629. Going Rogue. I just finished Sarah Palin’s book. I enjoyed it very much. From accusations of censorship in libraries, putting corrupt politicians in jail, opening up natural gas reserves to defending her decision to resign as governor this book opened up an awareness of issues I did not know existed. I did not know that wild life associations use photoshop images of deer backed by waterfalls and mountains and fields whenever they gear up to oppose drilling for oil in Alaska. I very much remember seeing these. This is interesting considering that there are no deer or mountains or rivers or human inhabitants where the drilling would take place. I did not know that only 2,000 acres would have drilling done out of the millions of acres at ANWAR.
I did not know that as a governor of Alaska she would be forced to pay their own legal fees when complaints were filed for misuse of state funds for using a state owned plane to travel to an event across state where she attended a ceremony at which she let her daughter cut the ribbon. The Press conveniently forgot that fact that she had sold on Ebay the expensive private jet purchased by the previous governor. I did not know that every single legal action against her was/has been dropped or dismissed. (For any one reading this and questioning my willingness to accept what Sarah Palin says- why are you willing to accept what some reporter says when the report was based on meager hearsay?) Example- when she announced her decision to resign as Governor, the press printed stories about how she did so because she was about to be hit with an indictment by the FBI. Story fizzled when the director for the FBI in that area said that it was absolutely not the case. Seems to me the press should have called the director first. The press knew the value of making the claim rather than finding the truth and dumping the story in the first place.
I now know the origin of the title for the book. The reason may surprise you. Read the book and find out why.
I also learned that the Katie Couric interviews contained much more interview time than what was shown and produced for TV and that these deleted parts would have given a much fairer impression of Sarah than that which was released. For example that part of the interview in which Katie and Sarah discussed the need to wean us off of petroleum as much as possible were deleted and only that portion was kept where she pushed for drilling. And by the way Sarah takes responsibility for the blunders in both interviews.
The real reason she asked Joe Biden if she could call him Joe at the VP debate is also an interesting story.
I also learned a great deal about how professional PR people have come to package candidates and as a consequence suppress the character of the candidate and at the same time ignore issues which should be discussed. Example- Sarah was not permitted to press Biden/Obama about Obama’s associates several of which have turned out to have some odd views or even have been terrorists. Maybe it is no big deal but the electorate did have a right to know and decide. She felt that the McCain/Palin campaign did a disservice to the American people by not bringing those issues to the attention of the voters. Instead the press pursued Troopergate which also was dismissed as bogus. Nor was she permitted to address on the national stage that fact that Obama listened to some rather nasty sermons for twenty years. Instead the focus was on matters such as whether Trig was her son. Her dad had the best answer when a reporter questioned whether Trig was her son-”yes, you dumbass, I was there when he popped.” Not elegant but at least true.
I enjoyed the book. I learned a great deal about the way elections are managed and conducted. I also learned how the press has changed through the years and the reason that news blogs and other news sources are growing in popularity. It just may be that the media I grew up with will fade as new sources of information become available. It will be interesting as always.
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