When I sat down to write about the Know-It-Alls this past Spring, I described them as a "clandestine syndicate of snobs in the highest echelons of media and government" ... I had no idea I was describing the real-life members of the leftwing "JournoList." Truthfully, I had no idea an actual nationwide secret enclave of biased journalists and progressive activists existed, though it seemed plausible given the Alaska ankle-biters' club. Talk about fact being stranger than satire. Call me intuitive. (I think we're all realizing that what we sense in our gut is going on, really IS going on. That reminds me that I need to buy Glenn Beck's new novel, The Overton Window. The parts of it I read at my mom's house are chilling. I also need to finish reading the brilliant American Spectator piece on America's Ruling Class, another glimpse into the Know-It-All world.)
And, in honor of what we now know was nothing short of a media conspiracy to sink Governor Palin from Day One, I'd like to share what I wrote in the introduction to my book, Advice to Sarah Palin From the Know-It-Alls. It's an ode to the 2008 election from the gloating, yet slightly sheepish, perspective of one of these arrogant elites. Apologies to those who have already read it in the book! This exerpt hasn't been posted to
C4P before. And remember, I'm a bit more on the whimsical side than most, which comes from being a recovering liberal, perhaps. Apparently I'm like Bristol Palin in one regard: I believe strongly in redemption. Which is why I hold out hope for even the worst lefties in the media. Hey, if I can get off the liberal Kool-Aid with help from conservative friends, anyone can.
Introduction: Crisis in Eliteville
It’s 3 a.m. Aug. 29, 2008, and we’ve received an alarming communiqué from our Ohio bureau: A private jet just touched down transporting the 44-year-old governor of Alaska and her sprawling family to a stunning announcement ceremony adding her to the McCain presidential ticket. Mavericky McCain had struck again, throwing us in the elite media and pompous punditry an unhittable curve. We had no facts, no narrative, and most importantly, no prior experience with Republican feminism. Was it a trick? Like telling us there are conservatives who listen to Coldplay? Was it a devious ploy to win over disgruntled Hillary voters? It was all-too-frightening, all-too-out-of-the-box, and decidedly above our pay grades. Sarah Palin was not the typical white-rich-old-overweight-Southern-male-seven-house-owning Republican-stereotype we’d mocked mercilessly over the last 40 years. She was a woman, this was a crisis. And, by Hillary, we weren’t ready. What to do?
What we did on that fateful August morning not so long ago is no secret, and nothing short of heroic. We in the elite media and know-it-all precincts everywhere sprung to greet the Palin challenge – head-on. Caught off guard initially, we quickly mobilized to assist newcomer Sarah Palin in her once-in-a-lifetime career opportunity. While welcoming an accomplished role model to the national stage, we did what any misogynistic, borderline psychotic group of people would do in our places: we gave her helpful advice on her fashion budget, counseled her on the real qualifications for vice presidents, and extended friendly tips about balancing her overwhelming maternal demands. And that was just the PG-13 stuff! Yes, Sarah Palin, with only eight years executive experience in government – eight more than anyone else on either ticket – needed our help, and badly.
In that glorious two-month advice-athon, one of the first things we pointed out was that Palin, a moose hunter, recently enjoyed an 88% approval rating governing a libertarian-leaning, independent-minded, energy-rich, virulently unreligious state. This meant clearly she was too popular to ever be vice president. We hastened to caution, however, that as a female candidate for higher office, Palin was naturally polarizing – and not just in a good, crisp-Alaskan-morning kind of way. Her classy shout-out to Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro, notwithstanding, Palin left many of us female know-it-alls inexplicably apoplectic. No doubt, before we would ever consider a woman like Palin for national office, she’d have to work much harder to pass major bills with less than her customary 95% bipartisanship. That type of near unanimity in important legislative work would never fly in D.C. where life-altering laws get done with vote bribes to achieve the magical “51.” Oh, but who really cares about actual governing records anyway? Certainly not us know-it-alls.
We also noticed that the spunky, energetic Palin had accomplished almost too much in too little time, as if she were privy to a constantly-ticking clock inside her head that forever chastened: “Don’t waste time, because time is precious.” Indeed, she was the youngest and first female mayor of her hometown, and the youngest and first female governor in Alaskan history. You might just think, “Hey, maybe there’s something to that.” Perhaps Palin possessed superior administrative skill, deft executive talent or a sublime toughness that eludes most people.
Making it to the top of a classically male-dominant state and unseating an incumbent governor from your own party is the stuff of legends. Ah, but who needs legends? Since Palin was not liberal, we just settled on calling her a lightweight, and left it at that. Indeed, adapting to Palin’s novelty proved interesting to say the least. One of the little details we noticed right away as we descended on her state like vultures to a kill, was that Palin kept a four-year digital countdown clock in her governor’s office labeled, “Time Left to Make a Difference.” This struck us as quaint but entirely unnecessary. After all, we in Know-It-All-Ville are completely comfortable with public servants who can’t seem to make a difference in five decades let alone four years. Truly, who wants politicians to work quickly for the good of the people they serve and return to private productive lives? We like it when our leaders continuously raise cash for their perpetual re-election campaigns, and hang out clocks that read: “Money Raised to Date.”
