Sarah Palin Newsweek Photo Shoot
Of the eight shots in the Sarah Palin cover shoot, all eight feature her in sweatshirts and similar togs. Not exactly presidential.
While Sarah Palin’s declaration to Newsweek that “I believe that I can win a national election” while remaining coy as to whether she’ll actually run for president is barely interesting, her decision to pose for a photo shoot for the magazine is.
As Chris Bodenner points out, Palin excoriated Newsweek back in 2009 for using a photo taken from a Runner’s World shoot for a cover story. And, while I’m no fan of Palin’s, I agreed with her that it was a cheap stunt.
But here she is again.
Of the eight shots in the Sarah Palin cover shoot, all eight feature her in sweatshirts and similar togs. This bolsters her “outdoorsy” image. None are exploitative. But they’re not exactly presidential, either. It’s hard to imagine Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann posing for these photos.
Sarah Palin’s whole charm is that she’s not “Presidential”, though. She caters to the kind of person who voted for Bush because they would probably like to have a beer with him, or who is insulted at the very idea that someone they would vote for has to be “Presidential” to begin with.
It’s similar to the Bachmann issue: the more we mock them and the people who go for it, the stronger and more entrenched they become.
>It’s similar to the Bachmann issue: the more we mock them and the people who go for it, the stronger and more entrenched they become.
I think this is more what they and their supporters want us to believe than what is actually the case. Many politicians, including Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and Obama, have had a quality of seeming to grow stronger the more they’re attacked.
A superficial reading goes like this: “Liberals called Reagan stupid, and ended up underestimating him. Liberals called Bush stupid, and ended up underestimating him. So, too, they call Palin stupid, and she’ll have the last laugh one day.” The fact that Reagan and Bush deflected these attacks with a breezy humor that bears little resemblance to Palin’s whiny, sarcastic bomb-throwing doesn’t matter to her supporters.
Ridicule doesn’t help all politicians. It never helped Quayle. Has it helped Palin? It may have helped her become a right-wing celebrity. But it didn’t help her win national office in ’08; quite the opposite. And anyone who’s been paying attention cannot seriously suggest it has made her a stronger potential candidate for the presidency. On the contrary, it seems the more she’s ridiculed, the more unpopular she becomes. The polls clearly bear this out.
But a lot of people overlook this fact because the more marginalized she gets, the more devoted her core of supporters become. That’s not a Teflon quality. It’s a cultish one. But an essential part of the Palin Cult is to deny all evidence of her massive unpopularity. Ergo, she’s the new Saint Ronnie. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a more delusional political bloc.
“Presidential” is code for Ivy League elite. Of course, Sarah can’t win if she tries to go through the gatekeepers. But she can win by going to the people. And this next election is going to be about more than which empty vessel looks good in a suit and can fake sincerity the best. Especially, as everyday another failure of the Ivy League brainiacs reveals itself.
A lot can be hidden when things are moving but when they hit a bump, like the Junk Bond crisis, the Savings and Loan crash, Enron, the High Tech bubble and the Housing crash, the idiocy of those involved is exposed. And thus it is with the debt crisis. We should think Obama for rushing the crisis to a head with his ill-advised “stimulus” and revealing the idiocy of the so-called DC elite.
Again, she looks like a catalog model for a sports outfitter.
The “Runners’ World” shots were illegally pirated. Newsweek broke copyright law in running them — Palin went along with them under the conditions that they NOT be sold or re-used outside of the magazine. Newsweek settled the claim.
Here, Palin — for reasons I don’t understand — did cooperate with them. I don’t agree with that decision, as going along with Newsweek (which, when sold for $1.00, was overpriced) will most likely blow up on her. But there’s no hypocrisy here — she made the deal with Newsweek, and apparently this time it’s being honored.
J.
This is a woman who is denying her destiny. She should start a company making sports togs using American labor. “Sports clothing made in America for real Americans.”
@JKB: I attended state universities. I still wear a suit when I go on job interviews or appear on television.
James –
Real ‘murkins don’t need any stinkin college education.
And only elites wear suits and ties.
Real ‘murkins wear Wranglers, and plaid shirts, and T-shirts of their favorite Nascar driver.
I’m a Joey Logano fan, for the record.
@jay_Tea
They most likely paid her — and there’s nothing wrong with that. Pretty common for this type of cover.
On, a slightly different note, is it me or is SP starting to look like she could be related to Donald Rumsfelt? Something about that cover image…
Here we go again.she keeps popping out like a hemorroid. If she stops showing off her goods,her flock won’t give their hard earned money away to saraPAC.that fills her wallet, so she can live a life of luxury. If she says she will run in 2012,she will lose all her money. The loose screw cannot beat Obama.
