The newspaper industry unfurled

I admit. I haven’t worked in the industry for decades. I don’t concretely know what sells newspapers and what doesn’t. I know the direction the industry is going, and I know some strategies for luring potential readers to slip their hands into their pockets, find a couple quarters and deposit accordingly. But do any of us in the industry actually know what sells papers? Is it Godzilla-esque pictures or headlines? Teasers? Coverage on the issues that matter most to them?

I’m a word guy. I think well-crafted, well-reported stories are more important to fulfilling our service to the community than pictures or gigantic headlines. Especially in this era of “bigger is better” and less (content) is more, I suppose I’m in the minoritythere.

But the truth is this: we are living in an era where Reading — and its cousin, Learning — are not just dying, but are becoming taboo. Sure, Joe Schmoe reads, but it’s a headline here, a snippet there. The ability and desire to dig deep into the written word, to dig deep into complex issues has long-since escaped us. And that’s why the written word, the printed press, is slowly nailing itself to a cross. It really is a self-sacrifice. Newspapers still claim to be the authority on local issues ranging from zoning to immigration to water authorities and crime, but the nation’s leading papers — The New York Times being the exception … because it can — do their utmost to bury that important content inside the newspaper, thus making the front page appear like some daily Michelangelo painting, replete with teasers, huge pictures and giant headlines. But, consequently, my life calling is not to graphics and pictures, though I’m adept to these things, but to words on a page. Still, I play along.

Why have even the nation’s largest papers succumbed to such devices? I offer The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as a prime example. The Anderson Independent-Mail as another, which, consequently, has seemingly banished copy altogether from its front page.

This, because the economic situation at many newspapers is that bad, thanks to the 24-hour news cycle on cable television and the general dumbing down of America. Continually, we hear about buyouts, restructuring, etc. within the industry’s leading papers. Photos and graphics become necessary in order for newspaper to compete and not be drowned out in the blare.

Obviously, this speaks to a larger issue: that of our Red Bull-infused, spastic society. And admittedly, I get caught up in the great and rabbit race to nowhere. Frequently, I will catch myself surfing online, and — oooh — something else comes up that I might like to check out, thus diverting my attention from whatever I originally was seeking information about. What was it? I can’t remember. It’s maddening. In another post, I quoted Kurt Cobain on television:

I hardly write any stories and I don’t work on my songs quite as intently as in the past. You know why??? Television Television is the most evil thing on our planet. Go right now to your TV and toss it out the window, or sell it and buy a better stereo. — “Journals,” Kurt Cobain

I posit that the Internet is the new television.

Have any of you heard of The Spectator? It was a short-lived publication in the early-18th century. It was published in an era where coffee houses were hubs of political and societal conversation and learning. People then read as if their lives depended on it, and often, they did. Television, since the late 1930s has served to muck that up. The Internet has mucked it up further. I would argue that the Internet is actually more productive for the educational betterment of society than television, but neither wins a gold star.

Simply, I wish folks today read as if their lives depended on it. We simply have to promote a society that is bent on making reading the printed word a priority. Why? Because, as convenient and good as it may be, the Internet isn’t ironclad. Books in hard copy form are ironclad. Government documents in hard copy form are ironclad. But once they reach the Internet or e-mail, they can be manipulated at will by people who know more than you about Web site security. By way of example, my entire blog www.jeremystyron.com, which is on a separate server, completely went down for a few hours yesterday I can only assume, by a hacker.

I’m not optimistic that such a society will emerge in the near future — our society will continue wind-blown into its own technological tailspin — but I am committed to at least trying, in as much as I can, to focus people to more hard copy learning. I say that while admitting that any kind of learning and reading, virtual or not, is benefitial.

The most efficient studying takes place, I feel, not when one is, in tandem, listening to music, playing an online solitaire game and reading some essay for class, but when one is sitting upright at a kitchen table, hunched over a book — with nothing as a distraction — with, perhaps, only a cup of coffee as company. Such a commitment will assist in building a society again more focused on the printed word, one more focused on dissecting and vetting the complex issues that confound us.

Negative ads: Why do we put up with them?

These campaign ads are getting harder and harder to watch. Check out this:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JoFVoPCMfg]

And then this:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK3Y1KPzW9k

And read how McCain ads have been debunked time and time again from The Washington Post’s E. J. Dionee:

Does the Truth Matter Anymore?