We also noted that while Palin commendably fought corruption in her own party, she displayed an embarrassing tendency to “quit” – under the auspices of not accepting “politics as usual.” In our opinion as upholders of moral decency, the middle-class Palin shouldn’t have felt the need to forfeit her six-figure government paycheck to promote ethical behavior. Obviously, being married to a hunky blue-collar union worker, she needed that money. Furthermore, she also should not have felt any compunction to quit because of the confidentiality rules that she couldn’t breach while serving in her position. That kind of courage and adherence to the rule of law makes everyone feel, well, awkward. Principled whistleblowers, whether they are Palin or the legendary Erin Brockovich, are buzz kills. We prefer public servants and concerned citizens who keep the broken system we know and love running as smoothly as possible for as long as possible. Palin should have just kept her mouth shut as chair of the state oil and gas commission. And she should have left the ethics problems to her boss, the governor, who wasn’t doing anything about them. It’s what they were paying her for, right? (Oh, you were thinking of the more recent time she “quit” … the governor’s job? Just goes to show how well we vetted Palin for you, the fact that you know so little about what matters in her public record, and so much about what doesn’t. We’re quite proud of that, actually. Had we done a better job telling the truth, Palin might have a movie named after her, and Julia Roberts another Oscar-winning performance.)
About the vetting we did, there may have been one or two other little “gaps” in our coverage. To our conservative friends, we feel a duty to report to you now that while, yes, Palin indeed slashed spending and balanced her budgets in Alaska, she also governed with a surprisingly light touch on social issues. In one of her first acts as governor, she granted benefits to the same-sex partners of state employees – against the wishes of the majority in the Republican-controlled legislature, but in accordance with an Alaskan Supreme Court ruling. As mayor, Palin resisted pressure from others to impose earlier closing times on the Wasilla bars. She let ‘em close at the traditional 3 a.m., seeing no need to micromanage. Palin also frequently praised the liberal Title IX law that allowed millions of young girls, including, apparently, Palin herself, to participate in sports at publicly-funded schools and universities. Of course, you’ll never know about any of these socially moderate views Palin holds because it contradicts our painstaking efforts to portray her as radically intolerant. Hey, that’s just the price you pay for being an openly devout Christian VP candidate in America, isn’t it?
Looking back, our fair, yet unhinged coverage of Sarah Palin was remarkable and historic – if incompetent in so many ways. It certainly kept us know-it-alls busy back in the fall of ’08, so busy, in fact, we were forced to delegate the reporting of former presidential candidate John Edwards to The National Enquirer. This was only so we could devote more time to investigating Palin’s pregnant unmarried 18-year-old daughter. Naturally, we published three NY Times front-page-stories about the “Palin Teen’s Crisis” the first week of her mother’s candidacy. The Edwards’ mistress, who received actual campaign funds, did not merit our scrutiny nearly as much as a vulnerable teen who just happened to be the daughter of someone we didn’t like. So we left EM (Edwards’ Mistress) alone when we first heard rumors about her unplanned pregnancy, even though her boyfriend was not a horny teenager, but actually a horny former VP candidate, who just happened to be running for president at the time.
Yes, between all the children, the clothes, and being from somewhere northwest of nowhere, Palin was a tough handle. We had never seen a vice presidential candidate like Palin before – a Republican with ovaries – so while we may have erred on the side of caution, we did the best we could, in the midst of a complete panic. In the past, we’d mostly ignored veep picks, inconsequential as they are. Did we dig up anything terrible on Jack Kemp, god rest his soul? Of course not. And, despite the unfair potshots we took at Dan Quayle, we left his family alone, and pretty much avoided printing outright fabrications about him, in favor of merely encouraging merciless exaggeration and heartless caricature. But Palin intrigued us in an entirely new and special way. She made us feel inspired about our work again. We could not just let her tell her own story without our help in distorting her record, ignoring her accomplishments, and obsessing about her weird accent and pricey wardrobe.
Truly, the entire Palin candidacy boiled down to this: Was America ready for a VP who spoke like that crafty police chief lady from the movie Fargo, but dressed like an executive-version of Jackie Kennedy? We didn’t think so. So, we made up stories about her banning books and belonging to an Alaskan secessionist party – knowing that most people wouldn’t bother to check out the corrections we printed later. We distorted the facts surrounding the decades-old Alaska wolf-culling program to leave some with the crazy false notion that Palin herself shot wolves from helicopters – just for sport. Ah good times. We also trumped up Palin’s perfectly legal dismissal of an under-performing cabinet member and gave undue coverage to her acceptance of per diem money while the Juneau governor’s mansion was being repaired. Obviously, even if it cost more, Palin should have hauled her family of seven to an Anchorage hotel, and billed it to the state, right? Staying in her nearby Wasilla home eating moose chili with a modest allowance for food and travel showed a stunning lack of fiscal irresponsibility – as did her layoffs of the governor’s chauffeur and chef, and the selling of the governor’s costly private jet.
Fortunately for you, we scrutinized every expense report Palin ever filed as if our lives depended on it, discovering that she only slashed the governor’s personal travel budget 85% from her GOP predecessor. No doubt, she could have cut more if she’d left her large brood at home despite their being asked to attend some of her out-of-state official functions. And speaking of kids, we talked to every grade school chum Palin ever offended during recess and even to some of the more childlike Alaskan legislators. It’s safe to say that we left no Palin stone unturned. You never can be too careful with female VP candidates – especially if they’re Republican. We certainly rose to the gargantuan task of vetting Sarah Palin, even if it gave us less time to report on the less-than-stellar records and non-existent executive experience of our presidential candidates. Oh well, nobody’s perfect. No doubt we’ll try to do better next time.
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