What Palin's Show Says About Us

Sarah Palin's Alaska, a TLC miniseries, has been quite a spectacle.

We've watched Mama Grizzly mush a dog sled across a glacier; stalk caribou on the tundra; paddle raging white water; and match her frontierswoman sturdiness against Kate Gosselin's urban diva shtick. In the lulls between action, the ex-governor gushed about family values and her love for Alaska, and threw political elbows. Love or loathe her, this series seems a huge success at projecting the essence of Sarah to the world. And without that myth, what's left?

However, thousands of Alaskans hold a different view. Those of us who've actually lived off the land are less than impressed by Palin's televised exploits and, more important, by what they tell us about her. Tentative, physically inept, and betraying an even more awkward unfamiliarity with the land and lifestyle that's supposedly her birthright, Palin deconstructs her own myth before our eyes.

To be sure, packaging and style have often trumped substance in American democracy. From the days of literal stump speeches and catchy but empty political slogans such as "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too!" politicians have vaulted into power on the shoulders of charisma and sound bite, projected to the widest possible audience by the best available media. Indeed, Barack Obama's own ascendance had less to do with his scant political résumé than his ability to light up a teleprompter. You could argue that Palin's mercurial, tweet-propelled rise is just the latest manifestation of a time-honored tradition. However, Sarah Palin's Alaska seems to have ushered in a new and troubling era in our democracy: the point where a burgeoning cultural fascination with reality TV and celebrity worship intersected mainstream politics, and the three merged into one.

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