Palin Emails Should Help Her Politically; Media Falls on Its Face Again (Updated)

There was outrage from her legions of supporters. Major media outlets were recruiting people to sift through 24,000 pages of emails that Sarah Palin wrote or received during her time as governor of Alaska to look for dirt. No other politician has ever been put under that kind of scrutiny. The mainstream media intention was obvious: find emails that would be damaging to Palin's political career and focus the public on them. The outcome, however, is turning out to be quite different.

Instead it has turned into the ultimate Wile E. Coyote moment for the mainstream media whose antics since Palin hit the national stage in 2008 have been as comical as what happens in the cartoon series "Road Runner." The mainstream media has tried to blow her up, drop boulders on her, get her to eat poison and trap her in ingenious contraptions involving catapults and boxes of TNT. Just as in the cartoon, the hapless media falls off cliffs, has anvils fall on their heads and is repeatedly blown up by hit stories and lies that keep backfiring.




The media coyotes even followed their Road Runner on the "One Nation" tour bus in as hilarious a fashion as the theme of the cartoon is. Now we have the emails. Allow the mainstream media to introduce themselves. Their name is mud.

How disappointing for the deranged it must have been when they woke up to this headline on Politico this morning: Sarah Palin emails provide no big bombshells. "It was the bombshell that wasn't..." Holly Bailey on Yahoo writes in an article titled Sarah Palin emails mostly confirm what was already known about the ex-governor.

Palin's emails will actually help her supporters portray her as an intelligent, engaged and effective executive as well as serve as an inside look at what went on while she was achieving her many accomplishments as a governor who had an 80% approval rating from the people.

Doug Brady writes at Conservatives4Palin, "Much to the media’s chagrin, the emails show a serious and highly effective executive who was in full control of her administration." The article concludes that Politico "is conceding that this surreal “colonoscopy” by the cartoonish mainstream media is backfiring and that the emails bolster the message in the soon to be released movie "The Undefeated."

The emails paint a picture of an extremely competent, observant and politically astute executive and leader. This could give strength and add more substance to arguments as to why she would be an effective president. She clearly demonstrates the political and intellectual wherewithal necessary to be a strong executive.

This leaves the complicit media scratching their heads. The best they could do with the emails is to post a front page article on Politico laced with opinion to try to portray the "good Palin" as someone from the distant past. Molly Ball writes that the emails "brought back the memory of a long-lost Palin: the popular, charismatic, competent woman of the people." She goes on to call the emails "reminders of a sympathetic figure who was not yet the brittle, divisive caricature Palin has become."

Ball concedes, however, that "If critics were hoping to see Palin revealed as a hypocrite, they’re out of luck. Her private statements are in line with her public ones..."

This blogger disagrees with Molly Ball's premise. The emails far from show a different Palin "before her darker tendencies — defensiveness, thin skin, grudge-keeping — hardened into tics." Instead, they give us great insight into the evolution of Sarah Palin as she went from being a local hero to being a national one. Palin is still a popular, charismatic, competent woman of the people. Molly, that has not changed. It is the perception of her that has changed.

The real reason why Alaskans turned on Palin is not because she changed, but because they didn't. When "mommy" went away to better herself and help Alaska get its name on the map, many acted like children who kick and scream when their mother is out of the room for too long. They should have been happy that their once favorite daughter was moving into a better position to showcase Alaska in such a way that the attention would help the people of the state have better lives.

Their reaction gave us an image of Alaska as a place filled with Levi Johnston types, wacky bloggers, crazy lady ethics violation filers and malcontents instead of the image Palin worked so hard to portray. Palin did much to present the beauty of Alaska and the self-reliant strength of its people not only in the example she brought to the main stage, but by getting people to become interested in the positive aspects of Alaska and its pioneering people because of her television show on The Learning Channel.

It's hard to say the Palin who ruthlessly and rightfully weeded out corruption in Alaska is different from the woman who seeks to do the same today on a national scale. Palin has always been a threat to the establishment since she walked into her first PTA meeting.

As for Palin's suspicion of the media, it's not paranoia as twisted writers would try to make it out to be. Someone who needed to keep on top of the local media to make sure they got the stories about her initiatives right and who has been so brutally beaten by the national press is quite justified in emails that demonstrate a desire to make sure that the record is straight.

Reading those emails reminds us of how good Sarah Palin was back then and how much bigger, more experienced and more knowledgeable she has become today.

As for the media, meep meep.


UPDATE: Read this post by Josh Painter. I think he says it all there.

It would indeed be sweet irony if the same media which has been trying to destroy Sarah Palin for nearly three years may, by overreaching, find itself largely responsible for undoing the same damage it inflicted upon Gov. Palin. The irony could only be made sweeter if she runs for the White House and wins the race.