Sarah Palin does a photoshoot

Here, we see Sarah Palin playing hide-and-seek. I'm not sure whether she's hiding or seeking, but surely she's cheating.

Sarah Palin did a photoshoot -- eight pictures -- for Newsweek, but the pictures are at The Daily Beast. The photographer is Emily Shur.

The photoshoot was done for a Newsweek cover story by Peter J. Boyer: "Palin Plots Her Next Move."

In Newsweek's story, Palin says that she believes she can win national office. Apparently, the story's writer didn't ask her, "Which office?" Of course, that is a "gotcha" question. "Any of 'em -- all of 'em," is the standard answer to a question like that, so I suppose he didn't really need to ask.

Update: The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart has written "Sarah Palin as Newsweek cover girl — again."


Update: The Christian Science Monitor writes that Palin doesn't look presidential:

What’s striking about the Newsweek feature is the photographs – not just the cover, but the two-page inside shot of Palin standing in a field of flowers, hair down, wearing a pink hoodie, hands in the pockets of loose-fitting work pants. It’s the Garden of Sarah.

Maybe the photos are Palin’s way of saying, “I’m not running.” Time was when a politically ambitious woman would agree to be photographed only looking “dressed for success” – usually in a suit, à la Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Newsweek cover earlier this year. Or the way Palin usually dresses on Fox News. But in this latest iteration, the vibe is more “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” than “West Wing.”

Sarah Palin's End: Losing Altitude

Frank Rich has mentioned Sarah Palin in his op-ed at The New York Times, "The G.O.P.’s Post-Tucson Traumatic Stress Disorder:"

SIX weeks after that horrific day in Tucson, America has half-forgotten its violent debate over the power of violent speech to incite violence. It’s Gabrielle Giffords’s own power of speech that rightly concerns us now. But all those arguments over political language did leave a discernible legacy. In the aftermath of President Obama’s Tucson sermon, civility has had a mini-restoration in Washington. And some of the most combative national figures in our politics have been losing altitude ever since, much as they did after Bill Clinton’s oratorical response to the inferno of Oklahoma City

Glenn Beck’s ratings at Fox News continued their steady decline, falling to an all-time low last month. He has lost 39 percent of his viewers in a year and 48 percent of the prime 25-to-54 age demographic. His strenuous recent efforts to portray the Egyptian revolution as an apocalyptic leftist-jihadist conspiracy have inspired more laughs than adherents.

Sarah Palin’s tailspin is also pronounced. It can be seen in polls, certainly: the ABC News-Washington Post survey found that 30 percent of Americans approved of her response to the Tucson massacre and 46 percent did not. (Obama’s numbers in the same poll were 78 percent favorable, 12 percent negative.) But equally telling was the fate of a Palin speech scheduled for May at a so-called Patriots & Warriors Gala in Glendale, Colo.

Tickets to see Palin, announced at $185 on Jan. 16, eight days after Tucson, were slashed to half-price in early February. Then the speech was canceled altogether, with the organizers blaming “safety concerns resulting from an onslaught of negative feedback.” But when The Denver Post sought out the Glendale police chief, he reported there had been no threats or other causes for alarm. The real “negative feedback” may have been anemic ticket sales, particularly if they were to cover Palin’s standard $100,000 fee.

What may at long last be dawning on some Republican grandees is that a provocateur who puts her political adversaries in the cross hairs and then instructs her acolytes to “RELOAD” frightens most voters. ...

How well do you know Sarah Palin? -- With 4 Classic Videos

The Christian Science Monitor has a 10-question quiz, "How well do you know Sarah Palin?" It can be fun to answer the questions incorrectly, particularly the question about the full title of Going Rogue, but more seriously: Does anyone who answers all ten questions correctly really know Sarah Palin?

During the quiz, you can see several videos, which I've collected here; however, I've added my own questions:


Does Sarah Palin play the flute?





Did Sarah Palin make it in sportscasting?





Can Sarah Palin shoot?





Is Sarah Palin "way hotter in person?"

Palin Family Circus News - Wednesday, Januray 5, 2011

PopEater's Rob Schuter reports, in "Kathy Griffin's Newest Palin to Pounce On? Willow, 16:"

... "I think it's Willow's year to go down," Griffin snarked to The Hollywood Reporter. "In 2011, I want to offend a new Palin."

