VF nailed it this time. Vanity Fair author Todd Purdum has published a scathing article about Sarah Palin that I’d like to share with you. (Warning: the article is six pages long.)
Here are some of my favorite parts:
“One person familiar with the situation told me that Donatelli could not stand dealing with Palin’s political spokeswoman in Alaska, Meghan Stapleton, who has drawn withering fire from Palin friends and critics alike for being an ineffective adviser.”
“Walter Hickel, 89, a former two-term governor and interior secretary, and the grand old man of Alaska politics, who was co-chair of Palin’s winning gubernatorial campaign, in 2006, now washes his hands of her. He told me simply, ‘I don’t give a damn what she does.’”
“During the presidential campaign, Palin’s deep ignorance about most aspects of foreign and domestic policy provided her with a powerful political reason not to submit to interviews.”
“When she chooses to reveal herself, what she reveals is not always the same thing as the truth.”
“Some top aides worried about her mental state: was it possible that she was experiencing postpartum depression?”
“One longtime McCain friend and frequent companion on the trail was heard to refer to Palin as ‘Little Shop of Horrors.’”
“In every job, she surrounded herself with an insular coterie of trusted friends, took disagreements personally, discarded people who were no longer useful, and swiftly dealt vengeance on enemies, real or perceived.”
“It was in this environment that her ambition first found an outlet in public office, and where she first tasted the 151-proof Everclear that is power.”
“Palin has always been a party of one.”
“Palin was entitled to make the dismissals, and she variously justified them on the grounds of budget difficulties or the need for a team that she could be sure would support her efforts. But the Frontiersman accused Palin of confusing her election with a “coronation.””
“More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—“a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy”—and thought it fit her perfectly.”
“When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig’s condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God’s, and signed it ‘Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.’”
“What do I take away from this?” he (Bitney) asks. “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s just a lot of emotions and stuff. I find it’s frustrating dealing with Sarah, because it seems we’re always dealing with emotional crap and we never seem to be able to focus on the business at hand that needs to be done. I don’t know whether to blame her or pity her for all this emotional upheaval that we’re always going through with her.
Mamadance 