This is not false naivete: I am genuinely surprised that John McCain and his campaign keep throwing out false charges and making false claims without any qualms. They keep talking about Sarah Palin’s opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere without any embarrassment over the fact that she once supported it. They keep saying that Barack Obama will raise taxes, suggesting he’d raise them on everybody, when Obama’s plan, according to the Tax Policy Institute, would cut taxes for “about 80 percent of households” while “only about 10 percent would owe more.” And as Sebastian Mallaby pointed outin his recent column, Obama would cut taxes for middle-income taxpayers “more aggressively” than McCain would.

And now comes a truly vile McCain adaccusing Obama of supporting legislation to offer “‘comprehensive sex education’ to kindergartners.” The announcer declares: “Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family.”

Margaret Talev of McClatchy newspapers called the ad a “deliberate low blow.” Here’s what she wrote in an excellent fact check: “This is a deliberately misleading accusation. It came hours after the Obama campaign released a TV ad critical of McCain’s votes on public education. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama did vote for but was not a sponsor of legislation dealing with sex ed for grades K-12. But the legislation allowed local school boards to teach ‘age-appropriate’ sex education, not comprehensive lessons to kindergartners, and it gave schools the ability to warn young children about inappropriate touching and sexual predators.”

Is McCain against teaching little kids to beware of sexual predators?

McCain once campaigned on the idea that the war on terrorism is the “transcendent” issue of our time. Now, he’s stooping to cheap advertising that would be condemned as trivial and misleading in a state legislative race. Boy, do I miss the old John McCain and wonder what became of him. And I wonder if the media will really take on this onslaught of half-truths and outright deception.

UPDATE: I wrote this post late Tuesday night. I’m glad to see the story on the front page of today’s Post begin to take up what will be an ongoing imperative in this campaign.

I starkly remember speeches where both McCain and Obama said they wanted to run clean campaign. While Obama attempted to stay above the fray for as long as possible, to keep afloat — because negative ads and character flaws are apparently what the American people respond to the most, truth or no truth — he had to go on the offensive. I contend Obama is still farther away from the perpetual political gutter than McCain, a man whose entire campaign was to be based on honor and uprightness. So, this begs the question: how does McCain continue on without his campaign folding under the shear weight of smeardom? Why do we put up with it? Why do Americans respond to these types of ads? Why do we insist politicians “go negative?” And most puzzling: Why do we reward them for doing so — McCain seems to pick up speed the more negative he goes, while Obama had to go negative to keep up — and punish those who keep to the issues themselves?

The short answer lies somewhere here: in the busyness, laziness, naivete or ignorance of many. Each of these seems to flow from the other. Busyness is really not an excuse for not being informed about an election that will determine who sits at the highest seat in the land, in this election or any other. Laziness is a symptom that’s hard to topple. Many simply watch the ads on TV or see a clip on the news, watch squash-fests like Hannity and Combs and assume they are well-informed.

To be more informed, I suggest taking 15 or 30 minutes per day and search the county’s leading newspaper’s Web sites, to first, not only get the basis of what happened politically that day, but to read opinion columns and the unsigned editorials of the major papers. These would include: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Los Angeles Times and, at this critical time, the Anchorage Daily News. If you have time or inclination, it is best not to just stick to American publications. Read The London Times and others for different perspectives. By all means, steer clear of CNN, FOX News, MSNBC or others. Their TV stations and their Web sites are useless. C-SPAN is the lone exception.

Some time spent doing the above will make one less naive about campaign strategies and techniques. As for the final symptom, ignorance, we must make a distinction between simple ignorance and willful ignorance. The above steps will take care of simple ignorance, but of willful ignorance, I’m afraid I have no cure, and it seems the McCain camp — and Obama’s to a lesser degree — play to this demographic. The symptom here is one that constantly seeks out parallel views, and views to the contrary are tossed out with the trash. Thus, I would argue grossly inaccurate and “vile” McCain ads, as Dionne terms them, work because they affirm to McCain followers how misguided and unfit to lead Obama is and vice versa. The political perceptions of some simply never change or even falter, probably because of familial ties or religion or what have you.

