COMM 317: 'Palinpalooza' - all Palin, all the time - the press and the 'incubator of civilization'

I really wanted to let it rest. At least for a couple of days. But then ex-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin blasted Newsweek - and blasted herself right back in the headlines, perhaps not by accident, while she was at it - when the magazine ran a sexy magazine cover picked up from a runners' magazine. Or allegedly sexy. Or something. (If you haven't seen the cover, and/or want to make up your own mind, link for one of the few unbiased reports on the cover and Palin's reaction to it.) So there she was this morning, right back at the top of the Google news page's aggragator. Right before she headed out for her first book signing in Grand Rapids, Mich.

So, OK, I'm sucked back in.

I hate to admit it, especially perhaps to myself, but I'm a sucker for Sarah Palin stories. She's like the the boy in the balloon, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the late Michael Jackson, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears' escapades in between trips to rehab and comeback concerts. In fact, maybe she's a lot like Britney Spears.

At least they both keep coming back, and reportedly they're both making money hand over fist.

Besides: I do have this excuse: All the coverage of Palin's comeback tour - OK, it's a book tour - can be considered as goods on sale in the marketplace of ideas.

Or can it?

How does all this contribute to American political life?

I like the comments on Alaska Mudflats, a left-of-center political blog written by "AKMuckraker," the pen name for a blogger in Anchorage who has chronicled Palin's career - along with the rest of Alaska politics - and built, almost singlehandedly, a virtual community of "Mudflatters" worldwide that raises money for flood-stricken Alaskan villages and plugs other good works for liberal causes.

AKMuckraker has been blogging her reaction to Palin's new book "Going Rogue" page by page. When the Newsweek cover came out, she took time off from that to offer what I think is one of the better analyses of the cover art. Did I say "better?" Maybe what I mean is I agree with it:

After blogging two chapters of Going Rogue, and getting up and rubbing my eyeballs, shaking out my arms, brushing my teeth and scrubbing my brain vigorously with a Brill-O pad, I clicked around to see what ELSE might be happening today in the news that didn’t have to do with Sarah Palin. So, what’s on the front page of Yahoo News right now? Sarah Palin.

AKMuckraker doesn't have a problem with it. Or if there's a problem, it's not Newsweek's problem:

I think it’s the perfect image for the cover. Why? Because the title of the article is “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah?” And behold, the problem. She has no boundaries, and no concept of how she is perceived by others, or why no governor should pose in short shorts, leaning on a flag in front of a blue star banner with a bumpit and makeup for a photo that makes her look like a cupcake.

And this:

So let me pass on a word of advice to all budding politicians out there. If you don’t want to look like a mindless patriotic cupcake, then don’t pose for pictures posing like a mindless patriotic cupcake. Just a suggestion.

So ... is Newsweek "an incubator of civilization" here?

Is Palin?

Think it over: The answer may be a little more complicated than it first appears.

Elsewhere on the Mudflats, there's a very nice story about how AKMuckraker went over to a WalMart in Anchorage to buy Palin's book the morning it came out. It has some lovely pictures of the WalMart and ravens ("dumpster ducks") scrounging in its parking lot.

Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post can't help himself either. In today's column he says, and I agree, "The media are going rogue." Kurtz explains:

They just can't help themselves. Journalists are addicted to Sarah Palin. Some love to hate her, some love to love her, all love to dissect or defend her.

Oh, they've tried to generate the same emotion for the public option, for the Afghanistan options, but sadly, that doesn't produce the same level of excitement. No thrill up the leg. No argument about women and sexism. No Tina Fey. No newsmagazine cover with a leggy ex-governor.

Palin is undeniably a crossover hit: a woman, a Republican, a politician, a hunter, a hockey mom, an Alaskan, a media critic, a cultural force, a creationist, the mother of a Down syndrome baby. There's something for everyone to argue about. Hers is a rise-and-fall-and-possible-comeback story.

Even the right is divided. David Brooks says Palin is a "joke"; the Weekly Standard crowd loves her. So you have left-right warfare and right-on-right ridicule.

And it does sell papers. Kurtz suggests it sells more than newspapers. He adds:

Does Palin pay a price for taking on those who buy ink by the barrel or have satellite uplinks? In some ways, yes, but since the media love focusing on the media, she winds up getting even more column inches and airtime (to which I've just contributed). Journalists are grateful for such a colorful and divisive subject. And that means the Palinpalooza will continue for some time to come.

This makes it two days in a row for Kurtz. In Tuesday's column he put it like this:

I contend that Palin is now moving into full-time celebrityhood. Yes, she wants to influence the political debate, even while making money and rebuilding her brand from the tarnishing of '08. But she is not acting like someone who wants to be president. She is acting like someone who wants to be a star. That's why her first interview was with Oprah.

In the same column Kurtz quoted blogger Tina Brown of the Daily Beast as saying Palin's book tour is "one of the all-time great hoochie coochie dances" and suggesting, "The media are dying for relief after three months of health care, Afghanistan, and the economic slump."

Which reminds me of Jack Shafer, media critic for Slate.com, who said when Palin first hit the national scene at last year's Republican convention, "the press scented the lard-fried Snickers bar [of a story] that was Palin" and dropped more substantive coverage.

I think there's something to that: As journalists, we like conflict and controversy, and Palin serves up great big steaming plates of of it all the time. It's a lot more fun than being an "incubator" for "civilization."

Or is that how we incubate our civilization in America?