfectly.
When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig’s condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God’s, and signed it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.”
In Alaska, there has never been a gubernatorial tradition of pardoning a turkey at Thanksgiving, but Palin decided to stage such a ceremony last November all the same, at the Triple D Farm & Hatchery, outside Wasilla.
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More presidential delusions………M
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Because Palin had taken particular umbrage in the fall campaign at any effort to criticize her children or invade their privacy, her willingness to mix it up in public with an 18-year-old, who is after all the father of her only grandchild, struck many in Alaska as odd.
So did Palin’s suggestion, at a time when declining oil prices have thrown the state budget into the red, that she did not want to accept about a third of the $930 million in federal stimulus money available to Alaska, because it would come with too many big-government strings attached.
The move seemed calculated to burnish her national conservative credentials.
In the face of bipartisan outcry, Palin’s aides insisted she had never meant to say she wouldn’t take the money, only that she wanted to review the matter carefully.
That was news to former aide Larry Persily. After the first meeting on the stimulus money, Persily told me, “Everyone in the room left thinking she’d said no.
Then her staff said, ‘She didn’t say no. She just didn’t say yes.”’ Palin wound up taking all but about 3 percent of the $900 million available to Alaska. The consensus even among the Republicans I spoke to was that she rejected the last $28 million—for energy assistance—mostly to save face.
The ever shifting sands of Palin’s sensibility were also on display after former senator Ted Stevens’s conviction on corruption charges was set aside, in April. Palin’s old nemesis, the Alaska Republican Party chair Randy Ruedrich, called on Stevens’s Democratic successor, Mark Begich, who had defeated Stevens just days after the original conviction last fall, to step down and allow a new election.
Palin told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in an e-mail, “I absolutely agree.”
Days later, at a news conference, Palin insisted she had never called on Begich to step down.
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This is not simply “ordinary lying”, even for a politician. THIS is just nuts! Like a kid who puts their hands over their face and says…you can’t see me…………M
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Perhaps nothing has caused a bigger stir than Palin’s nomination of Wayne Anthony Ross to be Alaska’s attorney general.
It was the first time in Alaska history that a cabinet nominee was rejected.
Though Palin’s spokeswoman has said she does not intend to challenge Senator Lisa Murkowski, the former governor’s daughter, who is also up for re-election next year, Palin has changed her mind without warning in the past, and becoming a senator would keep her in the national spotlight.
Surveying the landscape of political and policy troubles in Alaska, Gregg Erickson, an independent economic consultant in Juneau, concludes,
“Everything she’s doing seems to be saying that there’ll be a problem in the future owing to her inattention, but she won’t be here to deal with it.”
In Evansville, though, Palin concentrated on the task at hand: an emphatic defense of the anti-abortion cause.
But in doing so she made a startling confession about what she thought when she learned she was pregnant at 43 with her youngest child, Trig, who arrived in April 2008, as the world now knows, with Down syndrome.
“I had found out that I was pregnant while out of state first,” Palin told the crowd. “While out of state, there just for a fleeting moment, I thought, Nobody knows me here. Nobody would ever know. I thought, Wow, it is easy to think maybe of trying to change the circumstances and no one would know—no one would ever know.
Then when my amniocentesis results came back, showing what they called abnormalities—oh, dear God—I knew, I had instantly an understanding, for that fleeting moment, why someone would believe it could seem possible to change those circumstances, just make it all go away, get some normalcy back in life.”
It is almost impossible not to be touched by the rawness of her confession, even if it is precisely this choice that Palin believes no other woman should ever have, not even in the case of rape or incest.
When I ask Bitney what he makes of the whole Palin phenomenon, he sighs. “What do I take away from this?” he asks.
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s just a lot of emotions and stuff. I find it’s frustrating dealing with Sarah, because it seems we’re always dealing with emotional crap and we never seem to be able to focus on the business at hand that needs to be done.
I don’t know whether to blame her or pity her for all this emotional upheaval that we’re always going through with her.
Now we all get to listen to Levi and Bristol.
Check my feet for horseshoes if I have to sit there and listen to another talk show.
I got involved in helping her become governor because we needed to change some policy directions. Teen abstinence is not why I waved signs for her.”
Palin seemed resigned to the fact that her reputation would never again be as fresh and glowing as it once was.
She complained about “national figures and some in the press who, who want to put not just me, but anybody who dares speak up, it seems nowadays, right back down in their place.”
She bemoaned her changing fortunes in Alaska. “I think things here that have so drastically changed these past months … Some want to forbid others from speaking up, and it’s been through lawsuits, been ethics-violation charges, media distortions And those are the folks who want to tell me, they want to tell you to sit down and shut up.
We will not do so. I just can’t because I love my state, I love my country, and I need you, we need Michael Reagan to keep on fighting for our freedoms, for our country, and what we’re being fed today, it seems, is a steady diet of selected misrepresented news So I join you in speaking up and asking the questions and taking action, and here at home in my beloved Alaska, I just say, politically speaking, if I die, I die.”
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These are not the words of a skilled politician, faking victimization.
These are the words of a mentally unstable women, who believes everything she says…….at the time. Flip the switch in her head and the words might be different tomorrow, however her mental state will not………M
July 1st, 2009 at 9:16 AM
wow
July 1st, 2009 at 9:24 AM
Anyone interested in commenting on the flag desecration (there’s that word again! Only this time it’s a bit more appropriately used) in the Runners World Palin picture #7, there’s a comment section attached to the article — only trouble is, you have to register to use it.