Poet John Milton, writing a good three-plus centuries ago, caught me between the eyes a decade ago in college upon reading his “Areopagitica” tract against government-sponsored censorship. For me, it was an awakening. Here was a Christian poet, perhaps the greatest, saying how it was Ok, and even preferred, to read, not just books that affirm your view, but those of the “enemy.” And for this purpose: to know both good and evil, truth and mistruths, but still choose that which is true and good. I go back to this passage time and time again. It, for me, is the reason Christians, non-Christians, Jews, Muslims, Republicans or  Democrats should not acquiesce into their own deeply entrenched familial or religious worldviews, but to see and know.

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness. Which was the reason why our sage and serious poet Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas, describing true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in with his palmer through the cave of Mammon, and the bower of earthly bliss, that he might see and know, and yet abstain. — “Areopagitica,” John Milton, 1644

Increasingly annoyed by say-nothing blogs

You know what is increasingly raising my blood pressure? Surfing WordPress for some opinion writing, news or what have you, and finding blog posts that consist of one link and nothing else. Or, blog posts that are merely cut and paste of some other news story or video that can be readily found on some other site.

You shouldn’t have a blog if you don’t have something original to say. Anything else is regurgitation.

Saturday Night Live: Palin/Clinton

After much searching — most videos of this on YouTube are only video recasts of news shows talking about the skit (as of Sept. 16) — I found this on YouTube. Tina Fey delivered a nearly flawless impersonation of Sarah Palin.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi9WEj21h1g

Expected but poignant story from The New York Times

I read this whole thing, and while there are many troubling details, this is the most chilling quote of the article:

Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin’s first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.

“I said, ‘You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,’ ” Ms. Chase recalled. “She replied, ‘I want to be president.’ ”

This is the full article from The New York Times:

Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes

This article is by Jo Becker, Peter S. Goodman and Michael Powell.

WASILLA, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.

And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”

Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.

But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.

Still, Ms. Palin has many supporters. As a two-term mayor she paved roads and built an ice rink, and as governor she has pushed through higher taxes on the oil companies that dominate one-third of the state’s economy. She stirs deep emotions. In Wasilla, many residents display unflagging affection, cheering “our Sarah” and hissing at her critics.

“She is bright and has unfailing political instincts,” said Steve Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska. “She taps very directly into anxieties about the economic future.”

“But,” he added, “her governing style raises a lot of hard questions.”

Ms. Palin declined to grant an interview for this article. The McCain-Palin campaign responded to some questions on her behalf and that of her husband, while referring others to the governor’s spokespeople, who did not respond.

Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell said Ms. Palin had conducted an accessible and effective administration in the public’s interest. “Everything she does is for the ordinary working people of Alaska,” he said.

In Wasilla, a builder said he complained to Mayor Palin when the city attorney put a stop-work order on his housing project. She responded, he said, by engineering the attorney’s firing.

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Ms. Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Mr. Steiner that his request would cost $468,784 to process.

When Mr. Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages — through a federal records request — he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show.

“Their secrecy is off the charts,” Mr. Steiner said.

State legislators are investigating accusations that Ms. Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister, charges that she denies. But interviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.

Last summer State Representative John Harris, the Republican speaker of the House, picked up his phone and heard Mr. Palin’s voice. The governor’s husband sounded edgy. He said he was unhappy that Mr. Harris had hired John Bitney as his chief of staff, the speaker recalled. Mr. Bitney was a high school classmate of the Palins and had worked for Ms. Palin. But she fired Mr. Bitney after learning that he had fallen in love with another longtime friend.

“I understood from the call that Todd wasn’t happy with me hiring John and he’d like to see him not there,” Mr. Harris said.

“The Palin family gets upset at personal issues,” he added. “And at our level, they want to strike back.”

Through a campaign spokesman, Mr. Palin said he “did not recall” referring to Mr. Bitney in the conversation.

Hometown Mayor

Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin’s first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.

“I said, ‘You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,’ ” Ms. Chase recalled. “She replied, ‘I want to be president.’ ”

Ms. Palin grew up in Wasilla, an old fur trader’s outpost and now a fast-growing exurb of Anchorage. The town sits in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, edged by jagged mountains and birch forests. In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration took farmers from the Dust Bowl area and resettled them here; their Democratic allegiances defined the valley for half a century.

