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'I am a liberal, but I'm blown away by Sarah Palin'
by Rebecca Johnson

When my cell phone rang on vacation, I eyed the phone number wearily. It was my employer, Vogue, calling. My four-year-old, just out of the ocean and covered in sand, was whining for a shower. My three-year-old was thirsty. My hedge-fund husband was upstairs on his BlackBerry making plans to buy Dubai. I picked up the phone.

If life is simply a reprise of high school, Palin was the jock who attended church faithfully, ran the soup kitchen, and organised the bake sale. If her paper on the Lincoln-Douglas debate wasn't the most nuanced, so be it.
It was the publicist from the magazine calling to say that CNN wanted to interview me about Sarah Palin. My initial response was cool. "What do they want to talk about?"

"You're one of the few people who has interviewed her for a national publication," the publicist answered, referring to an article I had written earlier this year profiling the governor of Alaska for the magazine.

"Is she dead?" I asked worriedly. Alaska is notorious for small plane crashes - that's how the politician father of the writer and journalist Cokie Roberts died - and I knew Palin owned a float plane. It never really occurred to me that she might be the vice-presidential candidate. With so little time in office, even Alaskans hadn't yet made up their mind about Sarah Palin's job as governor of the state.

Posted by: Steve White 2008-09-14
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=249922