It might be worth it, though — there’s a significant number of Palinistas cooing over the article and the pictures, and talking about the Vanity Fair article being a hit piece.
July 1st, 2009 at 9:28 AM
I can see her locking herself in her room to read this with a big box of tissues to soak up all the tears and the sweat of rage. Even Todd won’t be allowed to be there. He’ll suffer later.
July 1st, 2009 at 9:53 AM
The part that gets me is the concession speech that Palin wanted to deliver that “somehow” (cough, Todd, cough) got loaded in the teleprompter. She is so full of herself.
I can just see her with her arms outstretched and raised above her head—Don’t cry for me Argentina…errrrr….Don’t cry…the country of Africa…oh wait…..Don’t cry for me Pro-American parts of the country..the truth is, I’ll never leave you.
It was easy to see from early on in the campaign that Palin thought that SHE was at the top of the ticket. I still think she believes it was all about her.
July 1st, 2009 at 10:00 AM
Have you posted that link over at HuffPo. I’m sure the readers over there would like to add to the comments at Runners World. I can see that the Palinbots are out in full force over there.
One funny (and most likely-fake) comment: “Wow, I didn’t vote for her but after this article, I am so impressed, I would vote for her”.
Say what?
If you vote for someone because they are a “runner”, well…enough said.
July 1st, 2009 at 10:15 AM
Read the article, loved it.
One thing though, a lack of zoning exists EVERYWHERE —->
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/06/zoo-installation-shows-trouble-in-paradise
And the places WITH zoning by and large look plastic and Stepford creepy, (i.e. Beaverton, OR).
Had a great conversation with a close relative who works in the Democratic circles of Dallas TX, as I explained to him how Sarah got to be be Governor:
The Dick Vote.
And apparently the Dick Vote in “Real America” is as influential as ever =-)
July 1st, 2009 at 10:51 AM
Ya think it could be the “change” ? Just thinking.
July 1st, 2009 at 11:02 AM
I rather like this line from the Vanity Fair article: “Perhaps most painful, how could John McCain, one of the cagiest survivors in contemporary politics—with a fine appreciation of life’s injustices and absurdities, a love for the sweep of history, and an overdeveloped sense of his own integrity and honor—ever have picked a person whose utter shortage of qualification for her proposed job all but disqualified him for his?”
July 1st, 2009 at 11:04 AM
This is good also: “Palin’s life has sometimes played out like an unholy amalgam of Desperate Housewives and Northern Exposure.”
And kudos once again to whoever came up with the book title:
Northern Overexposure
July 1st, 2009 at 11:08 AM
And (hee-hee): “Palin turns her debate with Joe Biden into a winkathon. By J. Scott Applewhite/A.P. Images.”
July 1st, 2009 at 11:44 AM
In reading through the comments, I notice that, from the time the VF article came out, right up to today, there are commenters who present *lots* of text, and then a single sentence of their own view. *Lots* of text!
Can we take it as a given that we’ve all hopped over and read the article, and a line or two will remind us of the exact section that you’d like to offer commentary on? I honestly find the commentary to be more immediate and interesting than the article.
I found something missing from the article — Palin’s prediliction for surrounding herself with men who loathe and despise women. WAR comes to mind, as does her most recent hire. I wouldn’t mind seeing a high-class rag taking on the mental and emotional causes for actively working to place women in the hands of men who would subjugate and harm them.
July 1st, 2009 at 12:54 PM
One thing I disagree with– The article stated that she could probably win the Iowa Caucus. He is probably thinking her “folksy charm” would play well there.
I lived in Iowa for 20 years (as recently as three years ago) and I can’t see Iowan’s falling for Palin. I may be wrong, but these are salt of the earth people who don’t buy into a lot of balony.
Her winking, flirting, skirting the issues style of politics doesn’t seem like it would play well with people who are REALLY concerned with the issues. Before the caucuses, people in Iowa really educated themselves on the candidates, their records and their plans for the Country. As the first caucus in the Nation, they take their role very seriously. They know the world is watching.
The candidates work for years in Iowa doing town hall meetings, traveling the state endlessly, and answering a lot of questions from concerned citizens. She can only wink and use her charms for so long before the people of Iowa would get fed up with her non-answers and want to know her record and where she stand on the issues that impact Iowa and our Nation.
I don’t think she can fool them for long.
July 1st, 2009 at 2:28 PM
I finally got through the whole article, but only after I printed it out. It was too hard to read on-line. Maybe because it’s just too hard to even follow anything about Sarah Palin, whether it’s coming out of her mouth or just the list of all her nutty behavior.
I think the part that shocked me the most (because I’d heard most of it) was the birth announcement for Trig. Good grief. How does she think that it’s OK to send something out from God? Wow.
July 1st, 2009 at 2:54 PM
Pat,
In her mind she is “God”
July 1st, 2009 at 3:38 PM
“As in any resource-rich developing country with weak institutions and woeful oversight, corruption and official misconduct go easily unchecked.” Yep, yep.
July 1st, 2009 at 10:15 PM
I think the reason why we haven’t heard from GINO about the VF article is because it’s all TRUE. Also her crazy fans haven’t come up with an appropriate spin just yet. Notice she takes her cues from them. Now that there is all this infighting over her she is probably sitting back and waiting to see how that’s going to turn out too.
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:42 AM
After calling Africa a country, Palin’s office ordered a map of the world! Unfortunately she will probably think the world is flat now.