Wednesday 1 July 2009

The Palin delusion

We still don't know whether Sarah Palin might yet bounce back to be the US Right's great hope for 2012, or whether her most lasting legacy may end up being a significant boost to the career of the splendid Tina Fey.

But anybody who misses the madness the 2008 election campaign - what with the Obama administration now involved in the hard slog of passing healthcare reform and climate change - may wish to reimmerse themselves in the long Vanity Fair profile by Todd Purdum.

Think Progresshighlights one odd detail.


More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—“a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy”—and thought it fit her perfectly.

When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig’s condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God’s, and signed it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.”


If I were an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent deity seeking a ghost writer, I might cast the net a little wider.

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