Palin Profile Reveals Facebook Ghostwriter & Spendthrift Ways

H

hermit

She's earned $13 million since the 2008 presidential race that shoved her onto the national stage, but Sarah Palin apparently is a crappy tipper. A new Vanity Fair profile of the former Alaska governor paints a picture of a woman who has skyrocketed to success -- stepping on staff, friends and family along the way -- but who is so deeply concerned about controlling her public persona that she hired a friendly blogger to write her much-ballyhooed Facebook posts.

The wide-ranging profile documents hotels where Palin stiffed bellhops; her demands during the presidential campaign and on her busy speaking circuit; tensions with residents in her home town; and Palin's fashion preferences (and includes a sidebar with more details on the RNC clothing flap) -- up to and including mentioning her use of Spanx and push-up bras. But after the more salacious details, Vanity Fair writer Michael Joseph Gross also drops strong suggestions there's something fishy with some of the political action committees paying Palin to boost candidates across the country -- but he doesn't quite nail it down.

This line from the profile sums up the theme of the piece:
A onetime gubernatorial aide to Palin says, "The people who have worked for her--they're broken, used, stepped on, down in the dust."

The most fascinating nuggets from the piece explore the many consultants Palin has paid to sharpen her image and help her as she (maybe) explores a 2012 White House bid. TPM took a close look at her spending this summer and found Palin spent nearly $400,000 on consultants, lobbying firms and the standard direct mail and fundraising firms politicians frequently use just in the second quarter.

Our piece detailed that Palin paid $22,000 to Rebecca Mansour's Aries Petra Consulting for "internet messaging," also known as posting on the Palin Facebook page. Previously identified by Politico as a "Los Angeles screenwriter and political neophyte whose creation of the popular cheerleading blog Conservatives4Palin (C4P) endeared her to Palin's inner circle," Mansour is described by Vanity Fair as "Palin's most unconventional hire."

Read the entire profile here.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/10/sarah-palin-201010?currentPage=all
 
Quote from hermit:

She's earned $13 million since the 2008 presidential race that shoved her onto the national stage, but Sarah Palin apparently is a crappy tipper.
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I read somewhere that Robert De Niro is also a crappy tipper.
 
The author of the blistering Vanity Fair profile on Sarah Palin says he wanted to write a positive piece, but was shocked by what he learned as he researched his story.

"The worst stuff isn't even in there," Michael Joseph Gross said on "Morning Joe" Thursday. "I couldn't believe these stories either when I first heard them, and I started this story with a prejudice in her favor. I have a lot in common with this woman. I'm a small-town person, I'm a Christian, I think that a lot of her criticisms of the media actually have something to them. And I think she got a bum ride, but everybody close to her tells the same story."

In the profile, Gross paints Palin as an abusive, retaliatory figure with an extreme ability to lie.

"This is a person for whom there is no topic too small to lie about," he said. "She lies about everything."

Asked about Palin's political future, Gross said it depends on what the media lets her get away with.

"If we decide to let her keep lying and getting away with it, she's gonna still be around," he said. "But if we start returning to the standard that a politician has to talk with people, and a politician has to tell the truth, then she's outta here, because she can't stand up to that."

Gross added that he takes exception to criticisms that he wrote a "hit piece" against Palin.

"I started this with every good intention toward her," he said. "I was just shocked and appalled at every step at what I found. And I wrote this story sort of against my will. It wasn't what I wanted to write, it wasn't what I wanted to find. It was what was forced on me by the facts."
 
The Cappy says it best:

Quote from CaptainObvious:

The more the left tries to minimize the Beck & Palin effect, the more desperate they look. Either Beck and Palin are irrelevant, or they're not. You can't have it both ways. Bottom line, the unwashed masses are pissed, and someone has to pay. That someone will be the party in power. Are Beck and Palin exploiting that? Sure they are, just like the left exploited the anybody but Bush sentiment. The merry-go-round continues.
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Quote from Lucrum:

I read somewhere that Robert De Niro is also a crappy tipper.
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Hmmm...

Like most people, self-important intellectuals don't like their cherished dreams and aspirations dismissed as fantasies. What really agitates them, though, is that they remember how effective that attractive, winsome fellow from non-elite Eureka College was in explaining how counterproductive, inefficient, and ultimately destructive Big Government is. Now intellectuals on the left are scared to death that the attractive, winsome gal from the non-elite University of Idaho has the same convictions as Reagan and the same common sense that Mises identified as the antidote to socialist nostrums.

The left can't stand the fact that Palin, like Reagan, isn't one of them. Like Reagan, she is not an "intellectual." She doesn't share what Thomas Sowell dubbed "the vision of the anointed" -- progressive elitists' unshakable faith in their grandiose plans for regimenting our lives. To leftist intellectuals, it's okay to have a president who thinks he visited 57 states, a vice president who has claimed that Franklin Roosevelt went on television to calm the people after the stock market crash of 1929 (no TV yet, and Hoover was president), and a Speaker of the House who has insisted that we must switch from fossil fuels to natural gas. All ignorance, error, and mental dullness can be forgiven as long as one subscribes to the political catechism, "The government must control economic activity." What is unacceptable, even evil, to them is someone like Palin, who doesn't subscribe to the same catechism, who just doesn't "get it."

Here is where Herod the Great enters the story. We read in the Gospel of Matthew that Herod feared any threat to his power; thus his vile order to slaughter male babies in the hope of killing off the one with the potential to mature into a leader who would threaten his hegemony. The political left is a modern Herod, desperate to halt Sarah Palin's political career now, before she can grow more formidable and possibly develop into her generation's Reagan.

Indeed, it has been amazing to see the scorn, vitriol, and even hatred directed toward this woman who dares to defy the left's narrow, preconceived notions of what political positions a female politician should be allowed to hold. It was comical to see how Democrats fell all over each other to distort Palin's autobiographical Going Rogue as an attack on John McCain. Why would Democrats rush to defend one Republican from an (alleged) attack by another Republican? Might it have something to do with the fact that they perceive McCain as a "good Republican" -- one who will compromise and cuts deals where Palin would not?

I have no idea what the future holds for Sarah Palin. It is indisputable, though, that the left regards her as its worst nightmare -- an articulate, attractive, effective communicator and advocate of conservative principles with Misesian common sense and Reaganesque potential. That is why she is the object of their Herod-like verbal thrusts today.
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She's a crappy tipper? You know, I wonder if she farts in her sleep? People need to know.
While this little side show circle jerk works for the Olberman and Maddow types, the rest of the nation is focused on the facts. The facts are one failed policy after another, and an administration which seems totally clueless and out of touch with the American people.
 
Quote from Gabfly1:

Not unless it's scripted. She has learned her lesson about ad-libbing.
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You mean like your fellow lover, Chris Matthews has said about Obama and his teleprompter:

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Associated Press is reporting that the author, Michael Joseph Gross, has admitted making a mistake in his piece.

Hermit, could you please tell us more?
 
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