Sarah Palin: Unwilling Media Starlet or Skillful Career Woman?

Throughout the past year, Sarah Palin has been a key character in various political blogs and media outlets. When John McCain announced that the Alaska Governor would be his vice presidential running mate in August 2008, news sites around the world exploded with nonstop Palin coverage. No aspect of her life went unexamined, with everything from her political opinions to her teenage daughter's pregnancy becoming front page material. 
 Today, the once-mysterious vice presidential candidate has become more accustomed to the exploitative aspects of political fame. This summer, she announced that she would be resigning as governor of Alaska in a supposed attempt to shield her family from the invasive press.

In spite of her recent career change, Palin has been more active than ever in the public eye, taking on a major commercial tour to promote her newest campaign: a book about her life. The book, entitled Going Rogue, discusses her vice presidential campaign and experience under the media's scrutinizing gaze. Going Rogue discusses now-infamous moments from the campaign, including Palin's botched interview with Katie Couric and prank call from a radio DJ pretending to be Nicolas Sarkozy. Palin lines the book with innocent explanations for why she was portrayed as a “villain” by the evil, biased media.
 Clips of some of Palin’s biggest bloopers can be found on YouTube.com, along with various other montages chronicling Palin's most unflattering moments. With the sheer amount of anti-Palin websites and groups scattered across the Internet, I would venture to say that Palin opponents are as passionate and dedicated to their cause as Obama supporters. It makes it difficult for Palin to truly argue that her poor public image was a result of biases in the media; the power of the fragmented media era is that interview clips and unedited answers are available to the public at the click of button.

Although Palin has publicly spoken out against the media attention her and her family have received throughout the past year, her recent actions have given a different message. With her new book has come a media blitz and major tour of press circuits across the country. Palin has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show and has made several public statements about her recent feud with David Letterman regarding comments he made about her daughter. Her actions clearly contradict her supposed disapproval for media frenzies, with her new book and publicity tour reading as a hungry quest for increased fame. It makes me wonder whether or not she was ever really in it for the politics; was her campaign truly a quest to remodel America's values and policies, or was it merely a stepping stone to fame? Her recent behaviors are more representative of an aspiring B-list celebrity on a quest for higher fame than a devoted politician fighting for social change. The ease with which she dropped her responsibilities as governor of Alaska and embarked on a media tour suggest an ultimate desire for public attention; the supposedly "private" politician turned author even has her very own Twitter account! In this day of the fragmented era, is it even possible for public figures to maintain any semblance of privacy, or are they all eventually destined to become fixtures of the media industry? 


-Sarah