Palin Family Circus News - November 15, 2010

Flippin' Geez!

The Washington Post's Alexandra Petri may have written the best review of Sarah Palin's Alaska. It begins:

If real life were like this, to paraphrase a member of the Palin clan, I would be outside 24/7 eating popcorn on a chair. But instead, I'm inside watching "Sarah Palin's Alaska" on TLC. In escalating order, here are the top moments of last night's episode. I would say "I watch so you don't have to," but, actually, I urge you to watch. It's better than Dancing With the Stars!

Ms Petri definitiely has some insights to offer. My favorite was her description of Sarah the hairless bear. At the end of her list of the show's high points, she closes with:

Before watching this, I would have likened Palin, the outdoorsy, folksy, big-stick-totin' country gal, to Teddy Roosevelt. But after watching her climb, I'd say she's more like Franklin.

"How do we get down?" she asks at the end. I hope the entire second episode is just her attempting to get down! If so, it will be riveting television!

Regardless, I can't wait. As Sarah says, " I don't think that I have been that scared or that challenged in a long time."

You can watch "The Five Most Ridiculous Moments from the Sarah Palin's Alaska Premiere" here.

After watching that, how can Palin's fans continue to call her "Madame President?" Karl Rove appears to have been prescient when he said, last month, “With all due candour, appearing on your own reality show on the Discovery Channel, I am not certain how that fits in the American calculus of 'that helps me see you in the Oval Office’.”

And, from ABC's The Note, quoting a New Yorker article about the show: “Why she [Palin] thought that [a reality show] was a good idea, considering that she complained regularly about the media’s intrusion into her family life when she was John McCain’s running mate in 2008 (while, at the same time, frequently putting her children on display), is a mystery,” Nancy Franklin wrote in the New Yorker. “Moreover, you might ask, how seriously will people take her as a political candidate – a Presidential candidate – once she has participated in a reality show?”

I might add that most voters expect candidates to have a much larger vocabulary than "flippin'" and "geez."


The post's photo came from a Mail Online article about the show. Sarah doesn't really mush dogs, but it isn't a bad photo.


Update: Apparently Sarah's Fox News colleagues got a few chuckles out of the show:

Via IM

Update: The Washington Post's TV Column has ratings. It may have been a big night for TLC, but some other shows did much better ... Family Guy and more ...