I know we are supposed to be observing "no Sarah Palin week" or perhaps (for the particularly ambitious liberal!) "no Sarah Palin month" (a whole month!?!) --but speaking personally? You gotta be kidding. Her ex-aide's manuscript (not even published yet!) was obtained by POLITICO. Translation: All "no Sarah" promises will simply have to go by the wayside for now.
The aide, Frank Bailey, tells us everything we know already, but with emails!:
A new memoir from an embittered former aide to Sarah Palin includes a trove of emails that vividly illustrate her intense focus on image and depiction in the media.This makes me wonder... I've gotten numerous hits from Alaska on my various Sarah Palin posts, which I assumed were from disgruntled Alaskans, personally subjected to Palin and looking for sarcasm aplenty (and we're SO happy to do our part here at DEAD AIR), as well as garden-variety sleaze (ditto!) ... and now I am wondering if these hits (particularly from Wasilla) were from Palin herself. Does she troll the blogs looking for herself? (I know the "Real Housewives" frequently do, but at least they admit it.)
The emails, apparently from the former Alaska governor, portray Palin as nearly obsessed with her political adversaries and consumed with every slight, real or perceived.
More from the pissed-off employee:
A Palin ally, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that Bailey and Palin corresponded and that the former aide had access to Palin’s passwords and her email account. But the Palin ally said that the content should be viewed through the lens of Bailey being “the quintessential disgruntled employee” who had been denied senior jobs he sought, cut out of Palin’s vice presidential campaign, and been caught up in the “Troopergate” scandal — details Bailey confirms in the proposed book, which is titled “In Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of our Tumultuous Years.”As every working class person knows: disgruntled employees know where all the bodies are buried. If you want truth, go to them; they are not beholden to anyone and do not act in obscenely craven ways in order to keep their jobs. (Brief quasi-socialist note: Why an ex-employee should be regarded as less truthful than someone still on the payroll is one of those evil capitalist lies, which you should never, ever believe.) Frank has been cut loose, and now, he is here to tell us all about his nasty boss. LISTEN UP, good Republicans. Behold your queen. She doesn't have too much between the ears:
“Todd just told me you had spoken with him awhile back and reported that some law enforcement friends of yours claimed some dumbass lie about Track not being Todd’s son? This really, really disgusts me and ticks me off,” Palin, according to Bailey, emailed aide Scott Heyworth in January of 2006. “I want to know right now who said it, who would ever lie about such a thing… this is the type of bullsh** lie about family that WILL keep me from running for Governor.”This makes me wonder even more... Did Palin teach her protégé (and brand new Tea-Party Governor) Nikki Haley, these kinds of high-tech hi-jinks? It makes sense; how Nikki vaulted to the head of the pack so quickly.
Palin later repeated the obscure rumor in an email to supporters, prompting Bailey to wonder about her “penchant for inflaming issues that, left on their own, might disappear” – a recurring pattern in her public life.
By the spring of 2009, just months after she and John McCain had lost the presidential race, Palin is depicted as tired of being criticized and focused more on her own national image than Alaska issues.
“I hate this damn job,” she wrote in an April 28 email to Bailey and another confidante.
A month later, she delves deeply into the case of Carrie Prejean, the Miss California beauty pageant contestant who voiced her support for traditional marriage.
“I got slammed on Fox News today for “not defending” (Carrie Prejean), speaking out for someone unfairly and mercilessly attacked by hypocritical media,” Palin wrote.
“I think it would be good to have that statement out there that of course I support this young, strong woman who voiced her honest opinion on stage - then got punished and crucified for doing so. What kind of statement can go out to solidify my already-spoken support for her? I know if I were in her shoes (and I have been) it does mean a lot to have someone with the balls to publicly speak up in support. I’ve asked for [Donald] Trump’s contact info so I can thank him, too.”
Palin, Bailey writes, thought about contacting the media to explain her support for Prejean – but then reconsidered.
“If I call those reporters then I‘m on the hook to answer all their other questions they want,” she wrote.
Concludes Bailey after the episode: “The question we failed to ask was: What does this possibly have to do with being governor of Alaska? While it had nothing to do with Alaska, it had plenty to do with publicity. Fox News made this an ongoing story, giving it wall-to-wall coverage. Sean Hannity in particular latched on with both hands. With Sarah suddenly an outspoken supporter, he had gorgeous Prejean on one arm and sparkling Governor Palin on the other. He appeared a happy man.”
