Posted on 10/07/2011 1:42:59 PM PDT by Yaelle
Editorial by John Ziegler
An Open E-mail to Sarah Palin
10/5/2011
The following is an actual e-mail "Media Malpractice, How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted" Filmmaker John Ziegler sent to Sarah Palin's personal e-mail address after she announced she was not running for president.
Dear Governor Palin:
Wow. So, is this really how your political saga is going end? By letting down your remaining supporters and telling them, with a straight face, that you can do more to impact change as a Fox News Contributor than you can as President of the United States?
I was almost positive you would run because it appeared that your brand demanded it from a career maintenance perspective. I had even written a long letter blasting you for being either selfish or delusional in making a decision to run which could help President Obama get reelected. While I applaud you for making the right decision, thanks to the way you made it, I must also question your real rationale.
One of the many reasons (other than the conversation I had earlier this year with Todd about working on your campaign) I was so sure you would give it a shot was that I figured you were way too smart to go this far with a blatant tease without a legitimate exit explanation.
While you have used the “I don’t need a title to impact change” line before (to justify your politically inexplicable resignation as governor of Alaska), I never figured you would actually try to float that as a last minute reason for not pursuing the most important job in the world. It is hard to believe that even the most crazed of your fans will buy that, but I am sure at least some of the remaining lemmings will.
Of course, there is no way you actually believe it yourself. First of all, how is this “issue" new information? You mean to tell us that in the last year since you started talking openly about running for president that this never occurred to you before? If it was a decisive factor now, why wasn’t it that way several months ago before you started acting like a candidate? Why did you selfishly put your supporters through the long wait and stunt the process for the actual candidates?
Secondly, exactly what change have you impacted since resigning from office? Being generous, you raised legitimate questions about a healthcare bill which ended up passing, you may have helped energize a base that assisted in winning back the House, and you were heavily tied to three senate candidates who lost otherwise very winnable races (btw, if “titles” are so unimportant, why did you even bother trying to help those campaigns to begin with?).
Finally, what change do you think you can possibly “impact” in the future now that everyone knows there is no chance of you ever having real political power and your base of current support is sure to wither away? You do realize (as I warned you about after your resignation) that people/media will stop caring about what you say/write once they know for sure you are never going to be president, right? If you still don’t believe me, just ask any promising athlete whose career is cut down prematurely by injury (as yours was by an unfair kneecapping by the media) how they are treated once a comeback is no longer achievable.
It is certainly possible that you may not accept this premise because you are under the understandable delusion (thanks to the media’s obsession with you) that you are somehow special and not bound by the same rules which govern mere mortals. After all, if you didn’t think you deserved extraordinary consideration, you would never have had the audacity to even float the idea of a presidential run after resigning office in a way that was clearly designed to get rich and stay famous.
If this is indeed the case, you are finally in for a rude awakening.
The only reason the liberal media has been obsessing over whether you might run for president is that you would have added to the entertainment value of a Republican race with which they are already getting bored. As you recently accurately (and, given your family’s penchant for participating in such endeavors, rather ironically) observed that they see the whole thing as a “reality show” in need of a new wacky character to spice things up. Plus, they would love for you to have somehow been the nominee to insure Obama’s reelection.
The conservative media has been going along with this charade as well because they see their own ratings as more important than the cause of beating Obama and because they fear offending your fans who are some of their most important customers.
Now that you aren’t running you have made yourself almost totally irrelevant. Unlike with Chris Christie (did you notice how much more passionately the media pined for him than you?), no one with an actual chance will want your endorsement. Once the nominee and the new VP candidate are chosen you will be very old news, and with no elected office (or, thanks to you’re your incredible lack of popularlity in Alaska, even the theoretical chance of one), you will have no opportunity to alter your narrative or make any news.
My guess is that you won’t even end up speaking at the convention because you are too big for a minor slot and too dangerous for a prime one.