In the past three decades, socially conservative Oklahomans and Texans have flocked north to the oil fields of Alaska. They filled evangelical churches around Wasilla and revived the Republican Party. Many of these working-class residents formed the electoral backbone for Ms. Palin, who ran for mayor on a platform of gun rights, opposition to abortion and the ouster of the “complacent” old guard.

After winning the mayoral election in 1996, Ms. Palin presided over a city rapidly outgrowing itself. Septic tanks had begun to pollute lakes, and residential lots were carved willy-nilly out of the woods. She passed road and sewer bonds, cut property taxes but raised the sales tax.

And, her supporters say, she cleaned out the municipal closet, firing veteran officials to make way for her own team. “She had an agenda for change and for doing things differently,” said Judy Patrick, a City Council member at the time.

But careers were turned upside down. The mayor quickly fired the town’s museum director, John Cooper. Later, she sent an aide to the museum to talk to the three remaining employees. “He told us they only wanted two,” recalled Esther West, one of the three, “and we had to pick who was going to be laid off.” The three quit as one.

Ms. Palin cited budget difficulties for the museum cuts. Mr. Cooper thought differently, saying the museum had become a microcosm of class and cultural conflicts in town. “It represented that the town was becoming more progressive, and they didn’t want that,” he said.

Days later, Mr. Cooper recalled, a vocal conservative, Steve Stoll, sidled up to him. Mr. Stoll had supported Ms. Palin and had a long-running feud with Mr. Cooper. “He said: ‘Gotcha, Cooper,’ ” Mr. Cooper said.

Mr. Stoll did not recall that conversation, although he said he supported Ms. Palin’s campaign and was pleased when she fired Mr. Cooper.

In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.

Your attorney, Mr. Showers told Ms. Palin, is costing me lots of money.

“She told me she’d like to see him fired,” Mr. Showers recalled. “But she couldn’t do it herself because the City Council hires the city attorney.” Ms. Palin told him to write the council members to complain.

Meanwhile, Ms. Palin pushed the issue from the inside. “She started the ball rolling,” said Ms. Patrick, who also favored the firing. Mr. Deuser was soon replaced by Ken Jacobus, then the State Republican Party’s general counsel.

“Professionals were either forced out or fired,” Mr. Deuser said.

Ms. Palin ordered city employees not to talk to the press. And she used city money to buy a white Suburban for the mayor’s use — employees sarcastically called it the mayor-mobile.

The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.

“People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”

Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.

But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.

“Sarah said she didn’t need to read that stuff,” Ms. Chase said. “It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”

“I’m still proud of Sarah,” she added, “but she scares the bejeebers out of me.”

Reform Crucible

Restless ambition defined Ms. Palin in the early years of this decade. She raised money for Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from the state; finished second in the 2002 Republican primary for lieutenant governor; and sought to fill the seat of Senator Frank H. Murkowski when he ran for governor.

Mr. Murkowski appointed his daughter to the seat, but as a consolation prize, he gave Ms. Palin the $125,000-a-year chairmanship of a state commission overseeing oil and gas drilling.

Ms. Palin discovered that the state Republican leader, Randy Ruedrich, a commission member, was conducting party business on state time and favoring regulated companies. When Mr. Murkowski failed to act on her complaints, she quit and went public.

The Republican establishment shunned her. But her break with the gentlemen’s club of oil producers and political power catapulted her into the public eye.

“She was honest and forthright,” said Jay Kerttula, a former Democratic state senator from Palmer.

Ms. Palin entered the 2006 primary for governor as a formidable candidate.

In the middle of the primary, a conservative columnist in the state, Paul Jenkins, unearthed e-mail messages showing that Ms. Palin had conducted campaign business from the mayor’s office. Ms. Palin handled the crisis with a street fighter’s guile.

“I told her it looks like she did the same thing that Randy Ruedrich did,” Mr. Jenkins recalled. “And she said, ‘Yeah, what I did was wrong.’ ”

Mr. Jenkins hung up and decided to forgo writing about it. His phone rang soon after.

Mr. Jenkins said a reporter from Fairbanks, reading from a Palin news release, demanded to know why he was “smearing” her. “Now I look at her and think: ‘Man, you’re slick,’ ” he said.

