Sarah Palin Needs to 'man up' in order to run

The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart has read Robert Draper's article from The New York Times Magazine and offers three reasons why Palin won't run:

After reading Robert Draper's profile of Sarah Palin that will run in the New York Times Magazine on Sunday -- the one in which she says "I am" thinking about running for president -- I remain convinced that she won't for three reasons.

First, the half-term governor is a whiner. ...

Second, to be blunt, if Palin is running for the nomination, she is half-assing it right now. ...

The third, and most important, reason why I think Palin won't run for president is because she is spectacular at being a star. ...

Capehart backs-up his reasoning very neatly, even devastatingly. See whether you don't agree by reading his post, Sarah Palin needs to 'man up' if she's going to run. Right now -- and probably up until the point of no return -- Palin is going to be "thinking" about running, because she is able to garner attention by being coy about her intentions.

When Politicians Debate Fictional Characters, It's Time for a Reality Check

Sarah Palin's recent problem with "Family Guy" has some historical precedents. It was in the early 1990s that some politicians began to have a problem distinguishing between reality and fiction: they actually began attacking fictional characters. In Michiko Kakutani's Fiction and Reality, Blurring the Edges, we're reminded:

... Vice President Dan Quayle attacks Murphy Brown, the fictional anchorwoman played by Candice Bergen, for undermining traditional family values by deciding to become a single mother, and in this week's season premier of the show [week of September 25, 1992], Murphy Brown strikes back, having already elicited even further condemnations from Mr. Quayle.

President Bush [The Elder] speaks of wanting to see an America that looks a lot more "like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons," and in a subsequent episode of the popular television show, Bart Simpson retorts, "We're just like the Waltons. We're praying for the Depression to end, too."

Even Ross Perot, who mocked Mr. Quayle's remarks about Murphy Brown, has gone on the record as condemning the television character Doogie Howser for having sex with his girlfriend ...

And Ms. Kakutani concludes:

In the end, it's dangerous to mistake fictional representations for the real thing. To do so is to ignore one of the most basic impulses behind art -- the impulse to order the chaos of regular life, to transform it into something more perfect, more shapely and more satisfying, to turn it into something with a beginning, a middle and an end.

Worse, to erase the boundaries between reality and fiction means forsaking our ability to make distinctions. It means living in a dimly lit world of shadows, mirrors and self-delusions, content with approximations and soothing mispresentations, instead of continuing to try to discern the truth. One ends up like Don Quixote, Cervantes's would-be knight whose sense of reality was shaped by popular chivalric romances -- a hapless, if well-meaning fellow who believed he could model his own life on that of his favorite literary heroes and who ended up tilting at windmills.

The New York Times has published three articles about Sarah Palin's dust-up with "Family Guy," here, here, and here. Sarah Palin, of course, took confusing reality with fiction to a new level.

Michiko Kakutani is a Pulitzer Prize winning critic for the New York Times.

Flightseeing In Alaska

Journeys

Alaskan Road Trip, 500 Feet Up

Scott Dickerson for The New York Times - A flightseeing tour of Alaska.

By SARAH MASLIN NIR

Published: February 21, 2010

[I]n Alaska, a vast state covering 663,267 square miles, much of the terrain is completely cut off from roads. By conventional means, a tourist can get only so far — or rather, so near. Standing at the end of the Homer Spit, I’d reached the end of the road: a few feet in front of me, the pavement dropped off into the sea.

Slideshow

Above it All in Alaska

Sarah Maslin Nir also wrote Sarah Palin: Going rogue in Wasilla