The great thing about “crowdsourcing” Sarah Palin’s emails is that we didn’t have to spend our weekend reading them to find out there’s nothing there. And that’s a good thing, because we really needed to wash the dog.
Luckily, there are more than enough people with Internet access and no life who were happy to help news organizations sift through some 24,000 pages of messages sent or received by Palin during her first 21 months as governor of Alaska. The emails, released on paper after three years of foot-dragging by the state of Alaska, were digitized, scrutinized and synthesized beginning Friday afternoon.
“A media colonoscopy” is what Fox News correspondent Greta Van Susteren called it, and we’ll linger on the metaphor only long enough to suggest that a gastroenterologist might describe the findings as “all pink.”
It’s not that there’s nothing in them, just that there’s nothing new. We haven’t read a single account, by a citizen journalist or a major media outlet, that is likely to change anyone’s mind about Ms. Palin. If you’re looking for evidence that she’s a vindictive, narcissistic lightweight, you’ve come to the right place. But there’s also plenty to support the conclusion of a campaign staffer, who said the emails “detail a governor hard at work.”
Of all the anecdotes flagged by readers, our personal favorite is Palin’s reaction to a “security reprimand” received by the governor’s office after 13-year-old Willow Palin managed to sneak her puppy into the Capitol building. The cops who busted her complained that she wasn’t sufficiently chastened, offering what her mother characterized as a “flippant” response. “That’s my girl!” the governor bragged to a press aide. That’s as good as it gets, or so we’re told.
So was this colonoscopy necessary? You betcha.
Even before the relatively unknown Palin was picked as running mate to presidential nominee John McCain in 2008, her habit of doing state business on her Yahoo account had been challenged by political activists in Alaska. Responding to a citizen’s records request earlier that year, Palin’s staff had withheld hundreds of emails exchanged on Palin’s private email, claiming they were exempt.
National news outlets joined with activists in the much broader records request after Palin became a vice presidential contender.
In a scenario all too familiar to any Illinois resident who’s tried to wrestle a public document from a township clerk, Alaska officials stalled for three years, filing for one extension after another. At one point they claimed the cost of producing the records would be $15 million. In the end they released paper copies — remember, these documents began life as emails — and required the requestors to fly to Juneau to pick them up.
That’s an expensive nuisance for the national media, but an insurmountably prohibitive hardship for ordinary citizens — especially Alaskans, who might actually find the emails interesting.
In an editorial the week before the release, the Anchorage Daily News complained angrily that state officials had no plans to make the records available outside the capital, which is nearly 600 miles from Anchorage and not accessible by road. “As a practical matter, for most Alaskans, they really aren’t available at all,” the paper said.
Now they are.
