Sarah Palin ‘Hit Piece’ reeks of Yellow Journalism
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Sarah Palin
to join Fox News
as book reveals
McCain camp
‘planned to
downgrade her’
By Anny Shaw
____January 12th, 2010
DAILYMAIL.CO.UK
Sarah Palin has been signed up
as a regular contributor to Fox News,
it has been reported.
The broadcaster confirmed that
Ms Palin will appear regularly on
the network,
although she will not have
her own programme,
a source close to the deal said.
Financial terms have not been disclosed.
According to The New York Times,
the former Governor of Alaska will host
an occasional series that will run on
the network from time to time.
Oliver L North also hosts an
occasionally-running documentary
series on the military called ‘War Stories’.
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As darling of many sectors
of the Republican Party,
it would seem Ms Palin is a natural fit
for Rupert Murdoch’s rightwing
Fox News Channel.
Once confirmed,
the deal will give the former vice
presidential candidate access to
millions of potential viewers.
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Ms Palin’s appointment comes as the
highly-anticipated book ‘Game Change’,
which in the UK is titled ‘
Race of a Lifetime:
How Obama Won the White House’,
hit the shelves today.
Authors John Heilemann and
Mark Halperin say the stress of
achieving wide-spread fame on
the global political stage caused
Ms Palin to have wild mood swings,
describing her at one point as in a
‘catatonic stupor’.
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The book recounts one episode on
the night of August 31 2008,
when Ms Palin arrived in St Paul,
Minnesota for the Republican
convention to a barrage of questions
from the media.
According to the book,
it was then that Steve Schmidt,
Republican campaign chief,
turned to the experts he had
recruited and said:
‘You guys have a lot of work to do.
She doesn’t know anything.’
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Ms Palin was sat down at a table
with a map of the world before her
and given a potted history
of foreign policy.
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Over the next few weeks she
‘crammed furiously’,
using index cards for prompts.
However,
according to the book,
the vice presidential candidate’s
mental state began to falter.
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‘She wasn’t eating
(a few small bites of steak a day, no more).
She wasn’t drinking
(maybe half a can of Diet Doctor Pepper,
no water, ever).
She wasn’t sleeping
(not much more than a
couple of hours a night, max)’,
the authors write.
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While being drilled for
upcoming interviews,
‘she would routinely shut down –
chin on her chest, arms folded,
eyes cast to the floor,
speechless and motionless,
lost in what those around her
described as a kind of catatonic stupor.’
The morning of her ill-fated CBS
interview with Katie Couric,
Ms Palin – ‘her eyes glassy and dead’ –
was unresponsive to attempts to
prep her as she was being made up.
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‘As they were about to
set off to meet Couric,
Palin announced
“I hate this makeup” –
smearing it off her face,
messing up her hair,
complaining she looked fat,’
the book says.
Later that month the McCain
campaign was seriously discussing
the possibility that Palin was
mentally unstable.
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According to the book,
Mr Schmidt and Rick Davis,
McCain’s campaign manager,
arrived at Ms Palin’s hotel room
in Philadelphia and
‘were appalled by the scene they found.
‘The room was hot and claustrophobic;
the shades were drawn.
The place was full of half-eaten
hotel food and stank of mouldering
french fries.
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‘Palin, looking dazed,
was surrounded, as usual,
by stacks and stacks of index cards.’
According to the book,
the camp was ready to ‘downgrade’
vice presidential candidate
Ms Palin’s responsibilities
in the event of a victory,
reducing her role ‘to the largely
ceremonial role that pre-modern
vice presidents inhabited.’
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Ms Palin’s spokeswoman
Meg Stapleton has dismissed the
book’s allegations as inaccurate gossip.
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__SARAH PALIN LINKS IN GREEN
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