Shortly after Sarah Palin burst onto the national scene two years ago it became obvious that she's the latter, not the former. The ex-Mayor of Wasilla isn't merely a charlatan -- she symbolizes the gullibility of the American electorate.Vanity Fair's Michael Joseph Gross gave her more of a chance than I did. Gross admits -- as a journalist, believing that she may have been treated unfairly in the press, and "as a Christian" -- to being biased in her favor before spending four months around Palin, her family and her entourage.
The result, appearing in the October issue of Vanity Fair, is "Sarah Palin: the Sound and the Fury." It's not pretty.
"Warm and effusive in public, indifferent or angry in private: this is the pattern of Palin's behavior toward the people who make her life possible. A onetime gubernatorial aide to Palin says, 'The people who have worked for her -- they're broken, used, stepped on, down in the dust.' On the 2008 campaign trail, one close aide recalls, it was practically impossible to persuade Palin to take a moment to thank the kitchen workers at fund-raising dinners. During the campaign, Palin lashed out at the slightest provocation, sometimes screaming at staff members and throwing objects. Witnessing such behavior, one aide asked Todd Palin if it was typical of his wife. He answered, 'You just got to let her go through it... Half the stuff that comes out of her mouth she doesn't even mean.' When a campaign aide gingerly asked Todd whether Sarah should consider taking psychiatric medication to control her moods, Todd responded that she 'just needed to run and work out more.' Her anger kept boiling over, however, and eventually the fits of rage came every day. Then, just as suddenly, her temper would be gone. Palin would apologize and promise to be nicer. Within hours, she would be screaming again. At the end of one long day, when Palin was mid-tirade, a campaign aide remembers thinking, 'You were an angel all night. Now you’re a devil. Where did this come from?'"Because Palin wraps herself in faith and family, Gross isn't shy about giving us some intriguing peeks behind her carefully crafted facade.
"In whatever remains of Palin’s inner circle...most people are following orders. Some details of the Palins' private life, however, suggest a reality at odds with Sarah's image. In speeches, Palin pays tribute to the man she still calls 'the First Dude.' One of the strangest passages in Going Rogue concerns post-election rumors that the couple was considering a divorce. 'That day in sunny Texas when the divorce rumors were rampant in the tabloids, I watched Todd, tanned and shirtless, take the baby from my arms and walk him back to the ranch house,' she writes, like a frontier Barbara Cartland. 'Dang, I thought. Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd?' Locally, much speculation surrounds the marriage. Some say Todd is henpecked, and others see him as the heavy. One person who has been a frequent houseguest of the Palins says that the couple began many mornings with screaming fights, a fusillade of curses: ''F*ck you,' 'F*ck this,' 'You lazy piece of shit.' 'You’re f*ckin' lucky to have me,' Sarah would always say.' (This person never saw Todd and Sarah sleep in the same bed, and recalls that Todd would often joke, 'I don't know how she ever gets pregnant.')"Gross exposes Palin's vitriol, her hypocrisy and her God complex. He largely avoids one particular topic -- her intellect or lack thereof -- but he does wonder aloud about a recurring theme in her speeches:
"('They talk down to us... They think that if we were just smart enough... ') To some, the message sounds like an affirmation. But is it really? Or does it seed self-doubt and rancor among her partisans, and encourage them to see everyone else as malign?"It's the latter, of course. Like Caribou Barbie herself, it's chicken shit.