With her being only 16, Willow would seem to be a target fraught with disadvantages, but that doesn't matter to Kathy.

"[She] genuinely can't stand any of the Palin family," a friend of Kathy's tells me. "Yet, the real reason she won't leave them alone is she loves all the headlines she gets whenever she attacks them."

What would it take to pry Kathy's claws from the Palin family? My source thinks that if people would just doggone stop caring about the Palins, then Kathy would be the first to move on and "find another victim." ...


Uh-oh. Bristol Palin to run for John McCain's seat? David Kahane, writing in "I Hate You, Bristol Palin," has proposed:

... In the wake of Tron, the air has gone out of the market for film sequels in Hollywood, but reality television — that’s where the money is. So why not this:

Beyond Celebrity Thunderdome II: Bristol Palin vs. Meghan McCain — This Time, It’s Personal. Two babes enter, one babe leaves. Hosted by Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Because you know — you just know — that one of them is going to run for Meghan’s father’s seat when it next comes up in 2016, by which time we’ll be in syndication and rolling in residuals.

Bristol, honey — have your agent call my agent and let’s make a deal. Better yet, let’s have lunch at Chaya.

Meghan McCain (born 1984) will be old enough for a Senate seat in 2016, but Bristol Palin will have to settle for a House seat. Sorry, Dave.


IM has posted a copy of an offer letter to Bristol Palin. Arizona is the land of opportunity, no?


CNN has "Political Circus: Former sitcom star blasts Palin, health care reform:"

... Roseanne Barr -- comedian, author, political activist and former star of the hit television sitcom "Roseanne" -- took shots at former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin during an interview about her new book on ABC's "Nightline" on Tuesday.

In "Roseannearchy: Dispatches From the Nut Farm," she wrote that Palin is "ripping off my act."

"She's not even telling the truth to the American people. I think she took a lot from me and from my show, absolutely," she said. ...

I'll have to watch my intellectual property more closely. NBC New York and, now, CNN have started Circus News columns.


In another "roundup" post -- What did I just say about my IP? -- Oops! "Palingates in 2010 - The Year in Review" -- They do live in the past, a lot, don't they? -- palingates' Patrick may have admitted to having a ghostwriter!

... Then there is Kathleen, whose influence on Palingates is much greater than is visible from the outside. Kathleen is a highly skilled professional researcher -- Is that a fact? Show us the offer letter! -- who doesn't get fooled by anyone -- Oh, really? -- and that's exactly what you need when you deal with Sarah Palin, the woman of many, many secrets. Also, many thanks to Kathleen for correcting my grammar on a daily basis.

One day Patrick gloated over discovering, he said, that Sarah Palin's ghostwriter is Rebecca Mansour. Now, Rebecca Mansour can be linked stylistically to some of Sarah Palin's Facebook rants, but not to all of them. A blogger with a ghostwriter -- Ach mein Gott! -- hasn't completed his research :)

The Business Insider noticed that Ann Coulter not only used the word retarded but referred to a person while doing so, and titled its article, "Will Sarah Palin Call For Ann Coulter's Head Over 'Retard' Tweet?"

This may be a signifigant development, because The Business Insider may have carried water for Palin in the past. I'll have to watch it, though, because they (I think it was at The Business Insider, if I remember correctly.) posted an article about Sarah's reality show performing poorly, then, later, replaced the article at that link with an article that would be more pleasing to Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin Just One of The Boys: Simply Unqualified

Scott Conroy of Real Clear Politics has written "Female Vote Could Prove Decisive for Palin." The article is about how Sarah Palin might fare in Republican primaries, not the general election. Before writing the article, Conroy spoke with Andrew Halcro, who ran against Palin in 2006:

On a late night during the 2006 Alaska gubernatorial campaign, Democratic former Gov. Tony Knowles and Republican-turned-independent candidate Andrew Halcro found themselves sitting next to each other in an exit row on an Alaska Airlines flight back to Anchorage following a debate in Fairbanks.

Halcro and Knowles had a friendly relationship, which was cultivated in part by both men's shared sense of exasperation over their inability to put a chink in the invisible armor that seemed to shield their Republican opponent, the former mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin.

While the two men were making small talk on the flight, Halcro, who ended up finishing third in the race, asked Knowles what was the most surprising indicator he found in his campaign's internal polling.

According to Halcro, Knowles replied that he was most astonished by how well Palin performed among well-educated women, and, perhaps more importantly, with moderate to liberal women.