Palin wasn’t entirely divorced from local issues at the time, but her fixation on appearances veered into the absurd, Bailey writes.
When an Anchorage TV news station, KTUU, ran an online poll in May asking Alaskans if they agreed with her decision to reject federal stimulus dollars for energy, Bailey writes that Palin’s small inner-circle “invested time, energy, and emotion into linking our computers and utilizing our software into generating votes in favor.”
Refreshing the results to run up the votes, they emailed one another.
When an aide said Palin was initially leading in the unscientific survey, the governor responded: “Oh thank God!”
Sarah's mentorship promises to reap major rewards in media time AND in learning how to cook the books.
Bailey reveals that she didn’t even support her own eventual ticket-mate in the GOP presidential primary, recalling that in a January 2008 email Palin wrote: “Huck’s a good pick for me, just fyi.”And with the anti-Newt remarks, we see how the Tea Party has endeared itself to the populists of the land. Her last sentence was something I might have written.
Her distrust of Republican insiders was crystallized in a scathing e-mail she sent in June 2009.
After they couldn’t confirm her attendance at an event, the GOP congressional campaign committees rescinded their invitation for Palin to speak at their fundraising dinner that month in favor of Newt Gingrich. The Alaskan reacted by typing a scathing assessment of the former speaker and the national party to her team, in which she credited God for keeping her away from the Washington fundraiser.
“Yes, (Newt/GOP) are egotistical, narrow minded machine goons… but all the more reason God protected me from getting up on stage in front of 5000 political and media ‘elites’ to praise him, then it be shown across the nation.” Palin wrote in the e-mail.
“At some point Newt would have shown his true colors anyway and we would have been devastated having known we’d earlier prostituted ourselves up in front of the country introducing him and acting like that good ol’ rich white guy is the savior of the party,” she continued.
However, when she thanks God for saving her from the embarrassment of "nothing decent to wear"--well, that is NOT something I would write. But it is something I hear women say all the time here in DeMint country.
The concept that Almighty God micromanages all of our lives and has time to give a rats' ass about your clothes, well, doesn't that just sum it all up, folks? What kind of bizarre, ego-driven, TV-American narcissism is THAT?:
Palin went on to express another reason she was thankful to the almighty that she wasn’t attending the fundraising gala.Oh boy.
“Plus, I had nothing to wear, and God knew that too. Party machinery sucks. I can’t tell you how much I hate it - nothing ever changes - we went through it before and after the VP campaign,” she wrote. “I’ve gone through it all my career. We just don’t fit into it, and maybe we should thank God for that.”
And as I wrote here, working for Palin looks like one of the shittiest jobs in the world:
“As mentioned in an earlier chapter, getting Sarah to meetings and events was like nailing Jell-O to a tree,” Bailey wrote. “On the campaign trail and as governor, Sarah went through at least ten schedulers, with few lasting more than months. Nobody wanted the job because Sarah might fail to honor, at the last minute, the smallest commitments, and making excuses for her became a painful burden. In at least one instance, a scheduler quit after breaking down in tears; another left after being accidentally copied on an email from Sarah trashing her.”And she doesn't like government interference, dammit, in anything EXCEPT a woman's womb (where she inexplicably believes the government should set up shop):
It was, Bailey claims, a scheduling issue that ultimately prompted him to lose faith in Palin.
After committing to attend an Anchorage ceremony in honor of an abortion restriction in August 2009, Palin backed out just days before the well-publicized event, Bailey claims.
“Sarah spoke of an aversion to our no-smoking in restaurant and motorcycle helmet laws. As governor in September 2007, she wrote specifically, ‘I want to make sure DOT knows my position on helmet laws - I don’t support them.’ After alerting us to her aversion to these laws, Sarah then added, ‘Heck, I don‘t even believe in Click-it or Ticket seat belt laws, and I filmed the damn commercial for ‘em.’”The next President? The next Vice-President? Does that scare you? It should.
Please do not underestimate her, as the Republican Establishment also underestimated Haley.
Start trashing her now.