From the UK’s Telegraph:
To an extent, the emails remind Americans of the person they saw take the state at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota nearly three years ago – refreshing, plain-speaking, open and uncomplicated.
Since then, her image has hardened into one of a brittle, even paranoid, politician who seethes with resentment, feels aggrieved and entitled and is intent on pursuing celebrity even at the expense of her family.
Mrs Palin as a person has become so remote that it is hard for to assess how much, if any, of that widely-held caricature has a basis in truth. The email release could mark the end of a chapter of what conservatives have termed “Palin Derangement Syndrome”. Her enemies in the media appear to have overplayed their hand.
Expressing a sentiment that will resonate with many, Greta Van Susteren, a Fox News anchor who is close to Mrs Palin, argued that she had been subjected to “a media colonoscopy” by news organisations on “a mission to destroy”.
With a film entitled The Undefeated, chronicling Mrs Palin’s rise to prominence, about to air, the former Alaska governor is doubtless hoping that harsher perceptions of her can be blunted.
Probably the person who has damaged her most, apart from perhaps the CBS anchor Katie Couric who elicited blank stares when she asked what Mrs Palin read, was Tina Fey, the Saturday Night Live comedienne and impersonator.
It was Fey who seared into the popular imagination the Palin phrase: “I can see Russia from my house!” Mrs Palin had never said any such thing but it encapsulated the feeling that she was frivolous and lacked any foreign policy credentials.
Three days later, a staffer called Patrick Galvin emailed Mrs Palin saying: “My suggestion is you offer to go on SNL and play Tina Fey, and you interview her as she plays you.”
Fey’s impersonation was so powerful that the two women are inseparable in some minds. Fox News, for which Mrs Palin works on a lucrative contract as a commentator, recently aired a picture of fey instead of Mrs Palin by mistake.
Perhaps now might the time for Mrs Palin to take up Mr Galvin’s suggestion.
Read the whole thing here.
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