"But that time has passed," Halcro told RealClearPolitics. ...

... Halcro, who has remained one of the most vocal Palin critics in Alaska, said that he did not prepare any differently in debating Palin simply because she was a woman and insisted that her record as governor of raising taxes on the oil industry and implementing a gas pipeline deal that has uncertain prospects for success will overshadow any built-in advantage she might have among women.

"I think she's going to get treated like one of the boys," Halcro said. "The debates are one thing, but I think you have to portray her as just simply unqualified." ...

The 2006 gubernatorial debates were covered by The NY Times and Christian Science Monitor during the 2008 presidential campaign. The Times wrote:

... Her [Palin's] debating style was rarely confrontational, and she appeared confident. In contrast to today, when she seems unversed on several important issues, she demonstrated fluency on certain subjects, particularly oil and gas development.

But just as she does now, Ms. Palin often spoke in generalities and showed scant aptitude for developing arguments beyond a talking point or two. Her sentences were distinguished by their repetition of words, by the use of the phrase “here in Alaska” and for gaps. On paper, her sentences would have been difficult to diagram.

John Bitney, the policy director for her campaign for governor and the main person who helped prepare her for debates, said her repetition of words was “her way of running down the clock as her mind searches for where she wants to go.” ...

And the Christian Science Monitor's article, written by Halcro:

When he faces off against Sarah Palin Thursday night, Joe Biden will have his hands full.

I should know. I've debated Governor Palin more than two dozen times. And she's a master, not of facts, figures, or insightful policy recommendations, but at the fine art of the nonanswer, the glittering generality. Against such charms there is little Senator Biden, or anyone, can do. ...

What to do? Don't panic. It's likely that there will be many debates during the Republican primaries. There will be several governors running for the nomination. Their records will be compared and discussed at the debates. What will Republican primary voters think when they find out that "Governor" Palin's record as governor isn't what she has since said and written she did as governor? Many Republican voters will ask, "Was Sarah Palin really Governor of Alaska?"

Our post, "The Story is in The Story" may be a starting point for examining Palin's record as governor and the discrepancies between her record and what she has written on Facebook about her record.

You can read about Biden's strategy for the 2008 VP debate in Game Change. The story begins on page 405, and you can use Amazon's Look Inside! feature to read it, if you have an Amazon account. Search for far-off Delaware.

Celebrity Fashion Cop's Advice for ... Sarah Palin?

Here is some fashion advice for aging teenagers, like Sarah Palin. It's from Rachel Fischer Spalding, writing for Lifescript: Top 10 Items You're Too Old to Wear: Are You Committing These Fashion Faux Pas?

Walk into any mall and you’ll see a 40-something woman wearing every trend from Forever 21: tight tank top, low-rise jeans, metallic platform heels, plastic bangles and oversized earrings. Are you a middle-aged fashionista who just doesn’t know when to quit? Read on for the top 10 clothing items to leave in the past…

Young and trendy clothes may look great on the killer body of a 40-plus woman. After all, Goldie Hawn shines in her trendy outfits even though they look like she raided daughter Kate Hudson’s closet. But should she?

Definitely not, says celebrity wardrobe stylist Ricci DeMartino, whose clients include Eva Longoria Parker, Patricia Heaton and Lisa Kudrow.

“Living in L.A. like I do, you can go to Malibu and see this look any day of the week!” DeMartino says. “But trying too hard only calls attention to yourself – it’s overcompensating. You don’t need to dress like a teenager to look young.”

Most of us don’t push the clothes age barrier nearly as far, but even a tasteful fashionista may not always know how to dress appropriately as she moves past 35, 40 and beyond. How do you know when it’s time to lose which look?

DeMartino mentions ten styles and indicates an age at which they're no longer appropriate. She suggests alternatives to the no-nos. The styles and their retirement ages are:

1. Message T-Shirts -- 30

2. Too-Trendy Denim -- 35

3. Costume Shoes -- 45

4. Micro-mini Skirts -- 40

5. Anything Showing Excessive Cleavage -- 50

6. White, Ribbed Cotton Tank Tops -- 40

7. Hair Gadgets -- 30

8. Oversized, Overly-Decorated Hobo Bags -- 50

9. Cheap, Unflattering Underwear -- 40

10. Loud Accessories -- 35

If the shoe fits, wear it. Isn't that what they say?