Ms. Palin won the primary, and in the general election she faced Tony Knowles, the former two-term Democratic governor, and Andrew Halcro, an independent.

Not deeply versed in policy, Ms. Palin skipped some candidate forums; at others, she flipped through hand-written, color-coded index cards strategically placed behind her nameplate.

Before one forum, Mr. Halcro said he saw aides shovel reports at Ms. Palin as she crammed. Her showman’s instincts rarely failed. She put the pile of reports on the lectern. Asked what she would do about health care policy, she patted the stack and said she would find an answer in the pile of solutions.

“She was fresh, and she was tomorrow,” said Michael Carey, a former editorial page editor for The Anchorage Daily News. “She just floated along like Mary Poppins.”

Government

Half a century after Alaska became a state, Ms. Palin was inaugurated as governor in Fairbanks and took up the reformer’s sword.

As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church.

Mr. Parnell, the lieutenant governor, praised Ms. Palin’s appointments. “The people she hires are competent, qualified, top-notch people,” he said.

Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: “Who?” Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.

“I called him and asked, ‘Do you know how to supervise people?’ ” said a family friend, Kathy Wells. “He said, ‘No, but I think I’ll get some help.’ ”

The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.

To her supporters — and with an 80 percent approval rating, she has plenty — Ms. Palin has lifted Alaska out of a mire of corruption. She gained the passage of a bill that tightens the rules covering lobbyists. And she rewrote the tax code to capture a greater share of oil and gas sale proceeds.

“Does anybody doubt that she’s a tough negotiator?” said State Representative Carl Gatto, Republican of Palmer.

Yet recent controversy has marred Ms. Palin’s reform credentials. In addition to the trooper investigation, lawmakers in April accused her of improperly culling thousands of e-mail addresses from a state database for a mass mailing to rally support for a policy initiative.

While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, her administration has battled to keep information secret. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a “personal device” like a BlackBerry “would be confidential and not subject to subpoena.”

Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account “when there was significant state business.”

On Feb. 7, Frank Bailey, a high-level aide, wrote to Ms. Palin’s state e-mail address to discuss appointments. Another aide fired back: “Frank, this is not the governor’s personal account.”

Mr. Bailey responded: “Whoops~!”

Mr. Bailey, a former midlevel manager at Alaska Airlines who worked on Ms. Palin’s campaign, has been placed on paid leave; he has emerged as a central figure in the trooper investigation.

Another confidante of Ms. Palin’s is Ms. Frye, 27. She worked as a receptionist for State Senator Lyda Green before she joined Ms. Palin’s campaign for governor. Now Ms. Frye earns $68,664 as a special assistant to the governor. Her frequent interactions with Ms. Palin’s children have prompted some lawmakers to refer to her as “the babysitter,” a title that Ms. Frye disavows.

Like Mr. Bailey, she is an effusive cheerleader for her boss.

“YOU ARE SO AWESOME!” Ms. Frye typed in an e-mail message to Ms. Palin in March.

Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor’s mansion in Juneau, records show.

During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing “Where’s Sarah?” pins.

Many politicians say they typically learn of her initiatives — and vetoes — from news releases.

Mayors across the state, from the larger cities to tiny municipalities along the southeastern fiords, are even more frustrated. Often, their letters go unanswered and their pleas ignored, records and interviews show.

Last summer, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, a Democrat, pressed Ms. Palin to meet with him because the state had failed to deliver money needed to operate city traffic lights. At one point, records show, state officials told him to just turn off a dozen of them. Ms. Palin agreed to meet with Mr. Begich when he threatened to go public with his anger, according to city officials.

At an Alaska Municipal League gathering in Juneau in January, mayors across the political spectrum swapped stories of the governor’s remoteness. How many of you, someone asked, have tried to meet with her? Every hand went up, recalled Mayor Fred Shields of Haines Borough. And how many met with her? Just a few hands rose. Ms. Palin soon walked in, delivered a few remarks and left for an anti-abortion rally.

The administration’s e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath.

Dan Fagan, a prominent conservative radio host and longtime friend of Ms. Palin, urged his listeners to vote for her in 2006. But when he took her to task for raising taxes on oil companies, he said, he found himself branded a “hater.”

