Sarah Palin

I’ve always thought Sarah Palin represented the first generation that believed celebrity was the same as the effort that created fame. For an aspiring journalist in the 1980's, it didn’t matter if one were Robert Redford playing Bob Woodword or Woodword himself - the work of acting and reporting were insignificant beside the reality of appearing on television.

I don’t think Palin really understood the difference between being herself or Tina Fey playing her, so long as her face was on Saturday Night Live. When she was invited to appear as a guest, the doubling that tantalized the audience meant little to her because the only thing she understood was the reality of being there.

Perhaps this is why she reserves her bitterest comments for people in the media who destroy her pleasure in finally achieving her goal. For Palin being on Katie Couric’s show was all that mattered. When she was criticized for not doing something she was genuinely confused. The appearance was the achievement.

When she placed second in the Miss Alaska pageant the lesson she learned was that she hadn’t been savvy enough to garner more media attention. It never seriously occurred to her the winner might have been the more attractive candidate or that she needed to work on the skills required to be a beauty queen like those successful winners from places like Texas. In the future she focused on being the center of attention.

Since she announced her planned resignation as governor of Alaska many have speculated on her attacks on those who filed ethical complaints against her. When she was campaigning with John McCain she got her first exposure to the adulation of large crowds, as well as an opportunity to observe the gilded life of the media and to wear expensive clothes.

Now that she’s back in Alaska, her out-of-state public appearances bring complaints of dereliction of duty. Her book contract raises concerns that it violates state limits on an elected official’s secondary activities. If political office is not a step to higher office, but to greater celebrity, then one can understand why she chaffs at bureaucratic restraints when she’s so close to achieving her goal.

She is like the child who spent her time in front of a mirror with a toy mike practicing her acceptance speech rather than doing the same dance step or musical passage over and over like Michael Jackson did. She doesn’t know fame is not an end in itself, but the reward given by people who appreciate the effortless efforts of the talented or something undefinably unique.