If the Republican ends up winning you will no longer have a purpose at all (unless you go really rogue and decide to be the chief conservative critic of the new president) and 2016 is obviously not an option, especially with no way to significantly enhance your resume. If they lose, by the time 2016 comes around a whole new wave of Republican superstars will be ready to take the plunge and you will have already shown yourself to be afraid of getting in the water even when people were still begging you to get in. By 2020 your name will be almost as remote as Dan Quayle’s and you will have been out of office for almost five times as long as you held it.
About the only way you could retain any semblance of political potency is to become the conservative Ralph Nader, constantly threatening a third party run. This would be roughly the “fall from grace” equivalent of Tiger Woods being reduced to doing a dating reality show for attention.
Now, if you realize all of this, then I praise you for making a selfless decision for the betterment of the cause. There was a time not long ago when I truly believed you when you said you were letting your principles guide you and, “If I die politically, I die.” You are now, clearly, about as politically dead as someone of your celebrity could possibly be.
However, based on my personal experience, I have lost my faith in your ability to correctly perceive reality or to be totally honest with yourself and the public. Therefore, I question whether this realization was truly the motivation for your decision not to run.
I think Ziegler has been in the recent past very bitter about Sarah and in June he was all about how she could not win, but he raises some points that might be interesting for discussion. He does have cause for being bitter as he did put together that wonderful documentary about her trashing by the media post the 2008 election. (You might remember it as the documentary where tens of people were asked who said "I can see Russia from my house" and every last one said "Sarah Palin," rather than Tina Fey.)
I still feel let down that she didn't give it a chance. She said she would if the country needs her, and the country clearly needs her. The whole suddenly putting her family first is kind of a hokey excuse because her family existed months ago, and she has done several things that practically spelled out a run, from the bus tour to the amazing short thank you video to Iowa with the "branding" signature Mama Grizzly at the end.
Zig may have a point when he says that maybe it was her polling or some other campaign sense of doom that had her not run at the last minute. He may have a point about her resigning. I don't like his scorched earth style of betraying personal confidences; he's done that before and it's just NOT NICE. Still, I didn't see it posted and I thought someone might want to see it.
I really am very sad about Palin's not running. I fantasize about a Cain - Palin ticket so that one day she can be President without needing to run again through the media gauntlet; no one can say that a Veep isn't ready.
Bitter indeed! Breakups never go well.
Open letters and open emails. I don’t get it. I guess they are all just vanities.
Personally, I have a feeling it’s to do with the stories in the National Enquirer. If I am right, at some point another shoe will drop and it will all make sense. If I’m wrong, then she was just teasing.
Maybe she prayed for guidance like she said she did and she believes God said no. Why isn't that common sense and logical explanation good enough for some people?
I question the sanity of anyone who could get that caught up with a politician.
Don’t know. But I suspect there’s more than one Palinite who feels the way he does.
Sorry John Ziegler, but your oh-so-serious e-mail probably went right into her junk-mail box without her ever having seen it.
She should return all the donations made to SarahPac that were not used directly to help candidates.
If Ziegler were a FReeper and had posted a fraction of this stuff a month ago, he would have been zotted with extreme prejudice, and the crowds would have roared their approval.
Wow. What an ass. If there is anyone I take at face value, it is Sarah Palin.
Especially yours? Hmmm???
I never donated to SarahPac.
I just think she really pulled a con job on her supporters with that.
No need for a refund here. I didn’t give her a thin dime. It should be a cautionary tale. But instead, Palin fans are just going to go on the rebound and start idolizing Mr. National Sales Tax instead. No sense of discernment. And a desperate need to admire someone.
This guy went off the same bitter rails over his previous radio station employer and colleagues. It’s clearly more about him than those he turns on.
Then again, she has a record of not finishing what she starts, so maybe this is just more of her M.O. As for her supporters, they were begging to be duped by someone.
https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?v=10150307773131831
a response he posted on facebook - haven’t viewed it myself yet
Maybe she figured out that while she had some extremely devoted fans, most of the country didn’t feel that way about her.
Ziegler did a worthwhile thing, with his documentary on the 2008 media gang-rape of Palin, but since then, going back two years or more, he’s often proven that he’s a bit of an unbalanced flake, who seemed to feel Palin spurned him.
As for Palin, I have no problems with her decision, and still support her 100%.
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