Yellow Journalism of "Vanity Fair" Exposed

As if it is any surprise to any of our regular readers, I am a fan of Gov. Sarah Palin. In fact the events of the last six months do tell us that someone with a very slim resume' (two working years in the US Senate) has made a LOT of mistakes. Yet let's not forget that Palin's resume' was thicker than Obama's and she was running as the VP.

I would not mind seeing Palin, over the next year and a half, gradually build her public persona with speeches (as she has recently) that add a little more heft to her profile. And then perhaps take a shot at running for President. However, I am not ready to anoint her and go "all in" just yet.

That said, there is a difference between a "wait and see" attitude and the "Palin Derangement Syndrome" (PDS) we are seeing from the hyperactive moonbat left. The latest is on display in this mockery of a profile piece in Vanity Fair magazine that is supposed to pass as "journalism."

Fortunately Jim Geraghty has read the entire screed for us and walked us through some of the more outrageous aspects of the Vanity Fair piece. I can't help but think that a piece as poorly written as this would draw quite a bit of criticism from a high school journalism teacher, and somehow VF saw fit to publish more than 9,000 words?

Here is a fair bit of what Geraghty had to say in mocking the piece.

Whatever her political future, the emergence of Sarah Palin raises questions that will not soon go away. “What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded?”

I’m still looking for any quote from Palin at any time where she expressed pride in what she does not know. The closest we come to in the article is an anecdote in which she tells a gubernatorial rival that she’s amazed at his command of “facts, figures, and policies” but then looks into the audience and wonders whether any of it really matters. We don’t know which “facts, figures, and policies” she’s referring to, but we have all seen detail-heavy speakers incapable of communicating a core message. Keep in mind that the current president was elected on a core message of “hope,” “change” and “yes we can.”

What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life?

Again, four years in the Senate, two of which were spent campaigning, is considered proper preparation for the presidency; two years as governor is somehow scandalously little experience to be vice president.

Her first trip to Washington since the election was to attend the dinner of the Alfalfa Club, an elite group of politicians and businesspeople whose sole function is an annual evening in honor of a plant that would “do anything for a drink.”

Ah. How the group got its name is very important to this story; otherwise it might that Palin appeared at a traditional get-together of prominent political figures, instead of the insinuation that she's hanging around with a bunch of lushes. The fact that President Obama spoke to the group* is strangely omitted.

Also with Coale’s help, Palin formed the grandiosely named Alaska Fund Trust, to defray a reported half million dollars in legal expenses arising from a slew of formal ethics complaints against her in her home state—prompting yet another formal complaint, that the fund itself constitutes an ethical breach.

The fact that Palin is now 15 for 15 in having those “formal ethics complaints” dismissed as groundless would seem to be somewhat relevant. Come on, man. You can think Sarah Palin is a terrible governor, and should never have been McCain’s running mate, etc., and still think these frivolous complaints are an expensive waste of everyone’s time.

Palin is unlike any other national figure in modern American life—neither Anna Nicole Smith nor Margaret Chase Smith but a phenomenon all her own.

Okay, admit it. You just wanted to get the name “Anna Nicole Smith” into this piece.

The clouds of tabloid conflict and controversy that swirl around her and her extended clan—the surprise pregnancies, the two-bit blood feuds, the tawdry in-laws and common-law kin caught selling drugs or poaching game—give her family a singular status in the rogues’ gallery of political relatives. By comparison, Billy Carter, Donald Nixon, and Roger Clinton seem like avatars of circumspection.

Tell me that when a Palin relative performs a rhythm and blues show in Pyongyang, North Korea.

Palin worked hard, and the results were adequate. Palin’s winking “Can I call you Joe?” performance against Biden was nothing like a disaster.

In this kind of a profile, this is an admission that she won the debate.

In fact, it seems to have emboldened her enough that the next day she openly voiced disagreement with the McCain team’s decision to pull out of active competition in Michigan.

Indeed, she outrageously voiced her disagreement by responding to the Michigan pullout with, “Oh, come on, do we have to?” Mutiny! (By the way, that early pullout and its effect on the state Republicans’ morale is partially blamed for an abysmal showing for the GOP in down-ticket races.)

You can read the rest of Geraghty's article here. It is well worth it.

Whether you like Palin or not is, of course, a subjective opinion. However insipid tirades such as this simply diminish the failing art of the journalistic profile. This was an opportunity lost by VF.