It is part of a pattern, Mr. Fagan said, in which Ms. Palin characterizes critics as “bad people who are anti-Alaska.”

As Ms. Palin’s star ascends, the McCain campaign, as often happens in national races, is controlling the words of those who know her well. Her mother-in-law, Faye Palin, has been asked not to speak to reporters, and aides sit in on interviews with old friends.

At a recent lunch gathering, an official with the Wasilla Chamber of Commerce asked its members to refer all calls from reporters to the governor’s office. Dianne Woodruff, a city councilwoman, shook her head.

“I was thinking, I don’t remember giving up my First Amendment rights,” Ms. Woodruff said. “Just because you’re not going gaga over Sarah doesn’t mean you can’t speak your mind.”

Sarah Palin/Charles Gibson interview

Since I have about 10 minutes for this right now, I’ll make some cursory comments on the recent Sarah Palin/Charles Gibson interview, then perhaps expand in a later post.

First, Gibson started right out with the pivotal question. He asked Palin if he could look into the camera, pointing to it with his hand, and tell the American people that she was ready to be vice president or president. She obviously answered, looking at Gibson, in the affirmative, but didn’t look into the camera. It was a nice try on Gibson’s part, though he knew she wouldn’t do it in the first place.

Second, the Bush doctrine thing was stunning. The transcipt, if it read like a Shakespearean play, would have went something like this:

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

[Awkward moment of silence, coupled with small grin by PALIN]

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush — well, what do you interpret it to be?

PALIN: His world view?

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq War. You know what, just forget it. I’m done. Interview over. …

[GIBSON takes mic off, leaves chair, punches cameraman and walks off in exacerbation.]

And finally, the best quote I’ve heard in an interview of this kind. As Palin was droning on, not directly answering anything, saying something about extremists, terrorists, freedom, our troops, whatever, Gibson said:

GIBSON: And let me finish with this. I got lost in a blizzard of words there. Is that a yes, that you think we have the right to go across the border, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government? To go after terrorists who are in the Waziristan area?

PALIN: I believe that America has to exercise all options in order to stop the terrorists who are hell-bent on destroying America, and our allies. We have got to have all options out there on the table.

Most of the time, journalists don’t really want to ask “Yes” or “No” questions because it leaves no room for elaboration. But here, Gibson was asking for a simple yes or no, but the ability to give clear, direct answers escapes nearly every politician, thus confounding us and confirming that, if they can be trusted in leadership, they sure don’t make a great case for themselves.

Mayor denigrates own constituency

A recent story published in the Daily Journal/Daily Messenger, said that the Walhalla, S.C.’s mayor claimed an increased wave of illegal immigrants to the area were draining the city’s resources and putting a financial burden on taxpayers. Since I didn’t write the story, I’m not sure whether we called him, or he made contact with us first, but the mayor also claimed recent reports had implied city police were arresting Hispanics for minor traffic violations. While the mayor, Randy Chastain, denied that any racial profiling was taking place in the city, he pointed to an increased amount of graffiti and the recent arrest of an illegal charged with murder as clues that more illegals were flooding the area.

School records did not support this claim:

Given that the total student population in Oconee has hovered around 10,500 for the past 40 years, Hispanics make up 0.07 percent of students in Oconee classrooms.

At James M. Brown Elementary School on Coffee Road in Walhalla, which at one time had one of the largest Latino-student enrollments in the state, their numbers actually declined during the current school year. — “Mayors says illegals abound,” Carlos Garlaza, Daily Journal/Daily Messenger

The school officials in the story took the high ground and simply said they weren’t getting into the immigration debate, that their primary concern was education. Fair enough. Walhalla Principal John Frady did, however, make this statement:

There are radicals that don’t want that sector in the community, and there are others who are more accepting. I happen to be among those that are more accepting.

Chastain, however, at least from the details presented in this story, seems to be in the latter camp. He apparently brought up the city’s supposed illegal immigration problem at his first meeting with city council as mayor and he still seems to be frothing at the mouth about the issue. Here’s Chastain’s most startling statement of the story:

Initially, they came here and were basically to themselves. They didn’t cause much problems. Now they are more brazen; there’s a lot more of them. There’s more now than there’ve ever been. It’s their culture versus the American culture.

