(Community Matters) Sarah Palin expose in Vanity Fair by Michael Joseph Gross
There’s a long and detailed version of what they had to say, but there’s also a short and simple one: anywhere you peel back the skin of Sarah Palin’s life, a sad and moldering strangeness lies beneath.
Such falsehoods never damage Palin’s credibility with her admirers, because information and ideology are incidental to this relationship. Palin owes her power to identity politics, pitched with moralistic topspin. She exploits the same populist impulse that fueled the career of William Jennings Bryan—an impulse described by one Bryan biographer as “the yearning for a society run by and for ordinary people who lead virtuous lives.”
Those who once felt close to Palin have followed her public transformation with a confused range of emotions. The common denominator is sadness. “People who loved Sarah Palin are disappointed,” said one woman in Wasilla, “because they found out that Sarah Palin loves Sarah Palin most of all.”
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