Going Rogue: An American Life (104 page)

SARAH

PALIN

it was mOte convenient for the media to have all of us rhere at once. I thought it was a great idea. This reporter and her colleagues piled into the room, laden with notebooks and tape recorders.

It worked our very well. I encouraged the commissioners to chime in anytime, and I had three sheets of paper in front of me that gave the most recent data on energy prices and projections that I knew we’d address. Sharon was so pleased with the press confetence and thought this AP repotter brilliant for her suggestion-until we read her story claiming that I had to “rely on [my] commissioners and notes to answer questions.” Sharon read it and shook her head. She knew we’d been set up. Another time this same reporter stopped Kris and me in the Capitol hallway for a quick interview. She to discuss a

string of what she considered “failures,” including the sudden acceleration of ethics charges and the (illegal) leaking of those claims

the public. Pen and pad in hand, she asked, “How do you handle so many setbacks? How do you get through such a lousy week?”

“A ‘lousy’ week? Really?” I said. “My son just called from Iraq. He is safe today. We just found out the holes in Ttig’s heart are closing up on their own, thank God, and he won’t need open-heart surgery. My daughters are good, my husband is good. Alaska is healthy and strong. No, ma’am, it hasn’t been a lousy week-it’s been
great.”

Meanwhile, members of the national press continued to hang out in Alaska sniffing for tabloid stuff. In one early press conference we noriced that our local reporters were flanked by a couple of repOtterS from the Lower 48 who’d been hanging around Juneau in search of material for their own Sarah Palin book. We never shut our doors to anyone, so people of all kinds attended these press availabilities. We didn’t check credentials.

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Going Rogue

But glancing along the side wall, 1 recognized these particular folks as the same ones who had cornered Piper on her walk home from Harborview Elementary School and talked to her for who knows how long about who knows what. That day Piper had come to my office and said, “Mom, remember those reporters who came on the campaign plane with us? You know, the ones Nicolle said didn’t like us very much? They just interviewed me on the sidewalk.”

That was Piper’s last independent walk from school. Reporters from across the nation camped out at the end of our driveway in Wasilla and on the ice in front of our home. They incessantly called and stopped by my parents’ and siblings’ and inlaws’ homes and businesses. Hostile political operatives barraged Meg and her husband’s home, medical practice, and neighbors, and bugged my attorney, my doctor, and anyone else who might have anything to do with us. Every once in a while a friend or member would think they could trust a reporter, and so they’d talk to them. And almost 100 percent of the time Todd and 1 would get a call later from a panicked loved one. saying, “Geez! We can’t win! That reporter took what 1 said all out of context.” Or even worse, “1 never said that!” We assured them we knew, it was okay, it was just the unproductive game some chose to play.

Challenges with the traditional media were one thing, but in addition there wete the “new media”-the leftwing bloggets. The lines between the two were often blurred, with stories starting in the blogosphere and leapfrogging to old-media channels. And some of the strangest, the conspiracy-nut “Trig Truthers” were still at it, harassing my attorney and my doctor. 1 loved my dad’s straight talk on the subject when he had to respond to one Truther: “1 know Trig is hers, dumbass. 1 was there when he popped out!”

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SARAH

PALIN

When the bloggers weren’t busy pushing

tales, they would

post threatening stories about any number of looming scandals that would drive me out of office. Such threats were meant to wear at our credibility, so people would believe that I always

on the brink of political destruction. During a trip to central Texas for a gasline meeting in June 2009, Meg broke the news about one such Internet rumor, though I had a hard time hearing her thtough her peals of laughter. A group of leftwing bloggers had been yakking about porn pictures and videos of me that they threatened would soon be released to the public.

”And these sexy videos were supposedly shot between
which
pregnancies?” I asked.

Every action we took-or didnt take-was fodder for the na, tional media.
It
was a pathetic and chilling thing to watch because I knew we weten’t the first this had happened to, and won’t be the last-until Americans say
enough.

I don’t like to hear people complain; I am the first to say, “Buck up or stay in the truck.” You have a choice about how to react to circumstances. But I will state this complaint for the record: what used to be called “mainstream” national media are, in many respects, worthless as a source of factual information anymore. The sin of omission glares in their reporting. Perhaps national press outlets just don’t have the resources anymore to devote to balanced coverage. Perhaps they’ve all just given up on themselves, so we’ve given up on them, too, except to treat their shoddy reporting like a car crash-sometimes you just have to look. The time has come to acknowledge that it is counterfeit objectivity the liberal media try to sell consumers. A period in the great American experiment has passed. We are moving into a new, more intelligent realm to gather information differently in order to hold our • 348

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