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"I Think People Will Get Tired of Him": Sarah Palin's Fall Shows the Limits of Media Obsession
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/02/for-donald-trump-sarah-palins-fall-shows-the-limits-of-media-obsession?utm_source=pocket-newtabBack in the before times of January 2015, when I was a reporter for CNN, I did a weekend live shot from the Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines, one of those political cattle calls where Republican presidential hopefuls take turns onstage professing their Christian faith before a crowd of people harvested from a Grant Wood painting, hoping to impress the state’s conservative activists. Most of the supposedly serious 2016 contenders had flown to Iowa: Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee. But the CNN anchor that day, Michael Smerconish, asked me a reasonable question about two attention-grabbing Republicans who were also there, Donald Trump and Sarah Palin, and whether they might run for president too. Like most Very Savvy political journalists at the time, I laughed off Trump’s appearance as just another thirsty White House tease. And having covered Palin up close since she was chosen as John McCain’s running mate, I knew her best shot at the Republican nomination was back in 2012.
Soon after the segment aired, CNN president Jeff Zucker, who is always watching, emailed me and a few other producers demanding that we not cover Trump or Palin, explaining that both Republicans were carnival acts, attention-seekers, two unserious distractions from the real presidential race to come. At the time, few in politics would have disagreed. I think about that moment from time to time, and not just because CNN’s position on covering Trump so famously changed once he actually became a candidate, delivering ratings galore. But the Iowa story is worth remembering, too, because of the way Trump and Palin were lumped together by the smart set as little more than a sad and desperate right-wing sideshow, when in truth, they were two of the most consequential political figures in American history.
These days Palin has receded to a historical footnote and a punch line for a news media that’s become even more cocooned in its urban bubble since 2008, with Trump now receiving most of the credit for upending the presumed order of national politics. But it was Palin who opened the door for Trump, the first politician to fuse together backlash politics and anti-elitism with the mighty American power of celebrity. “The impact that she has had on rejuvenating almost the Republican Party, it’s been unbelievable,” Trump said of Palin in 2008, soon after she was picked from obscurity to join McCain on the ticket. After McCain lost, Palin resigned from the governorship in Alaska but continued to gather strength as a fixture on the conservative political circuit, publishing a best-selling memoir, headlining Tea Party rallies, joining Fox News, and coming close to running for president in 2012. And she did most of it while bypassing the “lamestream” media by posting her musings and rants on Facebook for an enormous community of die-hard fans.
Like Trump, Palin had powers beyond the campaign trail: She wore a celebrity halo rarely seen on a politician. Her traveling circus in the fall of 2008 proudly embraced redneck America, Hank Williams Jr. and Gretchen Wilson, hunting and fishing, Carhartts and Walmart. Her crowds were rapturous. Rural Americans and working people who didn’t go to college saw her as one of their own, while liberals and journalists loved to mock her lack of sophistication and manner of speaking. It was a partisan culture clash that only gave Palin more strength. Tina Fey’s scornful impression of Palin on Saturday Night Live was only the beginning. After Palin came on the scene, as Nancy Isenberg recounted in her book White Trash, a history of class in America, Hollywood unleashed a crop of new TV shows that played off the redneck trope that Palin ushered into the mainstream: Swamp People, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Redneck Island, Duck Dynasty, Moonshiners, Appalachian Outlaws. Her family dramas became tabloid favorites. And Palin would go on, fittingly, to star in her own reality show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, produced by Mark Burnett, Trump’s beloved reality-show producer.
Soon after the segment aired, CNN president Jeff Zucker, who is always watching, emailed me and a few other producers demanding that we not cover Trump or Palin, explaining that both Republicans were carnival acts, attention-seekers, two unserious distractions from the real presidential race to come. At the time, few in politics would have disagreed. I think about that moment from time to time, and not just because CNN’s position on covering Trump so famously changed once he actually became a candidate, delivering ratings galore. But the Iowa story is worth remembering, too, because of the way Trump and Palin were lumped together by the smart set as little more than a sad and desperate right-wing sideshow, when in truth, they were two of the most consequential political figures in American history.
These days Palin has receded to a historical footnote and a punch line for a news media that’s become even more cocooned in its urban bubble since 2008, with Trump now receiving most of the credit for upending the presumed order of national politics. But it was Palin who opened the door for Trump, the first politician to fuse together backlash politics and anti-elitism with the mighty American power of celebrity. “The impact that she has had on rejuvenating almost the Republican Party, it’s been unbelievable,” Trump said of Palin in 2008, soon after she was picked from obscurity to join McCain on the ticket. After McCain lost, Palin resigned from the governorship in Alaska but continued to gather strength as a fixture on the conservative political circuit, publishing a best-selling memoir, headlining Tea Party rallies, joining Fox News, and coming close to running for president in 2012. And she did most of it while bypassing the “lamestream” media by posting her musings and rants on Facebook for an enormous community of die-hard fans.
Like Trump, Palin had powers beyond the campaign trail: She wore a celebrity halo rarely seen on a politician. Her traveling circus in the fall of 2008 proudly embraced redneck America, Hank Williams Jr. and Gretchen Wilson, hunting and fishing, Carhartts and Walmart. Her crowds were rapturous. Rural Americans and working people who didn’t go to college saw her as one of their own, while liberals and journalists loved to mock her lack of sophistication and manner of speaking. It was a partisan culture clash that only gave Palin more strength. Tina Fey’s scornful impression of Palin on Saturday Night Live was only the beginning. After Palin came on the scene, as Nancy Isenberg recounted in her book White Trash, a history of class in America, Hollywood unleashed a crop of new TV shows that played off the redneck trope that Palin ushered into the mainstream: Swamp People, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Redneck Island, Duck Dynasty, Moonshiners, Appalachian Outlaws. Her family dramas became tabloid favorites. And Palin would go on, fittingly, to star in her own reality show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, produced by Mark Burnett, Trump’s beloved reality-show producer.
A lot more at the linky dink.
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And take away the attention that the hearings are delivering and boom - it'll be 'Donald Who?" before summer - unless he has to begin making court appearances - or does a 'perp walk' in cuffs! 
