Sarah Palin might be right about the media. After watching the first installment of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" on TLC and ruminating on what was seen and heard, it's hard to dismiss the thought that I might personally be saddled with an old-fashioned, lamestream media prejudice.
This realization didn't hit immediately, of course. This realization took some thought. Sometimes you need to let the yeast of inspiration work on the sights and sounds of observation. It's a little like brewing beer. What you have when you first put the malt, hops and yeast together is a mix of malt, hops and yeast.
The mix needs to sit and ferment for a time before the taste of the finished product fully develops. The same might be said for one's take on a book, movie or, in this case, television show. First impressions are merely that: first impressions.
My first impression of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" was that Alaska is spectacular, which I knew, and that Sarah Palin oohs and aahs and my-gollys a lot, which I didn't know. Possibly this is a new thing.
She didn't seem to ooh and aah back when she actually did interviews with the Alaska media, but it's been years since she's had time for that, which should have clued me in on something but didn't.
It took "Sarah Palin's Alaska" to wake me up. The show has produced a realization personally shocking in its simplicity: Sarah Palin has become all about Sarah Palin.
I know, I know, this should seem obvious, but it's not if you're saddled with old-fashioned, lamestream media prejudice. As a reporter in Alaska since the mid-1970s, my Alaska has always been about Alaskans. All of them are far more interesting than I am or, for that matter, than most of the lamestream media types with whom I've worked over the years.
This prejudice toward others over self seems something common to other writers, too, and to previous Alaska celebrities. The television series "Jay Hammond's Alaska" wasn't all about Jay Hammond (Hammond was Alaska's legendary "Bush Rat" governor, for those unfamiliar with state history).
Stud Terkel's "Working" (Terkel was a legendary Chicago writer and lamestream broadcaster who penned what has been called this country's definitive book about labor, for those unfamiliar with the history of the media) was so not about Stud's Terkel that his name wasn't even in the title; it wasn't even in the subtitle, which read simply "People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do."
Not even Larry Csonka's "North to Alaska," now called "NAPA North to Alaska" to identify the sponsor, can claim to be all about the NFL football legend. The show is built around Csonka, but it's mainly about Alaskans and Alaska. Csonka travels around the state to introduce viewers to real Alaska characters and real Alaska places.
Sarah Palin, on the other hand, travels around the state to introduces viewers to, well, Sarah Palin and, well, the struggles of Sarah Palin, and, ah, the problem-solving skills of Sarah Palin and the Palin family. The people of Alaska (not to mention the critters) are bit players in the story of Sarah Palin, and the state merely a backdrop because, really, it's all about Sarah Palin.
Consider how the Palins seem to have (or at least had) "Right there in the next-door neighbor's yard, our new neighbor ... an author who's writing a book about us," as Sarah describes her 'hood when she sits down and stares into the camera.
'Who is this neighbor?', my old-fashioned, lamestream media prejudices lead me to ask. Palin doesn't say. Did she forget the who, what, when, where, how training she should have gotten as a communications major focusing on journalism at the University of Idaho way back when? Or is it just that an exploration of who this "guy" is might distract attention from what "Sarah Palin's Alaska" is all about -- Sarah Palin.
The "guy," as Palin calls her neighbor, is somebody "stuck inside writin' an ugly book."
It's unclear in watching the video whether this is a judgment on a particular book or all books in general. Palin is, after all, as she later explains, a TV person:
"We've got a few things on the plate today. I am getting ready to do a couple of Fox News hits, and I am anticipating perhaps what they will ask me." And she then tells teenage daughter Willow "it would be very valuable if you go over there (to the TV studio) with Todd and you guys learn a couple of those buttons to push ... please. That or you can go find me something to wear real quick."
Instead of spending her time "anticipating perhaps what" Fox News might ask the country's newest authority on the Federal Reserve, might not it have been more interesting for Palin to take a cameraman next door and ask the "guy" what sort of book he is writing and why? The "guy" is, or was until he moved, author Joe McGinniss. McGinniss has written some best sellers, the first of which was "The Selling of the President." It detailed the marketing of Richard Nixon on his way to a successful presidential bid in 1968. Palin, who is believed to have some interest in the presidency herself, might actually have been able to have an interesting conversation with McGinniss about that book.
Then again, some silly intellectual discussion about a book might have taken the focus ever so slightly off "Sarah Palin's Alaska" which is about, yes, Sarah Palin with a nod here and there to other members of the family:
"So Willow's a typical teenager," Sarah tells the camera, "and, ah, she's probably a lot more interested in socialization and hanging out with friends than she is in doing housework." Like, duh, who isn't? Is there someone who puts housework at the head of the list of things they enjoy doing?
Does Sarah Palin really believe the observation that teenagers don't like doing housework so important she needs to roll it into "Sarah Palin's Alaska"? Or is this what you're stuck with when your Alaska is all about you?
Then again, I confess, this could be my old-fashioned, lamestream media prejudice kicking in again. It's a prejudice against the Palinesque idea that 'it's all about me'. I find other people more interesting than the guy in the mirror. I know the guy in the mirror and his stupid stories. The stories of others are new and interesting.
I wrote a book about some others called "Graveyard of Dreams -- Dashed Hopes and Shattered Aspirations Along Alaska's Iditarod Trail" and took it as the highest form of compliment when David A. James wrote a review for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner saying this:
As an old-fashioned, lamestream media type in Alaska, my goal has always been to keep the 'I-me-my' crap out of the writing as much as possible, even when working in the first person. Frankly, I hate the I-me-my style: "I sneaked into the church. I sat in the back. I heard the priest say Mass. I watched the parishioners pray. I listened to the airplanes flying over the church. I, yi, yi!"
Unfortunately, I-me-my is now in vogue. The I-me-my crap is all over the place these days. Some journalistic friends even advised it was a mistake not to write myself into "Graveyard of Dreams." I couldn't do it. I thought the book should be about the back-of-the-packers from Iditarod 2010 -- the people who sacrificed so much to chase a dream -- not about some dumbass reporter who followed them along the trail on a snowmachine. But maybe this is an outdated idea.
Maybe Sarah Palin is onto something in chasing the idea that seems common to some of that cohort born in the 1960s, raised in the comfort of the post-Vietnam 70s and the all-about-me '80s. Palin sometimes seems almost devoted to turning on its head President John F. Kennedy's famous inaugural plea: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
For Palin, who quit public service halfway through her first term as governor, the motto seems more: "Ask not what you can do for Alaska, ask what Alaska can do for you."
So far, Alaska has made her rich. And by that standard, maybe there is something to Sarah Palin being all about Sarah Palin. Financially, it appears to work well, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Maybe her true next goal is to "ask not what I can do for the country; but ask what the hell the country can do for me." That would be the perfectly anti-Democrat thing for rebellious Tea Party Republican Palin to do, wouldn't it? (Don't any of you dare tell her that Kennedy was more like a practical conservative than like the European-liberal style Demos of today.)
Still, socially and intellectually, it's more than a little troubling to think a woman who keeps hinting she wants to lead the country is all about, well, herself. Then again, I admit, this sort of worry does reflect an old-fashioned, lamestream media prejudice I didn't even realize I had until "Sarah Palin's Alaska" helped me spot it.
Unfortunately, it's not, I confess, my only prejudice: I hate stupid. I'm not much on lazy. I have a bit of problem with inconsiderate, and I don't like liars. I could go on here, but I won't. The list starts sounding too much like the Ten Commandments.
Contact Craig Medred at craig@alaskadispatch.com.