The car wreck we can’t help but keep watching
I’ve been debating whether to post a link to the big Sarah Palin Vanity Fair article that has started making the rounds today. On one hand, she is looked upon as a possible leader of one of our two political parties and therefore her narrative (and future narrative) are an important part of our country’s story. On the other hand, the news media has the power to keep anyone they want as part of the national conversation. It’s an unspoken truth that the press decides what is news and should outlets stop covering Palin’s speeches, press releases, travel, etc she would lose much of the value she brings to the table: which is media driven (in that way she’s sort of like the Megan Fox of the Political scene - her influence is built up by the establishment). In the end though, the Palin narrative is just too mesmerizing, too interesting to ignore. Take this paragraph from the Vanity Fair article:
The consensus is that Palin’s rollout, and even her first television interview, with ABC’s Charles Gibson, conducted after an awkward two-week press blackout to allow for intensive cramming at her home in Wasilla, went more or less fine, though it had its embarrassing moments (“You can’t blink,” Palin said, when Gibson asked if she’d hesitated to accept McCain’s offer) and was much parodied. At least one savvy politician—Barack Obama—believed Palin would never have time to get up to speed. He told his aides that it had taken him four months to learn how to be a national candidate, and added, “I don’t care how talented she is, this is really a leap.” The paramount strategic goal in picking Palin was that the choice of a running mate had to ensure a successful convention and a competitive race right after; in that limited sense, the choice worked. But no serious vetting had been done before the selection (by either the McCain or the Obama team), and there was trouble in nailing down basic facts about Palin’s life. After she was picked, the campaign belatedly sent a dozen lawyers and researchers, led by a veteran Bush aide, Taylor Griffin, to Alaska, in a desperate race against the national reporters descending on the state. 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.
We have deceit, mistakes, lying (to herself probably as much as the outside world), dissension, immaturity, well the list goes on and on. The strange effect of all these negative qualities is that they make Palin strangely human… and almost identifiable. Like a car crash, we are entranced by the destruction, secretly happy to not be part of it, yet also know deep down that the mistakes we are witnessing could be our own.
Post a Comment
Syndicate this site