Anyone who previously doubted Sarah Palin's celebrity status need
no longer doubt. The surprise announcement of her decision to
resign the Alaska governorship effective July 26 -- fully 18
months before the end of her first term -- generated a reaction
nearly powerful enough to bump Michael Jackson's funeral from the
headlines.
In addition to the usual sources of political news,
People magazine weighed in with a report quoting
gubernatorial father-in-law Jim Palin's reaction: "Wow.…We had no
idea it was coming." The elder Palin reported that "Sarah
and Todd had thought it through," but their planning had been
unreported -- and their decision clearly unexpected -- by
Palin-haters in both parties, who rushed to interpret Friday's
resignation in light of their own prejudices.
Perhaps the most deranged reaction was the rumor --
immediately, officially and emphatically denied -- that Palin
was the target of an FBI investigation. Without merit of
evidence, logic or any on-the-record source, this rumor quickly
escalated into a frenzy of baseless speculation reminiscent of
the left-wing blogosphere's mid-2006
fantasies of "Fitzmas," when the indictment of Karl Rove by
special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was
regarded as an accomplished fact.
The political sources and political purposes of the Palin
investigation rumor were as obvious as the rumor's lack of any
factual basis, as Palin's attorney made clear in
his rebuttal.
"This canard was first floated by Democrat operatives in
September 2008 during the national campaign and followed up by
sympathetic Democratic writers," said Thomas Van Flein, the
governor's legal counsel. "It was easily rebutted then as one of
many fabrications about Sarah Palin. Just as power abhors a
vacuum, modern journalism apparently abhors any type of due
diligence and fact checking before scurrilous allegations are
repeated as fact."
That Palin's enemies would recycle this discredited falsehood,
and that unscrupulous reporters would rush to repeat the rumor,
was as predictable as the luridly breathless tabloid headlines
that followed news of Michael Jackson's death.
However, unlike the tabloid editors inventing juicy tidbits about
Jacko -- eagerly exploiting the legal convenience that dead men
don't file libel suits -- reporters who jumped on the bogus Palin
rumors were aiming at a live and potentially dangerous target.
Liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore was named as a source of
these "scurrilous allegations" by Van Flein, who warned that
repetition by mainstream news organizations was "actionable."
She's not the target of federal investigators, but Palin has been
a favorite target of Democratic enemies and envious Republicans
for nearly 10 months, ever since her announcement as the GOP
vice-presidential selection injected instant
excitement into Sen. John McCain's previously lackluster
campaign.
She quickly put the Republican ticket ahead in the polls, but
Palin paid the price for her popularity. As she said in her speech
Friday, "Political operatives descended on Alaska last August,
digging for dirt."
Even after the election, they kept digging, determined to bury
her political career. Her gubernatorial office made her a fixed
target, with enemies filing frivolous ethics complaints that made
Palin's every move a potential legal action that burdened Alaska
taxpayers.
This at least partly explains her enemies' rage over her
unexpected decision to resign on short notice. She thereby eludes
the trap they had laid for her. She returns to the status of
private citizen, where malevolent rumormongers can't cloak their
slander in bogus expressions of concern about "ethics."
There were, of course, many other important factors behind her
decision. She's working on her biography (with my Donkey
Cons co-author Lynn Vincent as her collaborator) for a
contract reportedly worth $11 million. And the refusal of her
enemies to spare her children from attack -- from David
Letterman's smutty snark at her teenage daughter, to the Internet
vermin who've chosen to target her year-old son Trig -- certainly
weighed in her considerations.
Palin's maternal concern about the "pretty mean-spirited adults"
who have "mocked" her Down Syndrome infant was dismissed by her
enemies -- CNN's Anderson Cooper could scarcely disguise his
doubt of her sincerity -- while others rushed to declare that, by
resigning as governor, she was in effect abandoning any prospect
of a political future.
"Her national political career is done," NBC's David Shuster
declared, even before reports of her plans to resign had been
confirmed. Other media types joined the rush to write Palin's
political obituary, with a Greek chorus of "conservative"
commentators transparently eager to agree that her resignation
represented proof that Palin is both unelectable to and unfit for
higher office.
Of course, she had just exposed as fraudulent the pretended
omniscience of the commentariat. None of them had predicted
Palin's resignation, and yet their latest oracular pronouncements
-- Ed
Rollins told CNN she looked "terribly inept" -- were treated
as authoritative.
The punditocracy can't predict Palin because she shares neither
their perspective nor their assumptions. Her ascent to political
stardom has been treated as a fluke by most of the GOP
establishment for the simple reason that she doesn't slavishly
follow the standard script of Republican politicians.
Of course, in recent years this script usually has ended with
"…and then the Democrats won," suggesting the need for a
re-write. The next version of the story may yet have a surprise
ending -- at least, surprising to the pundits whom Sarah Palin
has surprised so often before.
topics:
Sarah Palin, Republican Party, Media Bias
