How the Media Used to Treat Sarah Palin

After discussing with a friend, the horrid hit-piece from Michael Joseph Gross in this week's Vanity Fair, he reminded me of an old article published by a different magazine, from a different time.

Back in February 2008, Vogue featured a much different sort of article about Governor Palin. The piece was titled "Altered State" and it highlighted many different elements of the governor's life, both personal and professional. The beginning of the piece says a lot about who exactly Sarah Palin is as a person, and how the media has changed in regards to their treatment of her since then. The piece starts:

The editor of Alaska magazine had a problem. State governor Sarah Palin, with her historically high approval rating and natural good looks (one blogger called her Tina Fey's sexier sister), seemed a natural choice for the cover of his magazine. Problem was, the picture they had shot in her Juneau office showed Palin smiling. The official governor's portrait of her? Smiling. The pictures for her campaign against the incumbent Republican governor? Also smiling. That time she won the Miss Wasilla beauty contest 24 years ago? Probably smiling too.

This time, they were shooting her in her Anchorage office on the seventeenth floor of a downtown skyscraper overlooking the snow-covered Chugach mountains. "I don't want you to look mean," the editor told the governor when she arrived. "Just don't smile."

"OK." Palin looked skeptical. "I'll try." She folded her arms and looked straight into the lens. As the camera clicked, the corners of her mouth began to twitch.

"This is really hard for her," her spokesperson observed from the back of the room. "She is always smiling."

After a dozen or so clicks, the tension was too much. "OK," the editor relented. "Go ahead and smile."

"Thank you!" she answered, releasing the expression like a caged animal. Outside, the dying winter sun briefly lit the mountains with a rosy light and then was gone. "She really is a breath of fresh air," the editor said as the photographer packed up his equipment. "It feels like a new era in Alaska."

The rest of the article goes on to talk about Governor Palin's efforts to clean up Alaska's government, and her courageous decision to expose the antics she witnessed at the Oil & Gas Conservation Commission by members of her own party. It also talks a lot about her family life, including a trip over to her parents house by the writer. It is quite the contrast in character between the person interviewed by Vogue in 2008, and the person not interviewed, just seriously maligned by Vanity Fair in 2010. You can read the entire Vogue article here.

It's pretty clear at this point, that nobody with a serious or sane bone in their body believes anything Vanity Fair tried to sell with that garbage article. As has been noted throughout the day, even people on the left are shunning the eight pages of libel they published. I do hope Vanity Fair loses some readers over this episode. They don't deserve your hard-earned money, America! Lies are lies... Who wants to pay someone to lie to them?

I realize that Vogue and Vanity Fair are two different publications. However, I do not think it can be disputed that Governor Palin's treatment by the press dramatically changed the day she was announced as John McCain's running mate in 2008. The levels the media has sunk since to distort America's perception about her, is perhaps something that psychology majors should consider a study in. They are low-down, mean spirited, delusional, they attack her children, and they leave their own credibility in a pile of ashes in their quest.

Then they wonder why she won't sit down for an interview with them.

(Reminder H/T Gary Jackson)