Before going further, let me say that I used to work in a city with a comparable Hispanic population. Walhalla, S.C. and Clayton, Ga. both are running at about 15 percent. And even working in that environment in Georgia, never have I come across such a brazen, bigoted statement as this toward Hispanics. Sure, the crankier folks in Georgia thought Mexicans were taking over the place, just like here, but at least they were more tactful about it. Folks, on the whole in Georgia were quite pleasant, at least to your face. But Chastain statement should not only offend Hispanics, white, blacks alike, it should scare them. Chastain essentially denigrated a section, a significant section, of his own constituency! That is remarkable, and not in a good way. Sure, Chastain was speaking in the context of illegal immigrants for the purposes of the story, but in this specific statement, he’s clearly not just talking about illegals. By saying, “It’s their culture versus the American culture,” he’s talking about Hispanics in general, not just illegals.

I’ve already spoken at length about guys like this, so I won’t pummel a dead horse, but I feel speaking out against illegals’ status as non-citizens is fine because they are, after all, breaking the law. But No. 1, please don’t turn their legal issues into character flaws or strip them of their humanity. They are people with real families who really love them somewhere, either in this country, or elsewhere. They have beating hearts, pulses, souls and emotions. While their culture is different from Americans’ in some ways, it’s not better or worse, just different. And by all means, don’t demean members of your own constituency, most of whom are, in fact, legal. I’m glad I’m not part of the mayor’s constituency; if I were, I’d probably relocate post haste.

On a recent letter written to Time magazine

David Von Drehle’s cover story “The Five Faces of Barack Obama” assured me that Obama would be a good choice for President [Sept. 1]. The reason: he has the curiosity to look deeply into controversial issues. I am 80 years old and was raised in Wisconsin, where folks rarely considered other perspectives. I opted to live in Alaska from 1949 and on into statehood. I can well appreciate Obama’s ability to examine an idea or policy that has been suitable and decide to move on if it no longer fits. This ability escapes most Americans. Sadly, the very positive attributes Obama possesses appear to be fodder for voters to doubt his abilities. The only salvation I can see, if any, will be when the older folks die off and the young realize our mistakes and embrace a candidate like Barack Obama. — Rita Ihly, 80, of Bellingham, Wash., Letter to the editor appearing in the Inbox section of the Sept. 15, 2008 edition of Time magazine

This, to me, was a startling and refreshing statement for an 80-year-old to make. While sometimes older demographics of people tend to not consider other perspectives as much as younger generations, and are often adamantly opposed to stepping outside of their ideological box, this isn’t just symptomatic of old people, Ihly obviously being one exception. As Ihly pointed out, it’s symptomatic of most Americans.

And it’s symptomatic, in part, because of commentators on venues like CNN, FOX News, MSNBC and others, which just recycle the same ideas ad nauseum. People try so desperately to lump everything that exists in society, from groups of people, spirituality and ideologies, into compartments that never intermingle : white, black, rich, poor, blue, red, left, right. And it seems we have essentially become so entrenched in the two-party system that thoughts toward other ideas is outlandish, and the news media only propagates this, with the exception of C-SPAN, which does give its due deference to those who consider themselves independent (i.e. Washington Journal”). So, television, and perhaps other media outlets, is one problem. In short, people don’t want to think about complex issues for themselves, they want it fed to them through a drip line. Thus, television stunts creativity and independent thought:

I hardly write any stories and I don’t work on my songs quite as intently as in the past. You know why??? Television Television is the most evil thing on our planet. Go right now to your TV and toss it out the window, or sell it and buy a better stereo. — “Journals,” Kurt Cobain

I would be curious to know, and this is probably not quantifiable, to what degree the two party system has crippled our collective ability to render imaginative and inventive solutions to the problems that confound us, from energy, to our role in seemingly never-ending Middle-Eastern boondoggles, to health care, to education. While wordpress and other outlets like this have their fair share of partisan hacks only seeking to infuse their party’s ideas to as many people as possible, venues such as this one are actually healthy for Democracy, given the amount of ideas being spun out in any given day. But there again, that does depend on our ability or desire to, not only read thoughts we agree with, but to read about ideas that may be vastly different from our own, not necessarily with a goal to change one’s mind about an issue — though that may be one result — but simply to learn.