The Lighter Side of Sarah Palin

Governor Palin 4 President ^ | Daniel Foster

[MaxCUA]

Sarah Palin’s post-gubernatorial career has been shaped, and misshaped, by a media strategy heavy on knee-jerk combativeness, with a not insignificant dose of victim’s complex thrown in. Her ceaseless campaign against the perceived distortions of the mainstream media routinely crosses from defensiveness into confrontation, and even paranoia. Her recent defenses of Rand Paul and Nikki Haley — two conservatives facing starkly different political challenges — were remarkably similar boilerplate condemnations of “gotcha politics” and “media corruption” that managed to reduce the pair’s trials to her own persecution.

Palin’s prickliness has received a good deal of media attention, which makes sense. The gossip media’s laser-sighted focus on her every move — not to mention its fixation on the details of her personal life, from Andrew Sullivan’s obstetrical obsession to Joe McGinniss’s stalker journalism — is inherently creepy and frequently unfair, and it warrants a firm response. Palin’s conservative following, from Facebook to Fox News, is constitutionally disposed to suspicion of the politico-journalistic complex, and helps beat the drum from her side. Likewise, when the press gets hit by a force whose social-media reach alone exceeds most newspaper circulations, it tends to take notice. etc...