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The Sarah Palin e-mails

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by JayFarrar, Jun 16, 2011.

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  1. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

    So I got bored earlier and read about 600 of the Palin e-mails. They were from the summer of 2007.
    Thanks Washington Post!
    Anyway, just some random points and instant analysis.
    • Palin is way smarter than the character she currently plays on TV.
    • She's extremely knowledgeable on oil and gas issues and some of the international politics involved with that.
    • Her e-mails, the ones I read, paint a picture of someone who knew the local media and its ins and outs.
    • She seemed to work with the Anchorage, Juneau and AP print reporters extremely well as they would e-mail her direct with questions and she'd send back answers.
    • She often expressed frustration the reporters would know about state government issues before she did. This was mostly related to a special session that was in the process of being called.
    • She wasn't up to speed with social media or news websites and often had issues with a local Alaska blog knowing about scandals before the Anchorage paper. She also considered letters to the editor extremely important and would drop the hammer on department heads if a letter was critical.
    • She also insisted that her press people send letters to the editor in response to one previously published.
    • Talk radio was also important to her. I never saw a mention of any local or national TV.
    • She had a better understanding of the national media, particularly the conservative media, than one might think.
    • She was flattered by their courtship of her. She got a detailed report on a cruise ship that was bringing a buttload of conservative types to Alaska. Had all kinds of details and back story on people like, for example, Jonah Goldberg.
    • I think it was that cruise where Bill Kristol was smitten with her.
    • I don't know it was expense account reporting or what but the national media — The Times, Newsweek, etc — had reporters in Alaska even then and following her around
    • It seemed that she didn't consider national office a possibility, but a Senate run in the future seemed like a strong likelihood.
    • People in Alaska treated the governor's office like it was their personal problem solver and would send e-mails asking for help. More importantly, perhaps, was how often the governor's office would get involved with someone not paying child support or some such.
    • It took her a little time to put together her thoughts and if the question didn't need a simple yes or no answer she got in the weeds pretty quick.
    • She was also concerned with appearances and wouldn't let the governor's mansion staff replace a broken jacuzzi over fear it might cause a scandal.
    • Out of 600 or so e-mails, only one mentioned any member of her family, a daughter was basketball camp in Oregon and after that they went to Hawaii on vacation. Trig Palin was likely conceived during that family vacation but that's just a straight up guess.
    • Reality TV loved her even then and the crab fishing show was desperate to get her on regularly.
    • She really liked to gossip about the Murkowskis, who were having some scandals at the time.
     
  2. Point of Order

    Point of Order Active Member

    Where's the beef?
     
  3. HejiraHenry

    HejiraHenry Well-Known Member

    Well, of course, it won't take long for this thread to get locked.

    My impression is there must not have been a lot of smoking guns for that weird NYT/WashPost crowdsourcing project to suss out, or else Weiner's Wiener pulled all the oxygen out of the room over the last few days.
     
  4. Point of Order

    Point of Order Active Member

    Was Weiner's wiener a Bissell?
     
  5. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

    My point is that the Palin e-mails have jack and squat in them outside of some low-level gossipy stuff and Alaska issues.

    At least the ones I read and from what I gathered, the other e-mails were much of the same.

    A fair chunk of the e-mails were straight up boring. Form responses and lots of back and forth with one-word responses like "thanks."

    If anything, the e-mails make Palin seem really involved in state government and doing her best to keep up.
     
  6. HejiraHenry

    HejiraHenry Well-Known Member

    Jay, you are absolutely correct in your analysis. I just marvel at the resources poured into trying to get that "gotcha" moment, all of which fell short.

    Just imagine if the NYT and WaPo had applied the same crowdsourcing effort to, oh, I don't know, a 3,000-page health care reform bill that nobody could of read before voting on. Just sayin'.
     
  7. Point of Order

    Point of Order Active Member

    Good point HH, especially when if they wanted a "gotcha" they could just ask her what she reads or who Paul Revere warned.
     
  8. jlee

    jlee Well-Known Member

    The problem with the e-mails was that they were on her personal Yahoo account, and she fought disclosing them for that reason, IIRC.
     
  9. HejiraHenry

    HejiraHenry Well-Known Member

    I'm not taking the bait, mainly because I don't want to play any role in this thread getting locked. I can say "the history says she was right, after a fashion" and you'll say "she couldn't have possibly have known that," withou regard to the fact that neither of us can say for sure what she meant. And so on and so on and scooby dooby doo.

    Besides, I'm getting ready to file my 7,000-word analysis of a Bill Simmons bowel movement on the Grantland thread. Doody calls. I mean, duty calls.
     
  10. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

    I think the reason media outlets put so much into it was because Palin fought the release of the e-mails for so long and so hard.

    A reasonable person would think if she's trying so hard to keep people from looking, then something must be in them that would make the effort to find it, worth it.

    Besides, a kid's in prison for hacking her gov.palin@yahoo e-mail, which seemed to be the e-mail address that fed her Blackberry.

    I think people from either side of the aisle would agree that lots of smoke was there.

    But after reading the e-mails, and I say this as a lifelong Democrat, she could have made a pretty decent Secretary of Energy in a Republican administration. Then off to the Senate for a couple of terms and then she might have been ready to be a VP or, gasp, run for President.

    The other thing I'd note, her dealings with print reporters was good. Beat reporting tends to be rather genteel anyway. Despite her broadcast experience, she wasn't ready for the full contact sport that is national television reporting.

    And because her thought process isn't a quick one, everything becomes a gotcha question. The Couric one about what Palin reads turns into a train wreck. After a couple of hours skimming, I can say without a doubt Palin was reading closely the Anchorage and Juneau papers, the AP's state report, the oil trade's Petroleum News, Alaska news blogs and the Seattle Times, which I guess had an Alaska bureau at the time or still does.
     
  11. CarltonBanks

    CarltonBanks New Member

    It is a shame what they have done to this woman. She has come off looking pretty good in this entire email thing. And, to be fair, the Couric interview was creatively edited to say the least.

    Hopefully, for her sake, this will quell the witch hunt for a little while. I don't think she has any intention on running for president...think she is having a blast doing what she is doing right now. Good for her.
     
  12. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    What, exactly, have they "done" to her? And by "they", I mean the mainstream media, not some guy in a basement.

    And all she had to say for the Couric moment was that she read the Alaskan newspapers, and would read national web sites for news, and she would have been perfectly fine. Instead, she flubbed it, then blamed the reporter for her own screw-up.
     
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