@James Joyner:
And we peons must wear a suit or otherwise dress to fit in with those we hope to gain favor with. However, Palin is not going to win by going the conventional route and even then, she’s going for an election rather than selection so how she dresses is driven more by her persona than what DC elite might think proper. Lamar Alexander did quite well running for governor in a work shirt.
If Palin runs, she won’t get anywhere trying to be one of the beltway boys, she’ll be running an outsider campaign so not looking DC will be a plus, well except to the DC elite who will be scandalized.
We have always dressed our best for a job interview. I’m a lower-middle class Texan and know that much.
Come to Lousisiana and try it in a sweatshirt, unless you want to be roughhouse oil worker.
@Janis Gore: Yeah, but she’s Sarah Palin. She’d have it made by Vietnamese children, claim it was made in America, and when caught insist that people are being mean to her children.
@JKB: Yes, show contempt for the office of the president by running for it in running clothes.
I seem to remember Republicans swooning because W always wore his jacket in the oval office after that big thug Clinton sometimes took his off. Now suits are bad because we all worship at the altar of Saint Moron.
Really, sometimes I wonder if all Republicans start every morning scrubbing their brains of everything they believed yesterday.
@WR: There is a difference in running for the presidency and how you act as president. The first is a balancing act of what the people want. The second is as the representative of the nation.
jay:
Wrong. Newsweek bought them from the photographer (link, link).
There was no “claim” and Newsweek “settled” nothing. Your willingness to invent pure fiction is quite remarkable.
juke, yes, I had the details wrong. But as your own links show, I was closer than you imply.
Runners World bought the exclusive rights to the photos of Palin for one year, and Palin agreed to the photo shoot under those circumstances. The photographer’s agency then resold the photo to Newsweek.
There is some ambiguity as to whether or not it constituted a technical violation, but it’s clear that Palin believed — with considerable justification — that the photos were embargoed to any other magazines beyond Runners’ World.
I guess my memory’s colored by Newsweek’s “Koran In The Toilet” fraud that actually got people killed. You wanna dispute that one, too?
J.
You said the photos “were illegally pirated.” You said “Newsweek broke copyright law.” You said “Newsweek settled the claim.” Those are more than “details.” They are important claims. Trouble is, all those claims are false. And they are a terrific example of how you simply make things up.
You have an odd concept of “clear.” There is this much evidence to support this claim you made: none. And you are ignoring this:
What a shame that this contradicts your claim. Sorry to confuse you with the facts.
juke, I notice that you said I was wrong, but couldn’t be bothered to spell out the “truth.” That’s your modus operandi — you do as little actual work, but push the “other side” to do all the heavy lifting.
Also, you cherry-pick your “proof” — I notice how you omitted the title of the article you link to:
Palin photographer breached contract with sale to Newsweek
Or the first paragraph:
Your own source there, chump.
I dunno what relevance this has to the story at hand, apart from your age-old obsession with playing stupid “gotcha” games with me personally, but… meh. Nah, not worth continuing.
J.
You’re pretending the title means something it doesn’t mean. Yes, the photographer had a contract to not sell the photos without permission for a year. But you’re ignoring the source who told us why: “editors at the magazine were aware of negotiations to resell the pictures, and were primarily concerned to see that Runner’s World received prominent credit.”
So the purpose of that stipulation in the contract was not to make sure no one else published the pictures. The purpose of that stipulation in the contract was to make sure that no one else published the pictures without giving RW “prominent credit.”
Do you understand the difference between fact and speculation? I guess not, because you’re taking that reporter’s speculation and treating it as a fact. I guess you also don’t understand the meaning of the word “perhaps.” The purpose of that word (in this sentence) is to tell you that the rest of the sentence of speculation, not fact. Let’s look again at your phony claim:
Where did RW say that? Where did even Palin herself say that? Answer: nowhere. You’re ignoring this:
If RW made a deal with Palin “that they NOT be sold or re-used outside of the magazine” you should explain why RW “forwarded to Adams” the inquiries they received from “multiple outlets” about “obtaining the reuse rights.”
As usual, you are ignoring all inconvenient facts and inventing your own.
The relevance is this: you still haven’t learned that when you make things up, there’s a good chance that someone is going to notice and point out that you’ve been making things up. If you don’t like that experience, there’s a simple way to avoid it: stop making things up.
Pointing out that you’re making things up isn’t “stupid,” and it has nothing to do with “games.” Here’s a good example of something that’s “stupid:” making things up.
Wow, even when it is revealed that Jay is lying through his teeth, he still tries to blame it on everyone else. How pathetic.