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Maureen Dowd: Rogue American woman

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12:47 PM Thursday, November 19, 2009

Of course, the subtitle of Sarah Palin’s book is “An American Life.”

Because she is the lovely avatar of real Americans — ordinary, hard-working, God-fearing, common-sense, good, ordinary, real Americans.

If you are not living an American life, you are, to use a Palin coinage, living “bass-ackwards.”

Palin is so determinedly American that, when she went into labor with Willow on the Fourth of July while kayaking on Memory Lake in Wasilla, she writes, “I so wanted a patriotic baby that I paddled as hard as I could to speed up the contractions, but she held out until the next day.”

I approached reading her book with trepidation, worried I might learn that I am not a real American, dang it, just another dread “enlightened elite.”

I was born and live in Washington, D.C., after all. Now you’d think that this would be a rather patriotic city to call home, but Palin paints it as a cross between Sodom and Dante’s fifth circle.

Here is what the former Alaska governor censoriously writes about “shenanigans” in two capital cities: “Politically, Juneau always had a reputation for being a lot like Animal House: drinking and bowling, drunken brawls, countless affairs, and garden variety lunchtime trysts. It’s been known at times to be like a frat house filled with freshmen away from their parents for the very first time. At other times, the capital city’s underside was even darker: clandestine political liaisons and secret meetings, unethical deeds and downright illegal acts.”

She concludes: “In short, it was a lot like Washington, D.C.”

Indeed, Sarah explains that the reason she wanted to join the McCain campaign was because she and Todd could contribute something rare and special: “We are everyday Americans.”

“We felt our very normalcy, our status as ordinary Americans,” she writes, “could be a much-needed fresh breeze blowing into Washington, D.C.”

It is also real hard to be a real, ordinary, hardworking American if you are part of “what used to be called ‘mainstream’ national media,” as Sarah scornfully writes.

“The time has come to acknowledge that it is counterfeit objectivity the liberal media try to sell consumers,” she says. “A period in the great American experiment has passed.”

I was beginning to panic. I pored over the book to see if there was there anything I shared in common with this apotheosis of traditional American values.

We both had what Palin calls “a love of the written word” and we both entered a Veteran of Foreign Wars writing contest as children.

We both read “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” and “Animal Farm.” We both came from families that loved Ronald Reagan and drove Ramblers, that watched “The Lawrence Welk Show” and “The Wonderful World of Disney” on Sunday nights.

Palin’s father offered to let her hold some moose eyes. My dad came from Ireland, where they ate sheep’s eyes soup.

Sarah and I both banged on the upright piano in the living room and twirled around to “The Sound of Music.”

We both grew up loving Hershey’s bars and bacon and steak. As Sarah explains her carnivore philosophy: “I always remind people from outside our state that there’s plenty of room for all Alaska’s animals — right next to the mashed potatoes.”

She hunted moose and I hunted for Bullwinkle on TV.

We both belonged to the scouts, babysat and kept diaries. (Of course, I was writing about making Jiffy Pop and she, stacking firewood.)

We both now have stressful lives where we sometimes, as she puts it, want “a wife” to organize things. And we both went through an Ann Taylor period before discovering Dolce & Gabbana at consignment shops. I can empathize with Palin, bless her heart, when she observes: “After a while some of the giddy gets knocked right out of you.”

I must be somewhat American because I agreed with Palin that she was undercut by Nicole Wallace, one of the aides sent by John McCain to do the “My Fair Lady” makeover.

Wallace had had a contract at CBS News and was determined to get the big interview for Katie Couric, even if it meant leading the lamb to slaughter, telling Palin that “the Perky One,” as Palin calls her, was insecure (presumably because of her low ratings) and that she would do a short-and-sweet chat about balancing motherhood and a career.

But Palin should have been smart enough to know that Couric has had a reputation for decades of being a tough interviewer, and that she wasn’t going to whiff on a chance like that. And despite Palin’s all-American paranoia, it is common practice to ask presidential candidates what they read.

I also agree with Palin that the McCain high command should not have barred the Palin kids, including media darling Piper, from the stage the night of McCain’s concession speech.

Nobody puts Piper in a corner.

Maureen Dowd writes for the New York Times.

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