She used to keep it real. But having now gone through 24,000 or so of her emails, the media have concluded that Sarah Palin has changed.
“Once, there was a different Sarah Palin,” writes Politico’s Molly Ball. “She was hands-on and averse to partisan politics. She championed openness in government and had normal relations with the media…”
Ball’s article isn’t completely positive, mind you. She goes on to note that the recently-revealed emails show a Sarah Palin “before she became so polarizing” — and before she became “a freelance sharp-tongued partisan …”
That’s not change we can believe in.
(Interestingly, few reporters back in 2008 were writing about this “hands-on” Sarah Palin who “championed openness in government.” One hardly had to mine her emails to learn this. She had an 88 percent approval rating when selected as McCain’s running mate. Nevertheless, we are now told that she used to be cool. But no more.)
Still, assuming Palin did change, I can’t help wondering … why?
Former Palin documentarian John Ziegler took a stab at answering that recently, writing that “[columnist and former CNN host Kathleen] Parker and others killed off ‘Sarah Palin 1.0’ and that what exists today is ‘Sarah Palin 2.0,’ which is a very different program.”
Ziegler’s analysis is controversial, but as I noted on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” — one could hardly blame Palin for growing to hate the media. And it’s not like they ever quit hounding her. Writing at Politico today, Joe Scarborough notes that “the media’s fixation with Palin is getting downright creepy. And they have been strangely obsessive since she burst onto the national scene in 2008.”
Some things never change.